❤️🔥 July Love Letter ❤️🔥
Bom dia! Here is the latest and the upcoming in the world of Voilà Yoga.
The theme this month is Summer Love.
I hope you enjoy this letter, please hit reply with any questions or comments!
NEWS FROM THE STUDIO
I will be teaching my 2 weekly classes in Lisbon throughout the entire month of July. Both take place in Campo de Ourique.
🧘♂️ Mindful Flow
📆 Every Friday - 12.30pm at Yoga No Bairro
🤰🤱 Baby & Me - Prenatal & Postnatal
📆 Every Wednesday - 11am at Studio Organic Flow
You can now book your next class online! 🎊
I’m still looking for an open slot at a studio to launch a new class, in the morning. It’s taking longer than I thought, but I’m still hopeful it will happen…eventually! If you know of a place, I’m all ears.
I will be away in August, in-person weekly classes will resume in September. Online Private classes can be scheduled during the summer, please contact me if you’re interested.
✨ Organic Flow Studio - a serene space, perfect to welcome expecting & new moms, and their babies ✨ First Savasana 🥰
EASY-TO-DIGEST YOGA PHILOSOPHY
The concept of Tapas
You might only know of tapas as in delicious Spanish appetizer. Now you also know it’s also a yogic concept.
In Sanskrit, Tapas is the heat, the energy and the discipline of a practice, or “the ability to endure intensity for the purpose of transformation”. Summer is the time of the year where we can literally feel and experience that heat, and perhaps delve into our Tapas a little deeper. When our practice room is warmer than usual, the heat in the body builds up more quickly, helping the joints and muscles loosen up more easily, allowing us to access a meditative state (and maybe a stiller mind) with slightly less effort.
I do not like or promote Hot Yoga but I do love practicing and teaching in summer weather because of the intensity it can create. Have you noticed how the seasons can affect your own practice ?
LIFE IN LISBON
6 months into it
The more people I meet here, the more I hear stories about how long it took them to adjust to life in Lisbon. Newcomers talk about a full year on average before feeling settled here, and I can definitely relate to that. Even though Lisbon is a welcoming place overall, where people are warm and friendly, the simple act of navigating the city can feel complicated: the cable cars are cute but unreliable (and often packed), the subway is not connecting the downtown areas, biking is not realistic, between the cobblestones and the steep narrow streets, and electric scooters are scary, so buses are the only (crowded) public transportation option. We also end up taking a lot of Bolt or Uber here, because it’s cheap, but also because car travel is sadly often the quickest (sometimes only) way between places. Of course, we walk a lot , but those legendary seven hills are draining especially if it’s hot outside, if you’re pushing a stroller, or carrying kids and stuff around.
In class, our theme for July will be self-love: expect some self-hugging, self-care and some delicious restorative poses, to take care of yourself. Summer is usually a busy season, carrying a high level of energy around the solstice, and our practice can offer solace.
Lastly, here are a few things I loved in June: this podcast, this article, this book, this chocolate sorbet.
And a quote, why not.
“We cannot change people; we can only love them (…) If all we can do is change ourselves, then this is what we must do to create more loving personal space in our lives – and not blame, shame or spend our energy wishing, hoping that things are different.” - Pamela Anderson
Our quote this month, is from the one and only, Pamela Anderson. Watching her Netflix documentary piqued my curiosity the woman’s character, about the actual person behind the Baywatch body. Her newsletter, where she candidly talks about love is both subtle and sensitive, filled with simple but potentially revolutionary ideas. Dare I say she strikes me as a modern bell hooks?! After everything she went through, she’s surely one we can trust on the topic of self-transformation. I don’t know if Pamela practices Yoga but she certainly is a wise one.
👀 I started teaching in corporate settings, on the rooftops of 3 co-working spaces: Wework (photo), Nimbler and Avila Spaces. Yoga with a view! 😍
FROM LISBON, WITH LIGHT ✨
