Beginners Guide to Yoga
We understand that booking your first yoga class can be daunting, so we have created this beginners guide to yoga so you can feel prepared.
What’s coming your way at Same Star Yoga?
Despite still being in lockdown we have been working hard to still bring you new and exciting things. Keep your eyes peeled on our new timetable full of things that are coming your way.
The Four Gates of Speech
Yin yoga uses supported, long, passive holds to work on the deep, dense connective tissues of the body – the fascia, tendons, ligaments and cartilage – which are difficult to energize and open. Using this combination of support, low stress and long holds allows the connective tissue time to transform at a cellular level.
What is Yin Yoga?
Yin yoga uses supported, long, passive holds to work on the deep, dense connective tissues of the body – the fascia, tendons, ligaments and cartilage – which are difficult to energize and open. Using this combination of support, low stress and long holds allows the connective tissue time to transform at a cellular level.
Starting Your Yoga Journey as a Beginner
Now more than ever we are all looking for something to distract us from the turmoil of life, a way to balance our emotions and reflect. Yoga is a great way to do all of those things and get moving, but starting your yoga journey as a complete beginner can be daunting.
How Yoga Can Help With Stress
Looking back to times in my life when I have suffered great stress & anxiety, I know that it is always times when I have failed to remember the importance of symbiosis of the body, mind and soul. One or all of those aspects were being neglected. I was forgetting the benefits of yoga as a way of easing my stress.
Yoga Makes Me Feel…Confident
We are starting a new series where we speak to our kula about their yoga journey.. This week we have spoken to Lucy, a newer member of the kula who started yoga recently over lockdown. Since then Lucy has joined us for multiple online live-stream yoga classes and we chatted to her about her experiences and how yoga makes her feel confident.
We Are a Multi-Award Winning Yoga Studio!
There are always silver linings. Lockdown measures prompted us to invest in improvements for our online live-streamed yoga classes which has resulted in the studio winning an industry award.
The Benefits of Restorative Yoga
I know that it is hard to slow down sometimes, there feels like there is less and less time to rest. We take our bodies for granted and don’t nurture them like we are supposed to. This is why we have reintroduced Restorative Yoga into our class timetable. This practice has so many benefits from promoting deep relaxation to regulating the nervous system, Restorative Yoga will give us the space and time to reboot.
The Importance of a Good Yoga Mat
Let’s talk about the importance of a good yoga mat. Even though we use them everyday in our yoga classes, I have always taken the features of a good yoga mat for granted – until now.
Keeping You Safe
As a yoga studio, keeping our community safe is the most important thing to us. We have made lots of changes to ensure your safety and enjoyment of the class is unbeatable.
Be Kind to Yourself
It is important to be kind to yourself, because until we are kind to ourselves we can’t expect the world to be a kind place to be in.
Bring The Wonders of Ganesha Into Your Life
Many of us are familiar with the very cute looking elephant headed deity, but do you really understand what he, Ganesha, is all about? Have you considered reasons why it might feel relevant to have a murti (a statue) or a picture of him in your home?
4 Ways Yoga Can Help Ease Back Pain
The question of whether yoga can help ease back pain is a difficult one to answer. Having had many students pass through our doors with back-related conditions, we recognise that not only are we dealing with multiple types of injuries on a physical level (from disc problems, spinal fusions and nerve impingements to broken backs and chronic pain), there is also the fact that some physical conditions may arise as a result of the amount of mental stress that one is under or the fact that certain emotions haven’t been able to be expressed freely and easily.
Teaching Yoga is an Exploration of the Self
We’ve just had a fantastic couple of days teaching yoga. Trainees on our Yoga Teacher Training have now been studying with us for 6 months, having completed Module 1 ‘Connection to Source’ and Module 2 ‘Exploration of the Self’, this weekend we stepped in to Module 3 ‘Awakening the Heart of the Teacher’ where trainees began to move deeper into their teaching practice. Such a joy to see the difference in confidence from weekend 1 in March to now.
A space for you to be whatever you are feeling
Many of my students know the thoughts I have on the phrase “Love & Light”. It feels so very sadly unreal to me. I suppose the reason it’s used so much is because “Honour the Darkness” probably doesn’t sell quite so well on a yogi’s Instagram page.
But let’s face it, Life is not all love & light. Yes there has (for some people) been moments of illumination over the last 6 months but mostly there’s been a lot of grief, pain, separation, fear & loss, it has been and continues to be a very painful & difficult time for many people.
What are Mudras?
Mudras are hand gestures, energy locks used in yoga to influence the flow of Prana, lifeforce. Mudras can be used to balance the energies within us. In life our hands connect us to the outer world, not only do they enable us to reach out, touch, heal, express play, work, cultivate, hold & share.
Join us on an Odyssey of Sight & Sound
From time immemorial the teaching of yoga has been an oral tradition. The name of an early collection of yoga teachings, The Upanishads, literally translates as ‘sitting near devotedly” conjuring up images of students sitting at their teacher’s side listening intently to their teacher’s words. The sound and sights of yoga, such as chanting the mantra Om and forming mudras (hand gestures) to express our intentions are intrinsically linked with how we experience and integrate our practice.
Why do we chant Om?
Why we Om. It would be difficult to uncover the full wisdom of this mantra in a lifetime let alone a few words here, but I hope at least to shine a little bit of light on to it so that hopefully it can be a more meaningful part of your practice.
Re-imagining and Evolving Same Star Yoga
We are witnessing a global call to learn new ways of interacting, working and living together, adapting our perspectives and behaviours for the good of the wider community. It is a call to set aside our old patterns for new collective ones.
Collective change and transition to a new future
We have been very quiet throughout lockdown. Instead of trying to convey that we have all the answers to the fear and uncertainty of these times, we have taken our own advice of silence, to breathe, to press the pause button, to listen to our intuition, our souls whispers & to trust in the ‘no answers yet’ & that we will know when the time is right to press the reset button. We feel that time is rapidly approaching.