Yoga
DAOIST FLOW YOGA
For me, Yoga is not only a way to stretch, condition and tone the body to improve strength, flexibility, mobility and alignment, but it also trains the capacity to remain in the present moment, experience life more fully, and inhabit ourselves more deeply.
My practice is a hybrid approach, integrating Qigong with a Vinyasa Flow. Often when in a flow, the intensity of effort our body is experiencing can bring strong sensations into our awareness, I use Qigong intermittently throughout the practice, to give space and time for us to feel deeply into those sensations, rather than rush past them. The soft groundedness of Qigong is the perfect companion to a dynamic strong Vinyasa. This is the Daoist Flow approach to Yoga, in which I trained under Jean Hall and James Rafael.
My approach is highly adaptive to all levels of ability, and while it facilitates a process of internal connection to the self, it can be highly athletic and dynamic, depending on the needs of the student / students. I teach group classes and train students 1 to 1.
As a trainee Psychotherapist in the Gestalt modality, I believe that a group yoga class can become a microcosm of people’s lives. We can find ourselves lost in the same processes that emerge in our relationships, at work or between family members.
We may wish for the praise of the teacher, compare ourselves to others, hurt ourselves because we should be ‘better’, we can lose ourselves in narratives around shame, a fear of being seen, or not being good enough, or literally anything else, just from moving from Warrior 1 to Warrior 2. These are specific manifestations of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in the world beyond the class.
In a Psychotherapeutically informed Yoga class, my role as the teacher is not only to guide you through the flow, but to spend time and attention supporting you in tracking your own internal psychological process through the class. The goal is not to eradicate unpleasant feelings, but to deepen our awareness of our internal processes. If you can come to better understand the intricate nature of how you experience the feeling of being ‘lesser than’ (for example) in a Yoga class, this learning can help deepen your awareness of such processes in other areas of my life.
I am not yet a qualified and practicing psychotherapist, I am not offering movement therapy, this is an approach to Yoga that integrates my training thus far, to facilitate a more focused self-exploration, than may be found in a traditional yoga class. There will be no one on on or group discussion of the topics people bring to these session, or of what arises.
The class is ideal for those interested in deepening their self-awareness around the internal processes and habits that cause them difficulty, it would not be an appropriate space to explore specific trauma, grief, or acute emotional distress.
