Blue Point Yoga Center June newsletter

June 2012

Arm balances and inversions May 19

In case you missed the awesomeness at our weekend workshop, here's a photo recap for you:

After a brief warm up, we did our first inversion, headstand:

We learned that headstand requires a lot of neck strength.

Piking up...

And the fancy headstand #1

Fancy headstand #2

Fancy headstand #3

Then we moved onto crow pose. This is always a favorite!

And baby crow

Side crow

Flying side crow, a.k.a Eka Pada Koundiyasana 2

And a special one we invented, drunken crow

Yoga makes you strong, y'all!

Hi... 

Galavasana

Tittibasana... and several more arm balances that we didn't get pictures of, and then...

Neck traction. lovely.

We could have done this for 2.5 hours...

But then onto forearm stand

Getting up there!

Setting up for handstand.

And up!

Where have we see this before???

Mayurasana (we didn't try the one-armed version this time)

Do you really want to know what this was about?

Happy, happy!

Hope you can join us next time!

Blue Point Yoga Center November newsletter

November 2011

Community Yoga donations

Sunday, September 11 was the last day of our community yoga classes to benefit the Red Cross Japan Earthquake Recovery Fund. Thanks to our wonderful new teachers, Alicia, Allan, Anna, Irene, Joanna, Karen, Matt and Stephanie, who taught these classes beginning in May. They raised $521 for charity. With an added donation from Blue Point, our community will be sending $1000 to help the people of Japan. The earthquake and tsunami might seem a long time ago, especially with the events and storms of the summer much more fresh in our minds, but there is still a long way to go to rebuild after the devastation Japan experienced in the spring.

Click below for a recent article about the Red Cross' recovery efforts in Japan, and the programs that our community is helping to support.

Red Cross recovery in Japan

Without the enthusiasm and support of the teachers and students at Blue Point, this would not have been possible. Thank you all for your kind donations of time and money.

namaste.

Blue Point Yoga Center September newsletter

September 2011

Please note that there was a mistake in the Community Yoga section of the newsletter. We are offering community classes for two more weeks:

Sunday, September, 4 2:45-3:45pm
Sunday, September 11, 2:45-3:45pm

There will not be any community yoga classes after September 11.

Arm balances and inversions - Saturday, August 27

Hurricane Irene didn't keep anyone away from yoga yesterday! We had wind, a little rain, and a huge turnout for our arm balances and inversions workshop. We warmed up with some stretching and sun salutations, and then jumped right into our arm balances. We began with bakasana (crow pose). Those who were new to crow used a bolster (for their face) and those who wanted a challenge practiced one-legged crow, which is much harder than regular crow! Then we worked our way through another 5-6 arm balances, becoming stronger and more centered with each one. There were some happy shouts when someone made it into a difficult arm balance for the first time. There were also some grunts of frustration.

After our arm balances, we took a 15-minute restorative break - child's pose, reclining baddhakonasana with a 3-part breath. We then moved everyone to the wall for our last restorative pose - legs up the wall, always a crowd-pleaser! Our first inversion was headstand. This is the only time that Sara remembered to take pictures, so all the photos are of people in headstand!

Two newcomers to Blue Point and to yoga did beautiful headstands!

Preparing for headstand...

And they're up!

Gorgeous!

Anne-Marie is a headstand pro!

And Phyllis does her first unassisted headstand ever! Go Phyllis!

The spectators are impressed..

Then came handstand. We learned about escape strategies for middle-of-the-room handstands - falling into wheel or walking on your hands. Lots of people practiced L-shaped handstand. And Sara demonstrated one-armed handstand, although everyone was too tired at that point to try it! Brooks did a beautiful forearm stand into scorpion. We finished with some long stretching and twists.

It was such a fun and beautiful afternoon and a great way to spend a blustery, hurricaney type of day.

Om Shanti!

Blue Point Yoga Center August newsletter

August 2011