Tag: english yoga berlin

Terminology Tuesday: Rotation of Consciousness

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rotation of consciousness

photo by Fern

Today we are focusing on a term that we use in every class, during Yoga Nidra: rotation of consciousness.

The rotation of consciousness involves taking the practitioner’s awareness to different parts of the body. Wherever we focus our attention becomes the place where we also centre our energy. Bringing one’s awareness to each part of the body increases the energy in that part and allows the participant to identify and relax tensions there.

By using this practice we invite ourselves to experience total relaxation while being awake.  Nidra, here, means literally sleep. Yoga Nidra, therefore means the yoga of sleep.  It is about being aware while the body sleeps; the rotation of consciousness is one of the techniques that makes this possible.  It brings heightened awareness to the whole body, piece by piece. It grounds us with connecting to the sensations present there.

Important Tip

If you, like me, end up falling asleep during Yoga Nidra, first of all know that it is natural and common.  But, like me, you might regret having missed the visualization that follows, and really would like to stay awake.  Try and repeat the teacher’s words as they reach you, while feeling or visualizing the body part – it worked for me!

Clelia is an Erasmus entrepreneur working as an intern.  Her placement involved learning how to set up a small yoga business such as English Yoga Berlin. We offer Hatha Yoga classes with Pinelopi and Vinyasa yoga with Juli.  Our yoga Kreuzberg Berlin classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. We also offer Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain.

My Healing Journey at English Yoga Berlin

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Healing at English yoga Berlin

It was such a pleasure to meet you all!

My Erasmus placement/internship at English Yoga Berlin is coming to an end, (read here if you missed my blog back in May) and I wanted to take a minute to share what a healing journey it has been for me, it’s only the beginning, but many say ‘the beginning is half the battle’!

 

When I got to Berlin on April the 15th, I was really excited to be starting a placement with a small organisation that shared the values I aspire to.  It meant so much to me that both Erasmus and English Yoga Berlin thought that their time and money would be worth my ideas, life experience and skills.

Parallel to that, I was experiencing a rapid deterioration of my degenerative arthritis to the left hip, and growing symptoms for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).   I was hoping that this journey was going to be the opening I needed to understand and transform.  I was also apprehensive that PTSD could interfere with me giving and making the most of this opportunity.

Relaxing as more space to just be

From the first Yoga Nidra session at Pinelopi’s class, I experienced a loosening of the layers that were wrapped up tight to ‘hold me’ together.  By layers I mean thought patterns, defensive and self-critical in many places, focusing on a sense of powerlessness about how things are.  Pinelopi helped me to recognize them as repetitive, random and cyclical.  This went hand in hand with my physical pain, as the muscle layers stiffened up – are you familiar with this?  Observing mind activity this way creates space, to see more clearly.  I felt an overwhelming set of emotions, including of course relief and joy. Yes, my joy was trapped underneath all that.  This is one aspect that English Yoga Berlin taught me about yoga.  Relaxing is about getting more space to be and to become – and for me it was really powerful.

Becoming aware and conscious

Pinelopi would ask questions like “Where is your pain?  Where does it begin?  Where does it end?”  I realized that with my physical pain I had learned to have a ‘generalized’ experience about it.  One loses the perspective and dimensions of it.  “In general, I have pain”.  It became like white noise, after you hear it for a while you learn to screen it out.  Have you ever realized how noisy your fridge is only when it stops buzzing?  Like that.

Although I can see how ‘generalizing pain’ in my body was a way of coping, in the long run it creates a disconnection with the body.  The body is the source of a lot of important information.  A big part of my healing journey with English Yoga Berlin happened by attending all the classes, and nourishing through repetition and practice.  It’s like learning to play an instrument or to speak a language.  Setting an intention at the beginning of a class, like with Juli every Sunday at her Vinyasa Flow sessions, is a powerful action that connects a physical practice with a mindset, with the mind.

Limitations are our teachers

The  gentle questioning, either through actual questions offered by the teacher, or, specifically in Hatha Yoga, through the enquiry of how different poses, asanas, feel, led me through reflection:

 

where are our limits?

can we accept them, respect them?

can working within a limit be the real challenge?

 

Healing needs a safer space

I would have so much more to share about this yoga class in Kreuzberg: from breathing techniques to the feeling of belonging in a group committed to respect for our and each other’s bodies.

This has allowed me to nurture a priceless experience of the every day, every thought, every step of healing, the healing that never concludes – because healing is ultimately our powerful input in life.

