This course will be focusing on creating stability in the body and focus for the mind; qualities we can take off our mat and into our everyday lives. A vinyasa practice in of itself is an invitation to build stability and focus with its innate structure and rhythm, but this course also further encourages these life-enhancing characteristics by incorporating a carefully chosen meditation each week.

Many people don’t realise that the main reason the physical postures of yoga were created, is to prepare the practitioner for a more easeful meditation. If you have tried a meditation practice, you’ll know that staying still for long periods of time can be quite challenging, so each week of this course you will be guided through a flow to prepare the body and mind for stillness, and instead of a traditional savasana you can expect to be guided through a different meditative focus each week.

No previous meditation experience is required, although some yoga experience is recommended - a perfect course for anyone who has completed Yoga Foundations and wants to dive a little deeper.


WEEK ONE: To Understand is to Love. To Love is to Understand - Meta Meditation
Our flow in this first session will be gentle as we welcome ourselves into the space to move easefully and breathe into sensations as we find them. A grounded full-body practice giving us space to start to understand the body through movement. We shall then close with the Meta Sutra (loving-kindness meditation), a teaching from Thich Nhat Hanh (known as the "father of mindfulness"). A beautiful practice for coming back to compassion with the self, as well as those around us. 


WEEK TWO: Letting Go Meditation
Our movement this week will focus in on lots of hip and chest opening postures, as these areas tend to very typically tight areas in modern life. Exploring a literal letting go of tension in the body during our flow before coming into our meditation. This session will invite you practice letting go of anything that doesn’t serve you; a journey of coming to presence and acceptance. It is safe to let go and come back to compassion. 


WEEK THREE: Compassion Meditation
A compassionate but heat generating flow with some challenging poses for all levels. A call to connect with our bodies and our journey, keeping our mind on the breath as we move. Compassion should be a key thread through every yoga practice; ‘Ahimsa’ (non-harming) being the very first building block of our journey in the Yoga Sutras (philosophy). Exploring this week how to keep cultivating this compassion and recognising that it is often the places where it feels hardest to offer, that it is most needed. A practice of deepening and opening the heart. 


WEEK FOUR: Forgiveness Meditation
A strong focus on the breath for a slow and strong flow practice this week. Focusing in on steadiness, and presence, leading us towards our forgiveness meditation. As we acknowledge our own heartbreaks and the heartbreaks of the world, we also acknowledge the hurt that we may have been a part of. We have been hurt, and we have hurt. A universal truth. Through our meditation, time will be offered to deepen our practice of forgiveness. 


WEEK FIVE: Invitation To Joy
A fun flow, with some funky transitions to hopefully get you wobbling, smiling, and celebrating your journey! Joy (and sympathetic joy) is a vital support as we navigate life and the world around us, life is simply too tough without it. So let us move, smile, and laugh. We’ll close with a meditation inviting you into sympathetic joy and a recognition of how we can let the tiny joys around us uplift our path. 


WEEK SIX: Loving Kindness Meditation
Everything comes back to love. A flow focused on opening our front body, peppered with aspects of the whole course. Then to close - just as we began - with our Meta-Sutra. Extending love to ourselves, others, and the world at large. Laying those pathways within our bodies and mind to keep choosing love, time and time again. 

 

Sarah has taken inspiration for this course from the teacher Jacoby Ballard, and all these meditations can be found in their book 'A Queer Dharma'.

These sessions are each 60mins in length and the course is priced at £85 for 6 weeks.

Please bring your own mat if you have one.