Monday, 8pm-9.15pm at Grange Fitness, Grange Farm. Monday 15^th April to Monday 20^th May (no session on 6^th May Bank Holiday, 5 weeks).

The class at Grange Fitness is purposely designed to support an individual’s other exercise plans, whatever they may be. It concentrates on building core strength, mobility and reducing tension, all of which will allow the body to lengthen and find more flexibilty. Students of any level are welcome at the class. This class must be booked in 5 week courses directly through Grange Fitness, call 01473 623277. Prices differ for members and non-members, contact the gym for more information.

Tuesday, 7.45-9.00pm at Parkside School, Spring Road. Tuesday 16^th April to Tuesday 25^th June. No session on 28^th May.

This class is ideal for those with some experience of yoga. This Hatha yoga class will help you to feel energised and healthy, whilst giving you time to relax and unwind from the stresses of the day. Bookings for the whole term only at £60(£6 a class). Contact me on emma@yogaemma.com or 07894 461157 to book. Payment can be taken in cash, cheque or by electronic transfer.

Monday Mornings

Thank you to those of you that supported my new Monday morning class this term, it has been wonderful to meet so many new students. Unfortunately, due to a change in circumstances, I’m not going to be able to run the class any longer, my apologies. I can fit in another 5 weeks after Easter (15^th April to 20^th May, no session on 6^th May Bank Holiday) but I would require everyone to pay the £30 for the course in advance and the sessions will only go ahead if there are enough bookings. If you wish to do this please confirm as soon as you can.

I look forward to doing some yoga practice with you soon.

My new Monday morning at 10am class is filling up nicely, get in touch with me on emma@yogaemma.com ready for starting next Monday if you would like to do so.

And my Monday evening class at Grange Fitness is so busy that we are adding a Friday morning class at 11am to try and meet the demand. If you are already booked into the Monday evening class but are able to move to Fridays, or if you want to book into the Friday class then contact Grange Fitness on 01473 623277 to arrange your booking. All classes will  be for 6 weeks starting week commencing January 7th. £30 for members, £40 for non-members. Do note that the gym is closing early on New years eve and new years day if you are trying to make bookings.

As always one to ones and gift vouchers are available, but feel free to get in touch at anytime with your yoga queries and questions.

Looking forward to seeing so many of you at my New Year yoga classes, what a fresh and invigorating start to the New Year we are going to have!

Happy New Year to you all.

Emma

*NEW* Monday Mornings

10am-11.15am at St Margaret’s Church Hall, Bolton Lane. £6 a class. Monday 7^th January to Monday 25^th March. No session on 18^th February.

This new class for beginners is an ideal way to start your week. Focusing on mobility and flexibility and with plenty of time for breathing and relaxation.

As this is a new class you can book in advance for as many classes as you wish. There may be the opportunity to drop in if spaces are available but please contact me in advance to check.

Monday Evenings

8pm-9.15pm at Grange Fitness, Grange Farm. Monday 7^th January to Monday 11^th February (6 weeks).

Yoga classes at Grange Fitness are suitable for beginners and those with experience. These classes will focus on building strength and flexibility as part of calming and holistic class

This class must be booked in 6 week courses directly through Grange Fitness, call 01473 623277. Prices differ for members and non-members, contact the gym for more information.

Tuesday Evenings

7.45-9.00pm at Parkside School, Spring Road. Bookings for the whole term only at £66 (£6 a class). Monday 7^th January to Monday 25^th March. No session on 18^th February.

This class is ideal for beginners and those with some experience of yoga. This Hatha yoga class will help you to feel energised and healthy, whilst giving you time to relax and unwind from the stresses of the day.

Workshop, Saturday 2^nd March, 9.30am-12pm. £15

This workshop will focus on ways to simplify your yoga practise and help you find ways of doing postures and sequences with more ease. We will look at using the body to measure your placement and reducing bad habits in your technique.

This yoga workshop is only suitable for those with at least a year’s experience of practising yoga. The price includes refreshments and the workshop must be booked in advance.

As always for anyone interested in a targeted yoga sessions then 1 to 1 sessions are available, see my classes page for more detail.

If you are interested in booking for the above classes and workshops then contact me on emma@yogaemma.com or 07894 461157 (except the Grange Fitness class). Payment can be taken in cash, cheque or by electronic transfer.

