Strength and flexibility go hand in hand, flexibility increases strength and muscle tone, Yoga provides superior balance and body control while also improving your breathing and oxygen intake by increasing your lung capacity.

Being flexible prevents injury and speeds up recovery, alleviates back pain, increases your energy level, recharges your sex life and allows you to relax and sleep better at night. Yoga helps to reduce stress and minimizes the harmful effects of stress, recharges you mentally and trains you to develop focus and concentration so we can perform at our peak.

Yoga puts your body back into alignment. All the things we do to ourselves all the time ~ bad posture at the computer, over working our muscles creating tightness, stress, injury, or even being a couch potato ~ all these things can be turned around and fixed. Yoga also massages the internal organs which helps move things along and allow our organs to excrete toxins.

First and most important is the breath. We use deep diaphragmic breathing, in through the nose and out through the nose. The breath fills our lungs with life giving oxygen and exhaling the toxins that accumulate in our body. Breathing with our diaphragm increases our lung capacity and is the key to successful Yoga practice. Focusing on the breath allows us to calm our mind and body and helps us to get deeper into our poses.

Second is feeling. We want to feel something in every pose, not going over our limitations but feeling challenged and successful. We offer modifications for every pose, making all students feel like a Yoga master!

Third, fourth, fifth & sixth:
Listen to the body, Letting go of competition, judgment and expectations. For an hour to an hour and one-half, turn the focus inward, listening to our body, feeling the poses, focusing on the breath. Yoga is not a competition to see who can hold the poses longer, who is most flexible or pointing the finger at who is not as flexible or strong. Also not condemning yourself for not doing as well as you thought you should. Every practice is different, depending on the day. Some days we will not be as flexible or our balance is a little off, Yoga is a journey and we should feel successful where we are right now.

Seven is staying in the present moment. We cannot change the past or predict the future, while practicing Yoga, stay right here, right now. Let go of the stress and irritations of the past and don't let our minds wander to what we are doing after class. The key to being successful in Yoga and life is to live in the present moment. Ask for forgiveness for the past and ask for wisdom to guide our future but focus on here and now.