Life is getting Busy

A group of super strong warriors on International day of Yoga

So life as an A&E nurse and a yoga teacher is hotting up pretty well these days. For those of you who weren't aware, i spend the majority of my life holed up in Ipswich hospital wearing blue pyjamas (scrubs) rather than my big baggy harem pants. Life as an ED nurse and a yoga teacher certainly have there differences and i do like to think that yoga is my Yin to the hospitals Yang. My grounding, calming, more lunar relaxed side to the flat out, manic, more up in the air solar side that ED provides.

   So i have been teaching in ipswich for the last 14 months and so many of you have been lovely about my classes, spread the word and repeatedly come back with your friends, family and at times maybe even strangers you have pulled off the street. Though all the positive feedback it seems my class schedule is about to get pretty damn busy over the next couple of months. I have been teaching regularly in Martlesham and Kesgrave since april last year and that has grown to incorporate a class for parkinson's patients too. 

    In the last month i have also just started teaching 3 classes at the beautiful Kersey Mill pilates studio. Its been pretty super lovely to have such a positive reaction to the classes to so soon. My tuesday morning (10-11am) class has been fully booked as as the first of my thursday evening (6-7pm) classes. I am hoping that in the coming months this will also develop into more classes, Including men only classes/kids classes/complete beginners/meditation and relaxation as jenny (the big boss) seems really happy to develop the yoga side into the studio. 

In the last week i have also had offers of work in and around Hadleigh and in Ipswich with some super lovely people, both yogini's and fitness instructors. The ipswich classes will be at the lovely little studio www.www.suffolkyoga.co.uk. The exact days and times are yet to be confirmed but as i work three to four 12 hour shifts a week, its hard to offer regular classes. 

This blog is a little bit of a heads up that life is pretty sweet in my little yoga world and that is all thanks to you lot, i also would kinda like to use this to beg and plead (well beg an plead could be a bit strong, just hope) that as my time table becomes busier those of you who come regularly will continue to do so and maybe even increase your class numbers (we all know that you need to be practicing at least 3-4 times a week). Please continue to be so lovely and bring people along to spread the good word of yoga. I hope that if all keeps going in the same direction i will be able to cut my hours at work to start realising this crazy dream i have to teach you beautiful people full time and give myself more time to live my life with my STUNNING fiancee and our spotty pups.  

Namaste one and all, thanks for reading and see you all soon.

Yoga day at Henham Hall

Hey one and all

so this week I am privileged enough to have been invited to teach at Henham hall near southwold. One of my students was super kind and past my details onto the lovely Sarah Rous who invited me to teach 1hr 45minutes class of yang and yin! 

The setting is totally beautiful in an old beamed barn, with a beautiful energy and atmosphere! 

The long morning will involve a great meditation to set the day off, with a beautiful slow hatha flow to get warmed up and Into the day! There will also be talks on ayuveda and the great Indian health system of doshas, along with a some chat time on reflexology and how we can incorporate it into our yoga practice! 

If you are interested in coming along please get in touch at wibbs@mandukyayoga.com or Sarah@henhampark.com

This is such a joy after just finishing teaching 3 classes at the yoga day at dance east last weekend, here is a little picture from that great day...cannot wait for me like it this Saturday! 

Yin yoga teacher training in Milton Keynes

Sooooooooooo, i have been away for a couple of weeks, from my regular teaching, ok partly i was away in Croatia putting the final touches to my wedding plans, but i have also just spent the last week in sunny, cheerful Milton Keynes at an amazing studio studying for my 50hr Yin yoga teacher qualification. It was a little bit of a nightmare start to the trip as my car broke down on the way there and i ended up turning up 2 hours late. All the same once i got there i was greeted by some lovely folks in what was clearly an old converted church building of some type.

For those who aren't aware of what Yin yoga (sometimes called taoist yoga) is, it is a type of yoga that came around in the 80's combing long held floor based poses with a taoist view of meridian therapy/acupressure. Along with this a strong mindfulness element has been integrated into it. In the yoga world we call practices such as vinyasa flow, ashtanga, power/rocket etc Yang practices. They are stronger more fluid, quicker active forms of movement whereas Yin yoga is a very deliberately floor based, slow long held practice that gives much more time to meditate and allow yourself space to start working through the physical manifestations of your repetitive, destructive nature, that we all hold.. On the less "hippy" side of the practice it also targets different tissues in the body, rather than trying to stretch the muscles/fascia of the body (which are more superficial) we are aiming to apply a stress...(NOT STRETCH, BUT STRESS.....and no not a stress in a bad, IM REALLY STRESSED type way) to the deeper more connective tissues of the body (the ligaments, join capsules and bones). Yin yoga give us a very deliberate practice allow your selves to listen to our bodies and not push through what feels comfortable, we call this our edge. Because we hold poses upwards from anywhere from 2 minutes to 10 minutes we have to really start to listen to our bodily sensations and just learn to sit and not let our ego push us further than we are ready....the body is pretty amazing at letting you in and go deeper if you just give it a few minutes to do its thing.