1 to 1 yoga sessions are ideal for both men and women who want some time to themselves to relax and focus on their body. Sessions can be tailored to suit, so can either focus on a strengthening physical workout, a relaxing stretch, or a more spiritual practice of relaxation and meditation.

1 to 1 yoga can also be useful for those who

• Are working toward particular fitness goals.
• Feel uncomfortable in a class situation.
• Are working through a period of particular stress or emotional vulnerability.
• Want to focus and develop their yoga practise.
• Have particular injuries or medical conditions that require a more specific practise.
• Simply want to indulge in some time to themselves to enjoy their yoga

Vouchers are available at £50 which will cover an hour’s yoga session in a studio and a 15 minute wellbeing assessment to establish your physical capabilities and goals as well as your level of general wellbeing.

Vouchers for couples or small groups (3 or 4) are also available on request, as are vouchers for a course of 1 to 1 sessions. A choice of venues with yoga studios is available depending on availability.

To purchase vouchers email me on emma@yogaemma.com..

Happy Christmas Shopping!

Emma

The flip side to this is that I am already fearing the end of my course. I will miss our monthly meet ups, the warmth and support from such a beautiful bunch of people. I will miss the knowledge and guidance of our wonderful tutor. I will miss looking forward to a guaranteed day of inspiration, space and focus once a month. And I will miss the necessity to read and learn as I know I won’t have the motivation to do as much without impending deadlines. All in all, I am already fearful of the void in my life.

That said, I am also looking forward to having more free weekends, being able to find my own way with my yoga and shaping my teaching more over time. I am looking forward to (shorter) courses that are more specific and learning from new teachers.

What is interesting is that as the end point comes closer I feel the need to soak up as much of the course as I can before it is over. For the first time since I started I have handed in some coursework on time and actually read the books I needed to. I think this is partly because I can instantly feel the impact. I write an essay and the following week I can use some of the quotes in my class or offer an aspect of that philosophy to my students. As I read and write I find more and more moments of clarity and understanding. I have been overusing the word ‘epiphany’ of late, I have a bit a joke with one of my students about it. Every time we figure out a small change on one of her postures that has a big impact we start throwing the word epiphany around.  My class were tickled when I recently had a downward dog epiphany about alignment of the knees after practising with bare legs. Anyway, it may not be the right word to use due to its religious connections but yoga has offered me a lot of these moments lately. Sometimes in postures and sequences, sometimes in teaching approach, sometime in my approach to life.

I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that yoga has allowed me to see that there are so many possibilities and opportunities to learn in life. Writing this blog has clarified this for me and been a learning process of its own. Being a mum has been a massive and amazing learning process and maybe that is why I have drawn so much from yoga in the last 18 months, because it has happened alongside me learning how to be a mum.

I was inspired to write this post because (as one of the benefits of being a bit unwell last week) I have picked up The Bhagavad Gita to read, a classic Indian and yoga text that I have to read for my course. But never before have a picked up a yoga book, opened it at the first page and decided to read it cover to cover. I am on chapter 2 and I can already feel myself changing as I read it. This book is going to have an impact on me and I can feel it and am ready for it. So I hope you are looking forward to the post I write when I get to the end!

Emma

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As a one off session I will be leading a free Yoga class at Grange Fitness, in Grange Farm, Kesgrave from 8pm till 9.15pm on Monday 10th September. Members and non members are welcome to come along. This class is a great opportunity for you to try out my class, try out yoga for the first time or visit Grange Fitness.

After the first free session, my weekly yoga classes will begin at Grange Fitness on Mondays at 8pm from 24th September. These classes at Grange Fitness are suitable for beginngers and those with experience. The classes will focus on building strength and flexibity as part of calming and holistic class.

Grange Fitness is a friendly, family run gym located in Grange Farm, Kesgrave. Their services include a full Personal Training and Sports Massage Therapy service, as well as a well equiped gym and studio. As well as weekly classes I will also be offering one to one yoga sessions there as well. I’m really exctied to be working with the team at Grange Fitness for the first time and am looking forward to meeting some new students there.

You do need to book in advance for these classes so to book or just find out more details contact the gym on 01473 623277. You can also visit their website on www.grangefitness.co.uk and follow them on Twitter @grangefitness. If you are interested in 1:1 sessions then please contact me directly on 07894 461157 or emma@yogaemma.com.

