Tag: Hatha Yoga Kreuzberg

Berlin six hour workshop on Yoga and The Alexander Technique

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 We are happy to present our second workshop on Yoga and the Alexander Technique in Kreuzberg, Berlin! Rossella Buono, who is a close collaborator with David Moore, is back in Berlin and will be bringing the Alexander Technique to our Hatha Yoga classes taught by Pinelopi.

 

WHEN:            Saturday 2nd December 10am-1pm &  Sunday 3rd December 10am -1pm

WHERE:          English Yoga Berlin, Görlitzer Str 39, Kreuzberg

FOR WHO:      For any one with an interest in yoga or the Alexander technique.

TAUGHT BY:  Rossella Buono and Pinelopi from English Yoga Berlin

PRICE:              €50

The workshop consists of two mornings in which we will develop an individualized practice and an understanding of the uniqueness of the use of yourself in movement and at rest.

The workshop will provide an active and practical investigation of:

· Coordination and posture from an Alexander Technique perspective
· Modifying yoga poses
· Kinaesthesia
· Doing and non-doing
· Directing energy through the body
· Identifying and overcoming habits


In the first half of each morning Rossella will be introducing the Alexander Technique and how to apply it, in the second part we’ll use the new knowledge as Pinelopi leads a yoga class and Rossella provides hands on guidance and feed back.

– All abilities and levels of experience.

– Absolute beginners are welcome!

– Please wear comfortable clothes.

Booking is strongly recommended to ensure a place. To book your place, please contact:

Rossella: rossella (at) rossellabuono  (dot) com

Pinelopi: pinelopi (at) englishyogaberlin (dot) com

ABOUT THE TEACHERS:

Rossella Buono relocated to Canterbury, UK in January 2013 from Melbourne where she had an established Alexander Technique practice. Working with a great range of people, Rossella has applied the Technique to improving the lives of people with issues such as back, neck or shoulder pain, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease, sciatica, asthma, stuttering, anxiety and stress. She has also enjoyed attaining tangible posture and movement improvements for musicians, sportspeople, office workers, and the elderly. In her capacity as a care worker, she has developed strategies to improve the quality of life for people with physical and mental disabilities.

Rossella was first introduced to the Technique as a means of her own rehabilitation, after breaking her leg in an accident – and found herself benefitting greatly from the approach. After eliminating residual pain and regaining sustainable, coordinated mechanical function, Rossella decided to train as an Alexander Technique teacher. Since then she has worked to offer others the same opportunity for the elimination of pain and improvement of overall quality of life.

 

Originally from Greece, Pinelopi has grown up all over the world. Beginning her yoga practice in 1999, she went on to complete a 600 hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training course over a period of two years in Valencia, Spain. Since 2008, she has been working as a full time yoga teacher in Spain and continued to do so after her move to Berlin in 2010. Her classes are a mix of Hatha yoga asanas (yoga poses), grounding techniques, pranayama (breathing exercises), pratyahara (practice of detachment), yoga nidra and meditation. She is an injury conscious yoga teacher and a firm believer that yoga is for everybody and any body. She believes that no one should ever be in pain during class. All yoga poses can be adjusted so that one is still stretching, growing, strengthening, challenged, without experiencing pain or triggering old injuries.


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Rossella will also be offering Berlin private lessons from Monday 4th to Thursday 7th of December.
Cost €60 for a one- hour lesson (location Zentrum fur Alexander-Technik)

Healing is boring

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The unseen process of healing is often boring. Yoga tries to give methods to cope with this.

photo by Jeremy Bishop

I was contemplating on the nature of healing today and came to an important realization. Healing is boring. Whether it is healing from an illness, from a broken heart, from a deep set negative pattern, from past trauma… they all share, on some level, the same thing: the process is often boring. You would think that with something as majestic and beautiful as healing, the process would be thrilling. But no, the every day work of healing is tedious, requires mountains of patience and as a result becomes boring.

So how does it work? A wound occurs. A physical, emotional, or mental wound. And then the body, soul, mind needs to heal from it. It requires sitting with the pain, day in and day out. While the pain is there, one starts to think of the patterns that brought it about, the reasons for its’ origin. Depending on how big the wound is, people start to try out lots of random things so that they can leave the place they are in… often not having the slightest clue if this path will lead them anywhere. And then finally the realization occurs that this will be a long process, one that potentially requires daily physiotherapy, daily self care, or daily faith in your own self and strength. And daily patience.

And that’s the key word there: daily. If only it could be instant, I’ve done the work, I switched my mind to a new consciousness, and bam! I’m healed! But no, in most cases it’s about implementing on a daily basis whatever it is that you’re learning. And that daily work, is what we often find ourselves lacking the energy to do.

Realizing this, gives a more accurate picture of the work to be done. It helps one understand what lies ahead. And, most importantly, to prepare for the boredom.

So how can we deal with the boring side of healing? Here are a few suggestions:

Settle into the boredom of healing.

