Namaste and welcome to the spring edition of our newsletter. We are pleased to be able to offer a range of special events and courses in our Yoga Centre this spring, beginning with a beautiful Kundalini Yoga Internal Day Spa Workshop on Saturday 10 October (see below for further details). What a perfect way to kickstart your spring cleanse!

Spring is a perfect time to take a few small steps towards improved health. Small steps like better eating, practising yoga or other exercise more regularly and resting when you need to, are easy to implement and create a positive response to the often bleak news on our televisions each night.Sadly what’s lacking from the media hype is the real news on how to prevent illness and stay well.Yet it’s never too late to start improving your health and everyone around you can benefit too. Small changes now compound over the years as you avoid doctors visits, medications, missed days from work and school, as well as inspiring changes in your friends and family that can spiral out to benefit the whole community.

 

During this spring, you might also like to consider what your daily ‘caffeine’ intake is really doing to you. For an interesting excerpt on the impact of caffeine from Peter and Patricia Edwards book Glow with Health Cookbook, read on…

 

We also have some exciting news to share with you about one of our teachers. Penne Parbat gave birth to Maya Isobel on 26 July 2009. Congratulations Penne and Sanjay and welcome to the world little Maya! We hope you enjoy these precious early days together as a family AND are managing to get some good quality sleep.

 

We would also like to thank those of you who took the time to complete our Student Survey last term. All of us here at Williamstown Yoga Centre have had time to discuss and process the findings and we are looking at ways we can continue improving the Centre and our classes to keep you happy. We would also like to congratulate Helen Takea for winning the raffle prize – a gorgeous ‘Life’ Yoga Pillow & Eye Bag Relaxation Set.

 

Please keep reading now, for news of some wonderful spring inspired courses and workshops on offer at our Centre. And for a copy of our updated term four timetable, visit us online: www.williamstownyoga.com.au

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Kundalini Yoga - Internal Day Spa Workshop – with Kaylene Grieve
Saturday 10 October 2009, 1-4pm

"Beauty comes from within. Our beauty is not in our makeup or our fashion, it lies in our depth.”
Please join us for this relaxing, revitalizing and replenishing workshop. The Internal Day Spa workshop provides you with the tools and skills to achieve the beautiful, blissful and calm state we experience when being at a Day Spa, except it all happens within you!!! You will experience a series of Breath Tecniques, Kriyas (sequence of postures) and meditations which have a focus on beauty, radiance and relaxation. What you will learn in this workshop will leave you feeling healthy, energetic and with a renewed enthusiasm for life.

Learn how to:
Develop a Youthful Body
An Alert Mind
A Vibrant and Radiant Projection
For bookings please contact Kaylene on 0404 118 962 or
kaylene@kundalinibooks.com.au
Cost: $85.00

 

Yoga for Fertility (Four Week Course) – with Susanne Calman
Friday 13 November - Friday 4 December, 6.30-8.30pm
Yoga classes, guest facilitator, guided relaxation CD for healing, OM Mama fertility aromatherapy oil, heart shaped rose quartz crystal, take home notes, on-line support
Cost: $200

Bookings essential: susanne@williamstownyoga.com.auor or (03) 9397 3015

 

‘Dana Paramita’ (the practice of giving) - Weekend Mountain Yoga Retreat with Deb Robertson

Friday 20 November, 7pm to Sunday 22 November, 3pm

Open your heart to the practice of true giving with a generous and receptive heart, Dana Paramita. Mahayana Buddhism offers the teaching of the six perfections, and dana paramita is the first of these. Drawing on the yoga of Krishnamacharya and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, the gentle yoga practices, chanting and meditation will prepare us for the busy and often stressful Christmas period, helping us to offer others the gifts that are not for sale in any shop, such as our true presence and our understanding, and the gift of peace and happiness to those we love.