And don’t forget that my usual Tuesday evening  classes starts on September 4th at a new time of 7.45pm. There are still a couple of places left for the term so get in touch if you want to come along.

I’m off to do some yoga lesson planning in the sunshine while it lasts!

Emma

Summer Classes

I had lots of big plans for teaching yoga over the summer break. I was keen to do some classes and workshops, some outside in the sunshine, some focusing on advanced postures for my more experienced students and much more. Unfortunately, logistics and finances were not on my side for this summer so I have had to store away all these exciting ideas for future summer breaks. After some disappointment, lots of telling myself that yoga encourages patience and that if I was meant to do these classes then things would have worked out and so on, I received an exciting email.

DanceEast have invited me to teach three yoga classes at the beautiful studios at the Jerwood DanceHouse on the waterfront this summer. These classes are on Thursday evenings from 6.30-7.45pm, from the 26th July to 9thAugust inclusive.

For those of you that regularly attend my classes these sessions will be a great chance for you to keep up your yoga during the break. For those of you that have been in the past they are an opportunity to come and try yoga again, and for those of you that keep meaning to come along these sessions will be an ideal chance to come and try out yoga and my teaching for the first time.

Each class will be different and will offer some different postures suited to the group. They will be energising sessions with lots of standing postures so you can go home full of energy and make the most of long summer evenings.

If you would like to attend these sessions then you can book in advance through DanceEast, either on their website at www.danceeast.co.uk or on 01473 295230.

Autumn Classes

Again, (can you tell this is a repeating problem?) I had lots of plans and ideas for my weekly classes from September. It felt that after a successful year of teaching it was time to expand, add a daytime class, add an improver’s class, start building up more clients and so forth. But due to many circumstances, most of which are all about being a mum, it seemed that it would be best to stick with just the one class for now. I’m so excited about my yoga at the moment that I just want to be doing it all the time, but I think that would be biting off far more than I, or my family and supportive babysitting friends, can chew.

So instead there will still be the one class on a Tuesday evening, but it is now at a later time. Hopefully this will mean a few of you who have been keen to attend in the past but haven’t been able to will now be able to make it, unfortunately it also means I will loose a few of my regulars which I am sad about as they have come so far, but I’m sure there will be something for them in future. My challenge for the Autumn is to improve my skills at teaching to a mixed group. My wonderful and loyal regulars that have now been with me a year (thank you all) have progressed so much and I want to keep the class new and exciting for them but whilst slowly building up the newer students as they come in. As always, your continued feedback is the key thing for ensuring I can do this and I would encourage anyone attending my classes to keep in touch about their experiences and suggestions in whichever way suits them.

If you are keen to come along to the weekly class in the Autumn then I would encourage you to book for the term as soon as possible. I find that each term more and more people book in advance and therefore fewer drop-in places are available.

Summer Classes

Thursdays 26th July, 2^nd August and 9th August from 6.30-7.45pm, £5 per class.At DanceEast, Jerwood Dancehouse, Foundry Lane, Ipswich, IP4 1DW.

These classes are run by DanceEast and can booked in advance either online at www.danceeast.co.uk or by phone on 01473 295230.

One to Ones

And finally, I am now beginning to teach some 1:1 sessions to individual clients. I am so enjoying this part of teaching. It really is very exciting and satisfying to work so closely with a student and to be able to offer them a practise that really suits their needs. I have found that I can really get into detail with clients, working out small problems they face in postures, adjusting their technique to make postures more comfortable but often stronger and this way of working achieves results so much quicker and allows the benefits of yoga to really impact on the student.

If you are interested in having a 1:1 (or small group) session then I am now able to take bookings for September, just email me to discuss this in more detail.

I look forward to seeing old and new faces at all these classes and to sharing some wonderful yoga experiences with you.

Emma

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I expect you all have visions of me doing 105 Sun Salutations just to fill the time but it wasn’t quite like that. The weekend was a 2 day residential that was a part of our final year of our British Wheel of Yoga Teaching Diploma. We stayed at Potash Barns in Brundish. It’s so lovely, a series of converted barns, with a yoga studio overlooking a field of sheep. And the sun shone so it really was stunning. This beautiful setting combined with the friendly company of other yoga students really made it special.

