Register by April 7 for early bird pricing on each workshop or a special retreat package price for all three.

Gentle Yoga: Flexibility, Focus & Strength

Saturday, April 28,  2:00-5:00 p.m.  

The Power of Breath:  For vitality, focus and contentment.

Saturday, April 28,  7:00-9:00 p.m.

Gentle Yoga for stiffness, stress and recovery: Dynamic self-care.

Sunday, April 29,  1:00-4:00 p.m.

Meditation made easy: Connected within. Connected without.

Location:  Yoga Shivaya, 15 North Broadway, Suite 2, Tarrytown, NY, 10591

CE Credits available for yoga teachers on request.

Visit Yoga Shivaya’s website>>

In this era of the rapidly growing popularity of yoga, classes are springing up everywhere. As one shops around for a satisfying yoga class, the class names and descriptions may offer little help to the novice who really wants to know whether they are going to fit in or be okay in a given class.  Words that are intended to be descriptive can still be broad and vague.

Gentle Yoga is one term used by many to mean many things. Gentle Yoga can refer to a variety of types of yoga classes taught by teachers from various styles of yoga.

Generally speaking, gentle-style yoga classes attempt to serve a variety of distinct needs: people with movement limitations, or profound stiffness due to lack of activity; relief from disabilities and chronic conditions e.g., arthritis, back pain and other musculo-skeletal issues; recovery from surgery, illness or injury; for seniors, new practitioners, women who are pregnant and those seeking stress-reduction or weight management. A gentle yoga approach has even been found to be an important compliment in programs to reverse heart disease or provide relief from the challenging conditions of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, as well as mood disorders.

Gentle yoga classes are typically described as appropriate for those who want a softer, nurturing, slow-paced, well-supported and relaxing practice. The approach hopefully includes carefully orchestrated movements, controlled pressure, and well-measured stretches, including range of motion exercises. Postures may be approached in gradual steps, with plenty of time to focus on breathing and repetition so that the practice is simple to do and easy to remember. A gentle yoga style encourages a highly individualized approach to practice with on-going encouragement to make moment-to-moment adjustments.

Gentle Yoga is often considered easier, less intense, non-strenuous, minimalistic, quiet, meditative, or restorative.

I came up in the Kripalu tradition of yoga in the seventies and eighties, certified in 1983, long before yoga hit the mainstream. Since the late 1980s, as a teacher trainer, I helped pioneer a shift at Kripalu Center from simply offering beginner and intermediate classes to offering three levels, based on the intensity of the class rather than length of experience alone. Since about 1991, the three levels of classes at Kripalu have been called gentle, moderate and vigorous.

The practice of yoga in America has evolved dramatically over the last twenty years. There has simultaneously been an increase in yoga classes specifically called Gentle Yoga. Though this distinction is somewhat broadly defined, there are even Gentle Yoga Teacher Trainings and Gentle Yoga training modules now being offered in 500-hour advanced curriculums.

These classes intend to be inclusive rather than exclusive, an approach that has birthed the term accessible yoga. This is a style for people who don’t have the flexibility, coordination and strength which photos of yoga poses typically portray.

In fact, many people find the so-called beginning practices of yoga way too advanced for them.They get discouraged, scared off, or never begin. Many people really think that they can’t do yoga.

In response, accessible yoga classes attempt to meet yoga students “where they are.”

An effective Gentle Yoga class then, provides a compassionate, non-competitive environment that is welcoming to all.

Come to the March 10, 2012 workshop in Rye, NY to learn the other essential elements of a Gentle Yoga class or sign up for Rudy’s email list to be notified of other training opportunities with Rudy.

]]> http://rudypeirce.com/what-is-gentle-yoga/feed/ 0 http://rudypeirce.com/coming-soon-a-website-upgrade-for-gentleyogi-com/ http://rudypeirce.com/coming-soon-a-website-upgrade-for-gentleyogi-com/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:07:36 +0000 Rudy http://rudypeirce.com/?p=662 My wife Joyce and I are excited to announce that our website has been transformed! If you aren’t on my email list, you can sign up here and we’ll send your my teaching schedule on a quarterly basis and occasionally other announcements or offers.  Let us know how you like the site.

Join us for any or all of 3 Sweet and Deep yoga experiences.

• Friday night, 6 – 8, Rudy will offer his classic Gentle Yoga sequence, Sweet Openings, at the Dennis Memorial Town Library.
• Saturday’s classes will be at the sunny and spacious Carlton Hall, also in the center of Dennis.
• Saturday morning, 8:30 – 11:30, Jennifra will offer asana practice and a 30 minute meditation sit, within the context of the yamas and niyamas, yoga’s self-development prescription.
• Saturday afternoon, 2:30 – 5:30, Rudy will guide Expand Your Range, a stimulating sequence of shoulder and chest openers, back bends and strengthening standing poses.

