Lizzie for Free : a yogi's blog
The Free State of LizArchive for dynamic yoga
Day 6, Lizzie’s 30 Day Yoga Challenge
This afternoon I attended the Hot Power Hour at Indaba Yoga Studios with Hortense Suleyman from 12:30-1:30pm. While initially apprehensive about the class (namely because I’ve never been a fan of hot classes), the room wasn’t uncomfortably hot and Hortense had a nice smile and charismatic energy about her paired with a ‘no-nonsense’ attitude. She seemed to know the names of many of the students and was quick to offer words of encouragement.
Combining an interesting mix of sequencing from Dharma Mittra to pilates, we were challenged with things like vrksasana and pinchamayurasana, prasarita padottanasana into tripod headstand, and had an option to do a full wheel. There was even time for a few seated postures and twists. Hortense also played a nice combination of music that kept the class moving.
The one thing that I would have liked to have seen at the beginning was a warm up reminding the beginning students how to protect their lower back from the multiple back arches we did throughout the class from the beginning and a reinforced reminder throughout class. In lieu of an unsual seated breath exercise it perhaps would have been more useful to bring the attention to lengthening the lumbo-sacral junction while opening the upper back.
While there was no spiritual aspect brought into the class, for an hour-long fusion class Hortense struck a nice balance between asanas and ‘exercises’, and I left feeling positive and energized, and for an hour long class, maybe that’s enough!
Tomorrow, Graham Burns class from 13:45-15:30 at the Life Centre, Notting Hill.
Day 5, Lizzie’s 30 Day Yoga Challenge
Today I went to the Life Centre intending to take Zephyr’s 2:30-3:45pm class. Zephyr wasn’t teaching due to personal circumstances, but Victoria Fox was there to teach in her place with a kind smile and calm voice.
The class was dynamic, with many sequences using half-breaths moving between postures. This usually provided an added balance challenge (garudasana with elbows moving from knees to vertical spine), though sometimes it felt extraneous or potentially unsafe (three-legged dog from bent to straight raised leg; ardha hanumanasa forward fold to anjaneyasana back arch).
Overall, the class felt great and was energising. I would have loved a full backbend, forward bend and inversion, but I’m starting to see a trend here developing; I have work to do on detaching from my asana preferences and expectations, and an hour and fifteen minutes may just be a little shy of the time needed for a deeper practice.
I teach a handful of hour and fifteen classes and it certainly leaves me to re-think how I approach sequencing these classes. The more I practice and teach, the more I realise how much there is to learn; how exciting to see that long path ahead!
Up tomorrow, the Hot Power Hour with Hortense Suleyman, 12:30-1:30 at Indaba Yoga Studio. I will have the extra challenge of the heat, so let’s hope it’s a cold day 
Will you join me?
Indaba: A Gathering Place
It’s funny how life works. I’ve been a certified Jivamukti Yoga Teacher for four years, and having done the apprenticeship at the Jivamukti Studio in London and then teaching there for several years, I was fully immersed in the culture and method. Despite enjoying other types of yoga, I had limited time to practice elsewhere. I was dedicated and devoted to the Jivamukti method, and to the studio where I worked.
When I stopped working at the studio in September, despite the heartbreak of no longer seeing beloved beings on a regular basis, a new, larger, exciting world of yoga opened up for me in London. I found myself traveling further afield for classes when I had the time, and strengthening my self-practice. I began to reread the ancient texts in a new and different light, exploring new ways of approaching old postures, and shifting my perspective about teaching and practicing yoga. As a result I find myself more fulfilled and my practice and teaching have improved. It isn’t that I no longer honour the Jivamukti method (I am evermore the devoted practitioner and teacher), but I feel creatively inspired and at ease with myself in a way that I haven’t felt in the past. There is a freedom in honouring my authenticity without a sense of being judged, and that freedom enables me to embody the yoga instead of trying to embody my teachers and a specific method of teaching.
A new studio is opening in the spring in Marylebone, London called Indaba Yoga. Indaba means ‘gathering place’ in Zulu. The studio will be a place of cooperation and collaboration for many different methods of yoga, all ultimately leading to the same goal of Yoga – Union of the small, ego driven self and the conscious Self; and the union of the conscious Self in All Beings. I’m delighted and honoured to be chosen to teach there among a faculty of diverse, talented teachers. We will gather together from different walks of life to share, contemplate and create an enriching, ripe environment so that all may bring authenticity of self from the mat into daily life; so that all may experience freedom and wellness of being. Stay Tuned…