We began on Friday afternoon with a practical session working towards Chakrasana (Crab). I haven’t done this pose for years but our teacher, Elaine Fletcher, is so good at building us up and suggesting comfortable ways to move into the poses that it came really easily and I honestly could have stayed there for ages. The openness I felt in my upper body stayed with me for the rest of the day and I felt so energised afterwards. It is one of those really daunting poses where often the difficulty in doing them is often psychological rather than physical.

I didn’t get to do much more on Friday as I nipped home for Friday night so that my 1 year old wasn’t without me at bedtime for two nights in a row. By the time I got back on Saturday I had already missed early morning Sun Salutations which was disappointing but we went on to some sessions teaching each other head stand and shoulder stand, and I managed to do a lower version of head stand, my weight was on my head for the first time ever!

I know that yoga shouldn’t really be about desperately wanting to achieve certain poses, and for me it really isn’t about that nowadays, What is interesting is that the less and less that I compete with myself to reach physical milestones with my yoga the more and more I achieve. I wasn’t particularly bothered about whether I could do crab or headstand, but it was so satisfy and uplifting to find that I could without much effort. This reminds me that in my own teaching it is so important to encourage this approach in my students and hopefully they will find that if they enjoy their yoga and focus on learning about their bodies, that the physical ability to move on to more challenging postures will come naturally with time. It may take 10 years but it will come.

The rest of the weekend was filled with us teaching to each other, either for our assessed teaching work or simply for sharing our learning. We had a very inspiring session with Alistair Shearer one afternoon, about The Upanishads (a classic yoga text) and discussing the soul and the Self in yoga. It was a little deep and is a whole other blog post in itself but it was inspiring and very thought provoking. We talked about running our yoga businesses and did some chanting and meditating as well (not my favourite bits but I’m learning to appreciate them).

Coming home on Sunday afternoon my head was buzzing with new things to teach my students, things to save up and teach them in future, things to put in my essays, things to read and find out more about. I just feel so inspired about my yoga right now, so I must stop blogging and get on with doing some instead.

Emma

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If you are interested in finding out more about Potash Barns then visit www.potashbarns.co.uk

http://himmethree.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/ten-on-tuesday-no-29.html

Thanks to Heidi for inviting me to do this and I hope you enjoy my answers to some interesting questions, it was quite a challenge answering them!

You can follow Heidi’s blog from the link above and find her on Twitter @Him_Me_Three

Emma

So as it is nearly Summer I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a term working towards some energising back bends. Now the nights are longer and we all feel energised and uplifted it feels like time to build on the positivity of spring and do some postures that will help us get the most out of this time of year.

We have previously looked at some back bends in class. The more basic ones such as Cobra (Bhujangasana) and Locust (Shalabasana) poses have been a good starting point and from there we have touched on Dancer (Natarajasana), Bridge (Setu Bandha Sarvangasana), Fish (Matsyasana) and Bow (Dhanurasana). We will be returning to all of these in the term and looking at them in more detail, developing our technique for moving in and out of them easily and with confidence. As the term goes on we will look at new postures such as Pidgeon (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana) and Camel (Ustrasana) and may even venture towards Crab (Urdhva Dhanurasna) later in the term if you all feel ready.

All back bends require balance and strength to maintain, so we will continue to work on strengthening the muscles of the legs and abdominals, including using postures such as Boat (Navasana), all versions of plank and some of the Warrior (Virabhadrasana) poses.  We will also be developing our Sun Salutaion and possibly moving towards a slightly different version that incorporates some twisting and side bending. Hopefully, we will also get chance to continue our exploration into inversions and will touch again on Plough (Halasana) and maybe progress to shoulder stand (Sarvangasana) later on in the term. We will be returning to simpler breathing practices this term, mainly because back bends can be quite challenging and energizing so it is important that we finish each week with something calming and simple to ground you all again before you leave.

Back bends can be a struggle for many people, it is not a movement of the body we do very much in every day life, which is one of the reasons it is important to do them so that we maintain a comfortable level of mobility in our spine and torso. They can be very beneficial for relieving tension in the back, spine and chest areas and will aid the building of balance and strength through working on core muscles. Back bends can also be tricky mentally, because it is a movement into the unknown. In yoga we usually use the head and eyes to guide us into postures but with back bends we cannot do this, so through regular practice bending backwards may also help you to find increased confidence in our yoga and ourselves in general.

I hope you are looking forward to trying these postures in the coming weeks. See you at class.

Emma

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