English Yoga Berlin is a safer space

English Yoga Berlin is a safer space

New Year’s Wish for 2019

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May we experience peace, joy, solidarity and lots of laughter.

snow and stillness

Peaceful wishes

May our  eyes be open to all the small, and not so small, acts of care and love everyday.  May we notice the love in our friends’ quirky jokes, relentless listening, shared farts and smiles from strangers on a bus.   Random acts of love are the network that sustain us in our lives.  They are the juice that fuels our healing, our hope, and our connection.

May our eyes be open to both our own and the world’s suffering. Open like a mother’s embrace, awake like a vigil at midnight.  May solidarity warm our bones and give us strength to do the work that needs to be done.

May 2019 provide a place for change, healing, deep understanding and sustainability for the whole world.

With love,

English Yoga Berlin

Sliding-scale Queer Yoga

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Introducing a new payment guide for the ongoing community class on
Sundays at 4pm at our English Yoga Berlin studio!

Queer Yoga Berlin

Sliding-Scale Berlin Yoga guide

What is Sliding-scale Queer Yoga?

If you’d like to be part of our Berlin queers and friends yoga community on Sunday afternoons, and;
* the regular prices would make it difficult for you to cover your basic needs, use this reduced rate guide.
* you’ve got some extra, you are welcome to pay it forward to others.
* if even paying the lowest price is not possible, please talk to us about other options.

If you’ve been following us over the past few years, you may remember that in 2013 we started a community class. We offered this at a sliding-scale price where participants could pay what they could afford, in order to make a yoga class accessible to those with less financial resources. All of us yoga teachers of the collective would take turns leading the class. When the class ended because of low attendance, Juli wanted to keep the class going, so the Sunday 4pm yoga class was converted to a community class with sliding-scale payment.

sign on the door

English Yoga Berlin is a safe space

As the years went on, Juli also wanted to try to provide a yoga class for the queer community to practice yoga in a safe and non-judgmental atmosphere. So a collaboration between two queer yoga teachers began on Wednesday mornings. Since these classes also came to their end, and the Sunday yoga is already a space for solidarity with marginalized folks, it will now, in the spirit of alliedness, be a space for Queer Yoga and friends. This doesn’t mean that if you’re not queer, you are not welcome! It just means, that it’s asked of you that once you enter this space, to take into consideration your position in the world, recognize what your privileges are, make space for people more marginalized than you, and avoid assumptions and judgment.

 

Why “Queer” Yoga?

In western contemporary society, yoga classes can often feel excluding to those of us who are not middle-class, white, thin, flexible and cis-gendered. A common misconception is that if you don’t look like the person on the cover of a Yoga Journal, then you are probably doing yoga so that you can work towards that ‘ideal.’ For those of us who don’t, it can be discouraging to even attend a yoga class, knowing that we might be seen that way by others in the room.

When the room is filled with stereotypical “yoga-bodies” and unawareness of heterosexual and cis-sexual privilege, it can make some queer and trans* people feel uncomfortable and unable to focus on their own practice. And often the language used in mainstream yoga classes can be very hetero- and cis-sexist. As queer yoga teachers, we can take the first step in making the space (and the practice) more queer and trans* friendly.

At English Yoga Berlin we offer small classes for more personalised practice and private yoga lessons. Juli‘s yoga classes in English are a slow Vinyasa Flow yoga / Svastha yoga mix. Contact us here to learn more and book a private session, or check our classes schedule to participate in a group class at our Kreuzberg yoga studio.

The gift that keeps on giving

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“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

Khalil Gibran

 

know your light through the dark

Candles In The Dark
photo by אליעד מלין

Yes, yes, you know what I am going to say now: the Season is upon us. Or should I say the Seasons: Hanukkah, Bodhi Day or Rohatsu, Christmas, Kwanzaa, plus all the ancient festivals associated with the Winter Solstice.

It’s cold. It’s dark.  There seems to be an ancient intuitive call: to walk towards the light, the bonfire, the candle, reflect and get warm.  A lot of us go into this dark cave of hibernation and feel the need to reach inside our own psyches with a sign of care. Similarly, we reach out to our loved ones with a gift, a thought, a phone call, an act of kindness.

Additionally, the winter holidays mark the passing of another year. Memories, family dynamics, losses and longings all come up again, stirring a mix of emotions that makes winter hibernation hard to escape!

This time can be very overwhelming for a lot of us.

My way of dealing with this time of the year is by going into my body, into my breathing, into creating moments with myself. It is by going into my yoga.

If you feel you need a special place to go inwards during this solstice, we invite you to come and try out a class. This is also a great gift for a loved one who you think could benefit from the calmness and grounding, the gentle moments of solitude, and a more emotionally sustainable way of life.

