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Posted on February 28, 2012 by admin

Hello and welcome to the Yoga Boutique blog, a mélange of information to help enrich your health, vitality and daily life.

I’m Carly, owner of Yoga Boutique Sheffield, yoga teacher and enthusiast of all that is innovative, unique and boutique about life. I am passionate about health and an intelligent approach to moving and being on this planet.

These posts will compliment the courses, workshops and retreats that I teach. Providing useful tips, photos, videos and insights into the postures, themes and ideas that we are currently working with, alongside any other interesting, relevant offerings that I find along the way. So take a look, get involved and enjoy….

If we are not in the present, we are nowhere

Posted on April 26, 2012 by admin

I had a moment in savasana this morning that was like giving birth.

I had two very positive labor experiences with my children, both the most honest experiences of true “yoga” that I have ever experienced. Why? Because I was forced to truly “be” in the present moment. Both labors were very long and at times challenging, but each time my mind tried to race ahead by even one contraction something deep inside me said, “No stay where you are. Can I deal with this contraction?” As a result, yes was always the answer. I am positive that this is what allowed me to give birth safely and calmly. The kids both felt it too, in that neither of my babies heart rates increased as they went into the birth canal (which I am told by the midwives is rare) and neither of them cried when they arrived. They like me felt completely at home. Children are fantastic examples of yoga-they are always present. As we grow and the ego develops this becomes more challenging.

Admittedly, labor is an extreme experience in life and a rare one, in that you know you cant get out of it and you have to go through it. You are on the journey whatever it may bring. But isn’t life itself like that? Life is a series of births and deaths some physical and some metaphorical. But essentially if we are to live in yoga, the present moment is the only one we have. Interesting isn’t it that the French term for an orgasm is “petit mort” which translates to “the little death”.

We cannot predict the future, it is a waste to live in the past and yet we race forward making plans and waste energy replaying the past. Death is just around the corner, for all of us it is the only certain thing about life. And embracing it is actually one of the most life-full things we can do. Isn’t it true that when you lose something you really appreciate, you value the things you have more. Increasingly I feel more certain that the juxtaposition of life and death is the essence of being.

As I lay there in savasana I had a moment of being completely open, relaxed, grounded and happiness came through me. As it did a smile came onto my face……and then, my brain kicked in “wow that feels great, that was like labor, that’s interesting…..” and in the revelation that moment had already gone. I laughed and came downstairs to write this.

On Monday in a discussion about headstand one of my students very astutely commented, “As soon as you “have” anything its dead” and its true. A thought, a perfect posture, a perfect moment, as soon as you grasp it it’s gone. Perhaps once we embrace this, the highs and lows of life start to become the same thing. You cannot hang on to the “good” and yet the “bad” will pass – here and gone. Interestingly, Savasana is also known as corpse pose so perhaps we have to die a bit on our mat to be truly full of life.

If we are not in the present we are nowhere and that’s all we have.

Ahimsa, injury prevention and yoga

Posted on March 14, 2012 by admin

Last night in one of my classes we were working on headstand for the first time. And about 5 minutes into the practice someone stopped and said “I feel like I am 6 years old again. I never learnt to do headstands when I was little and that makes me quite sad. And now I feel totally out of my depth”.

We have all experienced this feeling or one like it. It is a mixture of emotions- fear, sadness, frustration. And often when we experience these emotions we beat ourselves up for not being better or working harder. I feel, as a teacher, these moments and insights are the key to true yoga teaching…how can we use spontaneous insights to get to the essence of yoga.

Ahimsa is one of the five yamas that make up the code of conduct for the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga. Translated from Sanskrit ahimsa means non-harm or non-violence. When you read about ahimsa it is often related to non-harm to others and in particular to animals. But going deeper than that, for me, ahimsa starts with kindness/non-violence to oneself.

In this example, I gave the yogini in question the first part of the exercise again to work towards the strength and connection that may one day lead her to headstand. Thereby, facilitating her ability to connect with something tangible that she can feel in her current practice. Maybe she will eventually do headstand, maybe she wont. For me, it is irrelevant, in that through her honest and astute observations she chose to stick with the preparatory version I had given and not force herself into a posture that she was not ready for. This in my view is the true practice of yoga. It is the process of letting go of the ego and not pushing forwards into postures for the sake of it. If more yoga practitioners practiced ahimsa many injuries could be prevented.

In the end yoga postures are not there to polish the ego. Yoga postures are a vehicle to open and unblock the physical body and ultimately teach us about the bigger picture. There will always be something else to find and do and this for me is the exciting part of yoga and life. If you could do it all today you would be pretty bored, right? And yet we struggle with the desire to be able to do everything here and now.

The true challenge is practicing in the present moment and accepting where you are. Interestingly, when you practice in this way this is often when the body begins to open. The present is the only certain and true thing and being in it is one of the hardest and yet most simple things to do in life.

And this is where yoga transcends a class and becomes a life practice. How can we bring the principle of ahimsa into the work place, our relationships with our partner or children? Essentially, by dropping the judgement and allowing ourselves (and in turn those around us) to be where we are right here, right now. And interestingly this is the key to change.