It’s important to accept that the nature of this process is tedious. Not everything in life has to be exciting. When you start seeing it this way, you are already psychologically preparing yourself for the work that is ahead, and you don’t give up when the process lacks glamour.

Keep your eyes on the prize!

Don’t let the boredom take you out of your healing path! I, for one, am a person who always needs change in my life and find it really hard to stick to long routines and to take part in things that bore me. What helps in my case is to keep reminding myself that this IS bringing change. This is bringing healing, which IS the biggest change I wish for in my life. I need to stick with it although at the moment it might feel so un-moving.

Spice it up!

Play your favourite tunes loudly while doing those same physio exercises for the zillionth time- Sing along too! Treat yourself to sushi, or your favorite meal, after each doctors’ appointment. Discover the value of talking nonsense. Call up a friend to specifically talk nonsense and hear yourself laugh, feel yourself lighten up. Do it every day if you have to! It’s about creating space to have some fun while you do the work. I’m not going to the doctor’s again- I’m having sushi again…. get it?

Time travel!

Yoga instructs to keep yourself present in the here and now. This is a very valuable practice. I can see how that would work in an ashram under the presence of an experienced guru helping you through your healing process. However, when you find yourself in extreme pain, entering deep into the feeling of here and now can make the pain too intense to take.

  • So my suggestion is time travel! Your mind subconsciously does that anyway, but I suggest you do it consciously.
  • First you need to be committed to a healing process and the work it requires, then let yourself experience the pain in doses and not all at once. If you are healing from emotional trauma, your mental energy is often stuck in the past. Try to take yourself out of the past and into the present, and when you are there, engage in something that really interests you, as part of your healing process.
  • If you are in extreme chronic pain, the present can often be a very painful place. Give yourself permission to not always be present in everything. Let yourself enter someone else’s life ie. by watching a movie. Remind yourself how it’s not always so, and how the future will be better when all the work is done.

A friend commented once, that everyone keeps on telling her how much they learned about their depression, and how good it ended up being for them. A sentiment she did not share. It’s easy to talk in retrospect from a healed place about how interesting the process was. But we must also acknowledge that most of the times we didn’t know where we were going, how long it would take to get there, if we will ever get there, and what coping mechanisms to use. Often we were bored and lost.

Making this acknowledgement has a transformative power of its’ own.

Pinelopi is a sivananda Yoga teacher based in Berlin. She specializes in Hatha Yoga, Pregnancy Yoga, yoga for beginners and business yoga. She works from our yoga Kreuzberg studio. 

Breathe Like a Baby- or Don’t?

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Image courtesy of Sura Nualpradid at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of Sura Nualpradid at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have often heard yoga teachers use babies as breathing models. “See how their bellies move up and down when they are sleeping?” “Babies haven’t learned the restrictions of every day life that changes our breathing.” “They don’t hold in their breathing, it just flows.” These are just some of the common phrases that come out in yoga classes.

Although I agree that babies have something magical in the way they are first experiencing the world, a study  has shown that babies have to work quite hard when it comes to breathing the first year of their lives.

In order for babies to be able to get through the birth canal unharmed, they need a higher elasticity in the rib cage. This means that the rib cage is too soft to easily support their respiratory system. As they grow older their rib cages will become hard and stable allowing better support in breathing.

Babies need to double their size within the first months of their lives. To do this, babies need a higher oxygen intake and a faster heartbeat amounting to a higher metabolism. They got to breathe way more than adults to keep those little bodies growing.

During pregnancy, babies can not use their lungs. Their blood bypasses the lungs by going directly from the right side of the heart to the left. Not having ever used their lungs means that when they will take their first breath ever, those lung tissues will be quite stiff and out of use… making breathing much harder for them.

Finally, babies’ nervous system, which regulates the frequency and coordination of breathing, is often still maturing in the first months of their lives. This leads to a lot of uncoordinated breathing and irregularity in breathing frequency.

All this goes to show that babies have a harder time breathing than adults. Babies’ respiratory system tends to mature along with their postural skills, therefore taking about a year before they can breathe in a more effortless way.

“Breathing like a baby” is not only impossible when one is an adult, but it is also undesirable! It is a relief to not be struggling with so many aspects of our anatomy just to get a breath in. Our adult lives bring other challenges instead. For example, we, adults, get stuck in our breathing patterns that often reflect the emotional patterns we have created. And that is where our focus should lie in. Can we change our breathing habits, not to one of a baby’s, but to one that allows more freedom so that we can experience other aspects of our emotional world?

All of Pinelopi’s yoga classes are in English. She teaches pregnancy yoga and hatha yoga in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Pinelopi is an injury conscious yoga teacher and will be happy to assist you before and throughout the class with tailored variations for your yoga poses. She believes that the increased awareness cultivated in her yoga classes together with the suggested variations for your unique body, make a difference both to practicing yoga in daily life and to the yoga benefits you take with you after class.