English Yoga Berlin offer yoga gift cards for one or more Hatha yoga and Vinyasa yoga classes. You can buy them at our yoga studio in Kreuzberg, or online.

2.5 hrs Workshop Pantanjali’s Yamas and Niyamas

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yama and niyamas

Yama and Niyamas: the non-physical benefits of Yoga

In Patanjali´s classical texts about yoga, eight parts of a yogic practice are outlined. These parts can also be referred to as “limbs”. The most widely known limb of yoga is Asana practice– the practice of physical postures. In our English Berlin Yoga Classes, we understand the value of going beyond the physical. This workshop, therefore focuses mostly on two specific limbs of Patanjali´s eight-fold path: Yamas and Niyamas.

 

Yamas and Niyamas are the first two steps of yoga that Patanjali discusses in the Yoga Sutra. They are ethical, behavioral and spiritual guidelines for living. There is a lot of room for interpretation with the Yamas and Niyamas–because of basic translation issues (some concepts are very tricky to twist into English!). These guidelines are designed for yogis to personally interrogate, observe and experience in the context of their own lives. They are given to students of yoga to contemplate and  incorporate into their everyday lives.

When:  Sunday 27th of January, 2019 14:00

Where: At The Yoga Hub Berlin, Greifswalder Str. 8, 10405 Berlin, Germany

Who is this workshop for:

Anyone who would like to be introduced to the dimension of yoga that is both beyond and essential to the physical practice. This workshop is also good (but not only) for yoga teachers wishing to refresh or deepen their knowledge.

Format of workshop:

This workshop is given in the form of a talk with ten mini self-explorative guided meditations to make the material relevant to you and your every day life.

Please note:

  • Most of the talk will focus on:
    • Patanjali and the goal of yoga
    • the Yamas and Niyamas (ethics and moral observances)
    • Pratyahara (the practice of dettachment).
  • The talk will focus very briefly on:
    • Asanas (yogic postures)
    • Pranayama (breathing techniques)
      • As these are explained in the regular Hatha Yoga classes
  • The talk will briefly introduce the goals of:
    • Dharana (concentration)
    • Dhyana (meditation)
    • Samadhi (liberation)
      • as these subjects are too big for a 2.5 hr workshop.

About the teacher:

Pinelopi teaches Berlin Yoga workshopsBackground info: Beginning her yoga journey in 1999, Pinelopi completed a 600 hour Hatha Yoga Teacher and Vedantic Philosophy Training course over a period of two years in Valencia, Spain. This training is recognized by the Berufverband de Yogalehrenden in Deutschland (BDY), World Movement of Yoga and Ayurveda and the European Yoga Federation. For the last decade, she has worked as a full-time yoga teacher in Spain and in 2010 she founded English Yoga Berlin. Currently she is deepening her knowledge through Leslie Kaminoff’s Yoga Anatomy Course and David Moore’s “Injury-free yoga” applying the Alexander Technique postural alignment to all yoga poses.

Price: 35 Euro

Early registration discount:10 € discount if you register before January 15, 2019. The workshop is refundable unless cancellation occurs later than January 13th, after which 50% refund.  Space is limited so register early before the spots fill up!

To book a place please contact:

pinelopi (at) englishyogaberlin (dot) com

 

Pinelopi specializes in Hatha Yoga. Her yoga Kreuzberg Berlin classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. She offers Berlin business yoga,  private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain, yoga courses and workshops.

Private Yoga Classes: a teacher’s point of view (Pinelopi)

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I asked Pinelopi (from English Yoga Berlin in Kreuzberg) what does a private yoga class mean to her practice as a yoga teacher.  Her answer sheds some light on what yoga can bring to one’s life.

Private Yoga with Pinelopi

Pinelopi from EYB

I love to share what my own practice of yoga has provided me: a journey into becoming aware and connected to the body, and in my case, transforming my relationship to chronic pain.  From that I have learnt that each body is unique and each person’s requirements, needs, and goals are unique too.

A private one to one session with a student provides me with an opportunity to work specifically for what their body requires, focusing on one specific pattern – be it a small postural habit acquired in the office chair, or a life-long struggle with pain.  In a class, the teaching can be more generalised about habits and patterns, and it is about becoming relaxed, alert and awake in a group context, something that is also special and appreciated by yoga practitioners.  They are just two different things.

