🎉 Back to (Yoga) school 🎉
NEWS FROM THE STUDIO
After a slow & restful month of August I am back in Lisbon and group classes are resuming this week! Both take place in Campo de Ourique.
🤰🤱 Baby & Me - Prenatal & Postnatal
📆 Every Wednesday 11am at Studio Organic Flow
🧘🧘♂️ Mindful Flow - Slow Vinyasa
📆 Every Friday 12.30pm at Yoga no Bairro
You can reserve your mat here. Classes are limited to 8 students.
Online Private classes can also be scheduled throughout the year. Please contact me to learn more.
🏄♀️🏄 Yoga for Surfers is a new weekly group class this season! Join me and learn new moves to improve your balance, focus and overall physicality on the board.
Yoga & Surf go together like peanut butter & jelly: they complement but also enhance each other. The sequences of this class are specifically designed to target areas of the body that are most solicited while surfing. We will work on strengthening and stretching those muscles, and also practice breathing and meditation techniques that you can use in the lineup.
We start on September 20th. This class will take place every Wednesday morning at 9 am at Studio Organic Flow. It will be added to my website for online booking shortly.
For the launch, I will be offering a 12-week package for just 135€. Just what you need to prepare for Winter season in the water!
NB: it’s an all-level but vigorous class: no previous Yoga experience is required but you must be in good physical condition.
✨ I recently wrote an article about Lisbon’s wellness scene for Health & Wellbeing Magazine, you can read it here. ✨
EASY-TO-DIGEST YOGA PHILOSOPHY
The 8 limbs of Yoga
Last month we started diving into the 8 limbs of Yoga. As a reminder, these are, in Sanskrit: Yama (Restraints), Niyama (Observances), Asana (Posture), Pranayama (Breath), Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi. This week we focus on the last four, those internal to ourselves.
Pratyahara: Sense withdrawal. The practice of cutting off external stimuli and distractions in order to turn inward, tune in with ourselves and observe our habits and thought patterns.
Dharana: Concentration. Bringing our attention onto a single object or thought to increase our capacity to focus on one thing at a time.
Dhyana: Meditation. Subsequent to Dharana, a state attained after steady and uninterrupted concentration. The mind is quiet and few thoughts go by. This takes years, if not a lifetime, of practice!
Samadhi: Enlightenment, or Oneness with all living things. Often described as a state of ecstasy, this is about feeling that “we are one”. The ultimate goal of Yoga!
I know some of these concepts can seem abstract at first but as you progress in your yoga journey, they will start to become clearer. Next time, we will go more in-depth into the five Yamas.
LIFE IN LISBON
Slow Summer
It’s been a slow summer, between Portugal and France, between family and friends. I did not do much, and that was exactly the point. I hope you had a chance to slow down and relax; may we all keep some of that slow pace with us into this busy part of the year.
Lastly, here are a few things I loved in August: this podcast about the colonization of wellness, this article about my favorite writer, this book (in French), and this monologue from the Barbie movie (that I saw twice and loved ).
And a quote, why not.
”Don't wait till the pose is over—exhale in the pose.” - Rodney Yee.
Rodney is a famous senior NYC-based yoga teacher whose wisdom inspires many. His classes are phenomenal, if you’re in New-York, just go. One of my teachers, Chrissy Carter, recently shared this and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The quote can easily be applied to September, a time of the year usually filled with anxiety and endless to-do lists. Don’t wait until the end of the month to breathe out, to let go of what no longer serves you and to release some of that tension. Instead, take a moment every day in September to exhale, in full, all the way down, through the mouth. Phew!
Summer memories from beautiful Portugal
Piscina das Marés in Porto
Quinta de Lourosa in Lousada
✨ FROM LISBON, WITH LIGHT ✨