Our teacher sarah Lo has been teaching for a fair few years now and is a student of Sarah Powers who is one of the main teachers of Yin world wide. We spent the first 2-3 days feeling a little out of our depth (im pretty sure i can speak for everyone) getting in touch with ourselves emotionally through our physical bodies. Lots of partner work talking through sensation we felt, how we felt interactions with people and ourselves effected us, and talk of mindfullness on a pretty deep level as to how it can be used for emotional issues and not a whole lot of actual physical yoga. there was talk of "I did not sign up for this" "when are we actually going to do some Yin" . well that came on thursday and friday, lots of sitting in long held postures and lots of practice at helping adjust our colleagues into more comfortable versions of what the "book" might say is the "ideal". After wards though it was quite funny how everyone of us actually came away at the end of the week getting much more from those first 3 days then we would ever have though we would.

i was lucky enough to have my birthday while on course too and my word wasnt i spoilt rotten, i had known these girls for 4 days and the love i was shown was amazing. this is one of the best things about doing yoga. The people who do it to are just so full of giving, loving accepting energy. i was given 3 birthday cards, a tiara, an amazng set of leggings and a tealight holder, plus we had cake. it was totally a birthday i wont forget in a long time. 

said birthday leggings and tiara.

i truly hope that these amazing yogini's will cross my path again as i continue along my journey, im sure we will, its far to small a world to not haha. If you have never taken a Yin class, i cannot recommend it highly enough, especially if you spend to much time rushing around work and home life, not finding time to slow down and just spend some time getting to know and understand your self and how happy you can be just in your own body. il close this blog with a quote from my teachers teacher, Sarah Powers

"I think one of the main benefits is being more at home in our own skin. Whether we’re a large person, or very slight, and through the seasons of our lives- this body is our particular garden to take care of. And we start to have more respect and therefore more embodied dignity in the body. Rather than treating it like an object and comparing it to the ideal that we see in glamour magazines."

Yoga for Parkinsons Disease (PD)

As some of my students, friends, and family will be aware, i am planning on taking my yoga practice and teaching in the direction of being a yoga therapist. For those that are not aware, yoga therapy is the use of yoga as an holistic practice to help live with, manage and in some cases improve many illnesses and long term diseases and conditions. As a practicing register nurse working in an accident and emergency as well as having a background working in cardiology, i have long felt that the old saying of "meditation and not medication" is far to true. There has been numerous research papers that have been published in the last 10 years or so demonstrating that through a regular yoga practice, including the physical postures, the breath work of pranayama and the use of meditation/mindfullness, stress can be reduced, blood pressure lowered, heart rate lowered, peak flow increased and problem solving time decreases. Yoga uses none competitive physical movement to help increased range of motion through joints and attempt to re-lengthen our muscles, when done with a very mindful breath and intention/attention.

So then, coming onto yoga and parkinson's. I was asked by one of my work colleagues who recently has been diagnosed and was eager to practice yoga to try and keep her mobility and find some techniques for relaxation. Some side effects of parkinson's medications are that they affect sleep, possibly from the dopamine having a stimulant effect. One of the advantages of yoga is that we work on total relaxation, we work on learning to move our attention away from the physical senses and switching from the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system to the parasympathetic and allowing the body to fully let go. Whilst some of accounts are more personal that scientifically researched, there are an awful lot of accounts of PD sufferers who state that the time they get to spend on themselves, learning to use their breath to enhance the parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system and feel how their body is feeling and moving and working has a very positive effect on their lives. The use of asana's (physical postures) to focus the attention on how we move our legs/feet and how we move our arms/hands also allows the PD sufferer to be aware of the slowing down and shortening of their gait, the typical shuffling motion seen in PD patients. The use of standing postures focuses our attention towards the extensors and flexors in our hips/knees and ankles which may well help towards the overall stability of the practitioner. This stability also goes hand in hand with the balance that begins to decrease with patients as their PD progresses. In america up to 40% of admissions to hospital for patients with PD come from a loss of balance and as we all know a large part of yoga is learning the proprioceptive ability of the body, learning to understand where your body is in space. Balance exercises are used in traditional PD therapy and so the use of the breath and additional attention to how the body/feet/hands feels on the floor means that there can be a large benefit in reducing falls in PD patients.  

So yeah, this has just been a very brief look at how yoga can be of benefit to people who are diagnosed with parkinson's disease. I am looking forward to really taking these classes on to as many people as i possibly can and bring my knowledge of western medicine/nursing into the setting of yoga and eastern practices. Next year i hope to take my training in Yoga Therapy and will begin to widen my reach in take on private patients as well as class, not only for PD, but also for conditions such as stress/anxiety/depression, heart failure, other cardiological issues and also respiratory illnesses. If you have any questions of would ever wish to talk to me about anything to do with yoga therapy, please feel free to get in touch with me through my website. 

light and love 

namaste 

wibbs @ mandukya yoga

Welcome!

Namaste and hello from my new site and the centre of what will, hopefully, be the place for all the information you could possibly need in regards to my yoga classes/retreats/me and what it is I am up to. There will hopefully be regular blogs going up which will hopefully keep you entertained. These will be to do with courses I attend and how these could affect our practice or just day to day lives, interesting things I read in regards to recent yoga research and anything I think you may find of interest!

Please have a look around the site, share it around and try and come along to a class or two! If you have ever fancied trying meditation but thought it seemed far to hard (it's really not) then get in touch and we can arrange a taster for you! Same with general yoga asana (the physical side of it) practice!

Look forward to seeing you all at a class soon! 

Light and love
Namaste
Wibbs

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