Personalised experience

At the beginning of a private yoga session, I get to do a check-in and find out what is going on in the student’s life at that moment.  I also get to understand their learning style, if they are a visual person, seeking metaphors, or more drawn towards an experience of ‘embodied presence’, centering on sensations and more like an investigation.

The relaxation I give them at the end often has to do with what they are dealing with using a learning style method that works powerfully for them.

Private Yoga classes for finding your pieces

Finding the pieces

People mostly book a session bringing a challenge with them, like chronic pain.  I often feel that  people come in a big knot, and the process of yoga is to slowly loosen the knot by tackling a little piece at a time, first this piece, than that piece, continuously, with repetition. Often it’s because of this knot that several habits get created: the pain might have started from one thing and then the body is trying to protect and compensate creating new habits.

I see a private session with a student as a chance for the student to find the puzzle pieces of their own selves through Yoga. It’s an approach that requires an openness to transformation in our bodies, energies and minds.

Contact us here to learn more and book a private session, or check our classes schedule to participate in a group class.

 

Private Yoga Classes: a teacher’s point of view (Juli)

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Since I have started working with English Yoga Berlin, I have been in an enquiry about private yoga classes and what they have to offer, and how the teachers themselves experience them. Here is Juli’s experience:

pirvate yoga classes: Juli

I have never had a private lesson myself, although I have given them. I have received private sessions with osteopaths, naturopaths, physiotherapists and psychotherapists, and while I do not want to draw parallels with these professions (I am not a therapist), I do find that when I give private lessons it feels something like that: it’s private, it’s personal, focusing specifically on whatever people share, be it about how they are feeling or what is going on with their body. Over regular sessions, trust develops a more directed and personalised approach.

As a teacher I help a client learn how to pay attention to their own body, breath and mind, and how those sensations are connected through thought patterns, emotions, and daily activities. I really like to look at ADLs (activities of daily living), and how to unwrap repetitive patterns. When I give a first-time private lesson, I will communicate through email to prepare what a client might need for the first session, and then develop a program for home yoga practice until the next time we see each other. The program usually includes 15-20 minutes of yoga three times a week and some ADLs.

private yoga classes: Juli

the benefits of a private session with a teacher need to be nurtured in our home practice

Yes there is homework, because as my Svastha yoga teacher says; “once a week is nice, twice a week is maintenance, but three times a week is progress.” What he means by progress can be any goal, whether it be to recover from an injury or to feel more lightheartedness.

The mentor/student relationship is essential to the Yoga experience – where you are learning from someone who knows more than you (an expert? but who is an expert in Yoga, we are all learning).  In the ancient tradition, a guru would decide if a student is ready and a student would decide whether this guru was the right fit for them – and I really believe that you can’t learn yoga from just anybody, any teacher – it has to be someone you connect and resonate with. I imagine how the experience of a series of one to ones would magnify the opportunity of that connection and resonance. This is why it’s important to find the right fit.

At English Yoga Berlin we offer small classes for more personalised practice and private yoga lessons. Juli‘s yoga classes in English are a slow Vinyasa Flow yoga / Svastha yoga mix. Contact us here to learn more and book a private session, or check our classes schedule to participate in a group class at our Kreuzberg yoga studio.

 

Wishing you peaceful connections in 2018

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English Yoga Berlin 2018

Handprint in Snow

“I’ve learned that every day you should
reach out and touch someone.
People love a warm hug,
or just a friendly pat on the back.”

― Maya Angelou

The cold winter days are upon us, when we seek comfort indoors, with warm food and good company. It’s important to remind ourselves not to take for granted that these things come more easily for some of us than others. Connection is as much a human need as are food and shelter. But family and friendship are not such simple words as they seem. Not all of us come from families who love us, and some have no family at all. Friendship is more accessible to those who spend time in places where people are open to making new friends. For those who cannot for financial, physical or emotional reasons, it’s just all the more difficult. We can connect online if we have access, but what if we don’t? In this wish for peaceful connection in 2018, there is also the wish for more meaningful connection, reaching out to people in need, being patient and empathetic with those who are struggling, and learning about others by asking gentle questions instead of making assumptions, and on the flip side, moving past the fear of asking for help or friendly company when needed. If we were to imagine how every one of us on this planet is connected, and hold onto that image, we could perhaps put it into action. What would happen if the whole world recognized our interconnectedness?

During this time, things quiet down at English Yoga Berlin. We’re taking a few days off to recuperate between the years, please take note of our schedule. We look forward to an exciting new year in 2018. English Yoga Berlin thanks you for all your commitment and support in these past years. We continue to give Hatha Yoga and Vinyasa Flow Yoga classes regularly in 2018.