When you’re brand new to yoga, it can feel intimidating and be difficult to know exactly where and how to get started. Our beginners guide to yoga was created specifically for you - to give you all the tips, guidelines, and recommendations you will need to start a successful yoga practice.
What is Yoga?
Yoga means ‘union’ or ‘connection’. In Sanskrit, the word ‘yoga’ is used to signify any form of connection. Yoga is both a state of connection and a body of techniques that allow us to connect to anything.
Conscious connection to something allows us to feel and experience that thing, person, or experience. The experience of connection is a state of yoga, a joyful and blissful, fulfilling experience.
Awareness is the secret of yoga.
Is Yoga Right for you?
Yoga is in no way exclusive - being able to practice yoga does not matter how old you are, how much you weigh, what you do for a living, where you live, or what religion you practice.
Yoga is accessible for just about everyone.
How often should you do yoga?
If you can practice yoga 3 or more times per week, you will see significant improvements in your flexibility, range of motion, strength, balance, inner peace, and overall well being.
What are the benefits of yoga?
The benefits of yoga are almost endless! Yoga empowers you to make conscious choices toward living a more healthy and fulfilling life. Yoga also helps you:
Keep your mind healthy and strong
Reduce stress and promote relaxation
Get a better night’s sleep
Boost your immune system
Help heal common aches like back pain
Increase happiness and well being and reduce depression
Lose weight and change your body shape
Improve and maintain the health of muscles, joints, and organs
Prevent conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and auto-immune disorders
Improve flexibility, strength, stamina, mobility, range of motion, and balance
What Yoga Classes do we offer?
Yoga for Anxiety
This class involves a series of restorative yoga poses with a focus on soothing the nervous system, relaxing the body and calming the mind. It will also include specific breathing techniques that are proven to reduce anxiety. You will learn how to activate your body's relaxation response and come out of the fight-or-flight state.
Gentle Yoga
We will be practicing hatha yoga in this class, which involves a set of simple physical postures and breathing techniques. These are generally practiced more slowly and include more static posture holds. Hatha yoga is beginner-friendly and has become one of the more popular types of yoga. This class is suitable for all ages and stages of yoga practice.
Yoga for Pregnancy
This class involves a series of yoga asanas that are safe for women during all stages of pregnancy. At the end of the class, we will have a check-in and chat about all things pregnancy and how you're travelling in general. Come along and join a supportive group of ladies who know just what you're going through!
Yin Yoga
This class is slower and more meditative than other types of yoga. Yin yoga involves holding poses for a few minutes at a time, targeting your deep connective tissues like fascia, ligaments and joints. This allows you to stretch and lengthen these tissues whilst also teaching you how to breathe through discomfort and be with your thoughts. A great practice to help counter the effects of our busy and fast-paced lives.
Yoga for Teen Girls
Come along and enjoy some gentle stretching and breathing with other girls your age! This class is for females aged 12-18 years and involves a mix of different yoga practices including vinyasa, hatha and yin. You will learn tools to let go of stress and worry, release physical tension and improve your overall wellbeing.
Deep Peace Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a self-regulation practice that involves awareness and non-judgement of our moment to moment experience. This class will help you to slow down racing thoughts, enhance focus and attention, and become more calm and clear. You will learn to embrace your present reality and accept your thoughts, feelings and sensations as they are. Meditation helps us to become less resistant and more in flow with life.
If you're curious about trying yoga, but are worried you'll look like a confused mess during your first few classes, know that you definitely will. So take a big breath and just own it -
no-one but you even cares.
Before long you'll get the hang of it. Just like most things in life, we get better with practice.
The mental and physical benefits of yoga can be astounding, but they come with patience, consistency . . . and a sense of humor. After all, you are creating weird shapes with your body.
