Yay! The Blog

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Teaching Gentle

Can Gentle Yoga be Transformational?

Or is Gentle Yoga “too easy” to achieve that result? And what does it even mean, that a style or experience of yoga can be transformational? What transforms? What changes? How Change Happens Transformation can happen on a number of levels because we are multidimensional beings. Change can occur on

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Mindful Living

Does yoga teach us about social justice?

True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice. Martin Luther King, Jr.   This is one of my favorite Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes. The yoga perspective on social justice is essentially that we are not actually separate from each other. We

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Teaching Gentle

Dynamic Gentle Yoga is slow. How slow?

Dynamic Gentle Yoga™ (DGY) is a method of guiding and instructing yoga that evolved over the 35+ years I taught yoga and trained new yoga teachers at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health*. DGY is built on a strong foundation of Kripalu Yoga and has three main characteristics: slow,

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Welcome

Let Yoga Be an Experiment: The Awareness Foundation

In yoga, an approach of experimentation is highly valued. To experiment, one must bring a sense of curiosity and leave expectations at the door. This is helpful because the body changes all the time; it is in a constant process of degeneration and regeneration, a constant process of digestion, including

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Gentle Practice

Yoga changes how I think; 15 minutes can be enough

Some of my favorite outdoor activities often make it easier for me to stay relaxed about life. This is the simplest here in the northeast in the summer, although, when we have had a good snow, I can enjoy cross-country skiing. Whatever the season, living in-the-day, living in-the-present is still

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Science of Yoga & Breath

What is Pranayama?

In The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, one of the essential texts for serious yoga students, the Eight-Limb path is prescribed as an approach to relieve the human experience of suffering. The first two limbs are known as The Yamas and Niyamas. The third limb is asana, or posture. These and

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Teaching Gentle

Creating Safety

Can you really make a yoga class work for everyone? How do you make it safe? Safe for those nursing injuries? Safe for those with chronic conditions like high-blood pressure, asthma, arthritis? Challenges and limitations like stiff joints, rock-hard tight muscles, poor balance, obesity, dyslexia, or even hyper flexibility? As

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Gentle Practice

Trust Your Experience: Avoid Pain and Strain

If you are new to yoga, curious, or full of questions, you have come to the right place. Yoga is many things to many people. There is no yoga practice or yoga tradition that is right for everyone and no “right way” to do yoga that you have to fit

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Gentle Reading

The Great Work of Your Life

I have been reading a compelling book called The Great Work of Your Life, written by a dear friend, Senior Kripalu Scholar-in-Residence, Stephen Cope. Stephen’s insights in this, his third amazing book on the philosophy of yoga, are illuminating some of the challenges in my professional life as a yoga

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