Yoga as Self Care and Beginners Yoga Classes

The power of yoga is not a secret and you can find it from the first class. So, where and how do we begin anything? We live in a climate of needing to know, to have guarantees, money-back or opt-outs. Where does exploring yoga fit in to your life now?

Actually, we arrive on the yoga mat for the first time for a reason. Something we long for, a need or a knowing unanswered by our current lifestyle, habits and actions. We are brought to the mat to seek that there is something more to life, something greater, more mysterious than ourselves. When you arrive on the mat, you have given up resisting the fear that sometimes starting yoga, can bring up within us. You have stopped living on thoughts and feelings that are not leading to or becoming, your actions. Only actions can bring about change or results.
New To Yoga?
But wait, are you new to yoga? Any yoga? Maybe you tried a few classes and felt it wasn’t right for you. If so, definitely try Kundalini yoga. It is so accessible as ‘yoga for everyone.

We make adaptations, in classes we are all ages, shapes, and sizes. No, we don’t go into those contorted yogic positions you see on Instagram posted by bendy young and super-slim people in tight lycra posing on a Bali mountain top or beach.

Yoga IS for you – come to lessons and discover how much joy it creates within you as you move breathe and stretch and inhabit every space within your body. Wear loose clothes – don’t buy anything special. Bring your mat and a cushion, a shawl or blanket, and bring an open mind. Expect the unexpected in a GOOD way.

There are many rooms within you, we have layers and layers of the human body to help us have a unique experience on earth. Yoga unlocks those doors, clears out interior cupboards, and our kundalini yoga breathwork is like opening the window on your lung capacity. You will be surprised how fast a lesson will flow. We are also the only yoga that plays planetary or symphonic gongs at the end of class for your relaxation. These gongs are totally different from gongs used in general sound baths that are not affiliated with a yoga class. Our gongs are designed to complement the yoga practice and we are trained in ‘gong yoga’.

Chance? Luck?
I came to the yoga mat through the kindness of a stranger. A chance conversation with someone who worked there whilst I was browsing the bookshelves of my local yoga studio helped me put aside the need to know absolutely, what a class may be like, what outcome, what experience I would have during that 60 minutes. I trusted a complete stranger’s words and yet they told me nothing about my experience. I had to make that journey alone.
(note: the books area was my comfort zone – books are my addiction – I was going nowhere near the yoga class booking desk…). This chance conversation changed my life for better.

Trust

My first class was a revelation. During the 60 minutes on that yoga mat, I had time and space to connect to the wilderness of and within, my body; to be lost in translation from breath, movement and stillness. The class ended with the gong being played to relax and heal our nervous systems. It was a Kundalini yoga class, the only yoga that plays a healing planetary gong for the relaxation part of a class. It was during that first kundalini yoga class I came home to my ‘whole self’ which is the soul. I had graduated into this shining person with limitless possibilities.

I stepped back out onto the street, the spring sun smiled back at me, I heard birdsong amongst the car horns and as I walked along the embankment beside a bracken smelling grey river, I saw the sun again now gleaming off the water and I felt I so alive I knew I could begin fully living my one wild and precious life. As the months and now the years have passed, I know I have found a habit to practice that fully supports all areas of my life, from my glands, my nervous system, my lungs, my strength and my mind. You can too.

Start – When the time is right, start, and the pressure will be off you.

Sometimes we see things – maybe you are reading this as you have seen the title ‘Beginners Kundalini Yoga’ classes on Instagram or Facebook. So please know, this hasn’t appeared before your consciousness by accident. It is a message, a calling in, that the universe is giving you back the invitation to start now, as it takes your subconscious messages you have fed it, feeling you needed some active change in your life and is giving you the nudge to create the change in yourself.

Here is a sign, if you are reading this. It’s time to enjoy a yoga that creates the change you want to be in your life. By cultivating a regular practice – which you can begin with a new series of 4-week classes at YogaSpace Yorkshire.
Join me
Tuesdays 6.30pm for 75 mins and you can book on the hub. (link in bio)