“I took Jennifra’s Saturday morning class over this past Memorial Day Weekend and was not surprised to receive a masterfully guided sequence that took me deep and left me refreshed, clear and content.”

~Contact Jennifra at vitalityfound.com to register and for more information.

Here is her contact info as well:
jen@vitalityfound.com
508-432-5840

 

I offered four classes at The Spirit of Yoga studio in West Chester, PA.

Studio manager, Sara Beck, was on top of all the details as she showed me the studio space and introduced me to teachers, Judith Curiel and Danielle, who came for their own nourishment and to offer any assistance during the classes.

Friday evening familiar faces and some new faces showed up for a 7–9 p.m. Sweet and Deep, Gentle Yoga class. Friends and dedicated students and yoga teachers from various schools came to nourish body, mind and spirit, the Gentle Yoga way.

My guests included a hard-working real estate man nursing a new asthma condition, a grad school psych student working with chronic fatigue, a dedicated and weary hospice nurse, a yoga teacher with some onset arthritis in her hands, and a 20 yr. old young woman, fresh back from studying pranayama in India, and others.

We had two, 3-hour workshops Saturday:
1. Expand Your Range of Motion
2. Connecting body, breath and mind: coordinating breath and movement.

Sunday morning, I met Pam Walsh, the owner/Yoga Teacher Trainer, who participated in the Exploring Freedom: Yoga and Meditation workshop. At The Spirit of Yoga Studio she has created a marvelous resource for the community with two yoga spaces, offices for privates, props and changing space to leave bags and hang coats.

The feedback this weekend was that while Gentle Yoga is a well-known and sought after “yoga brand”, there aren’t many workshops by Gentle Yoga Teacher Trainers to give students a well-developed, depth experience with mindfulness and ease.

On the way out of town, Monday morning, I met with Mark Nelson, owner/teacher of The Yoga Garden in Narberth, a suburb on the Main Line northwest of Philly. He had responded to the post below and said we might be able to schedule a weekend in June. After the tour, we talked and arrived at a three workshop weekend, June 17 – 19, Friday – Sunday. Go to yogagardennarberth.com for details.

So as I waited, I did what came naturally to me at that time.  I inhaled my arms up and did a lazy Half-Moon side-to-side stretch.  Boy, did that feel good.  I did a second round and then noticed that my hamstrings were calling for some TLC.  Now I was really getting into it, eyes closed, ujjayi breathing, completely losing myself in the moment.  I was in the midst of a delicious forward bend when my friend pulled up to the curb.  I “came to” and stood up as he stepped out of the car leaving it running for our quick-hug-throw-the-bags-in-the-car-get-in-the-car transition.  After our initial hello he looked at me curiously and somewhat sheepishly and asked if I was okay.  I said “yeah, why?”  He replied, “Well you were all kind of all bent over when I pulled up.”

I was as startled at my own naivete as I was at his; I had been completely oblivious that my little stretching break would have been noticed and thought odd.  It was the mid 80’s and I was on my first real vacation since becoming a resident in a yoga community where the culture was such that you could stretch during a meeting (everyone was sitting on the floor) and no one thought anything of it.  Due to my unbridled enthusiasm, whenever I left the community, my friends and family received a crash course in yoga philosophy, holistic health, and “conscious communications”, some of key elements of the lifestyle at the Kripalu Yoga Ashram (now the Kripalu Center), where I lived from 1982 -1995.  I’m sure I must have been pretty obnoxious and arrogant with my newfound “wisdom”.

The concern of my friend who picked me up at the airport that day, upon seeing me do something that had become second nature to me, provided a bit of a revelation about how unusual it was at that time for people in the general population to use stress-reduction or tension release activities.  These days, it’s more common, but not commonplace. Self-consciousness holds some people back.  Then there’s the resistance many of us feel to trying something new and unfamiliar. Add to that the effects of our fast-paced culture and its encouragement of a heady lifestyle and the result is that we all bear some degree of disconnection between body and mind.   I am grateful to have found yoga (or perhaps it found me) early in my life such that it is second nature to me to stretch and that simply stretching brings my mind back into my body where I have the opportunity for integration and a sense of wholeness.

Although we each have a unique story, it is some sense of disconnection and its attendant suffering which likely led us to the yoga mat.  The practice of yoga is where we can learn to transport ourselves across what is sometimes mysterious terrain, using the sensations produced during stretching to bridge the separation that causes all human suffering.   We all have the possibility of sharing the benefits of a little stretching here and there with others we encounter in life.  And for those of us who are teachers, we have the amazing opportunity of creating community wherein stretching is not only normal and understood, but brings contentment and peace into common, everyday moments of our lives.

Throughout the highs and lows of life, whether bad times or good, whether living in darkness or light, untruth or truth, sugar always tastes sweet.  So too can the sweet remembrance of the union called Yoga be ever tasted.                    Swami Jnaneshvara