 

This retreat will be held at Clearview Retreat (www.clearviewretreat.org.au), 90 minutes north of Melbourne in the King Parrot Valley, on 87 acres of bush with eucalypts, granite rocks, a tea tree forest and immense views. Wonderful vegetarian food is included.

Each retreat is limited to small numbers of people, so book early.

 

Cost: $345 or $385 (price includes yoga, accommodation & food, and varies with level of accommodation + optional massage at extra cost).

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Williamstown Yoga Centre will close on Sunday 20 December and re-open on Monday 11 January 2010. Stay tuned for details of some yoga intensives over the Christmas break.

 

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Caffeine – excerpt from Glow with Health Cookbook by Peter and Patricia Edwards (www.vitality.com.au)

“…caffeine hypes us up! It creates an altered personality living on adrenalin (on our nerves), and in the long term makes you tired and age prematurely.

 

Caffeine causes what is referred to as ‘insulin resistance’, which means it creates problems with the body’s ability to metabolise sugar and function properly on a mental level. It also causes increased production of adrenalin, which as well as having an effect of raising blood sugar levels, it makes the mind and body ready for ‘fight or flight’, meaning it pumps you up ready for a fight (or fighting!) or running a race! This is not a positive side effect when we consider that besides hyping us up, blood sugar problems are already rampant in modern society among young and old alike…this causes mood swings, depression and a scenario of associated emotional conditions. Adrenaline is a hormone secreted by the adrenal gland and has an action of stimulation of the nervous system causing:

 

Dilation of the bronchioles and shallow breathing.

Rapid and shallow breathing and can be a major causative factor in anxiety and panic attacks. Anxiety and panic attacks have been significantly linked to the use of caffeine.
Rising of the blood pressure…

It also releases glycogen from the liver, which causes further fluctuations in the blood sugar levels giving rise to all sorts of neurological and neuromuscular problems…

 

In real life terms, too much caffeine can cause ‘personality alterations’, loss of peace of mind and serious personal problems that can very easily lead to relationship problems…

 

You would be surprised at just how many negative moods, depression, fatigue, temper tantrums, panic attacks and irritability caffeine addiction is behind.

 

Control the caffeinated foods and drinks in your house! Cut them down and replace with alternatives that contribute to your family’s health, not take from it. Herbal teas and caffeine free coffee substitutes are all fine. You may need a ‘decaffeinated’ coffee for a while. If this is the case, make sure you get one that has had the caffeine removed with water. Most use a detergent-like chemical that leaves a chemical residue in the coffee. ‘Vittoria’ decaffeinated coffee is one brand I can recommend. Quality fruit and vegetable juices…are healthy, and don’t forget about good old water! To assist you reducing your caffeine if you are having too much, I recommend you get the supplement…containing B complex with the minerals zinc, magnesium, manganese and chromium. This will certainly help you come off any addictive substance” (pp. 30-32).

 

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Recently, a dear friend presented me with a beautiful gem of a book called Mitten Strings for God, in which the author shares her own search for a more satisfying balance in her life. The following are two interesting quotes from her book, which may, as they did for me, make you want to stop and ponder them in relation to your own lives:

 

“I think it is all too easy for us to forget, in the face of our material orientation, that most of us can make choices about our lives. We have the freedom – more so, perhaps, than any previous generation – to define our lives, to live according to our values, to set our own boundaries…[Yet] We may be so caught up in a cycle of bills and acquisitions, activities and exhaustion, accomplishment and recognition, that we don’t even realize we have become the unwitting victims of our own ambitions and desires. But even this, at bottom, represents a choice. And it is not too late to change our minds” (Katrina Kenison, Mitten Strings for God, 2000, p. 211).

 

“Like Thoreau, I love ‘a broad margin to my life’ – the less packed into a day, the better. Sitting still, I am able to appreciate my life simply because I am taking the time to experience it. But even a few moments of tranquility can be hard won. It seems that idleness is suspect; we are supposed to be on the go. Perhaps that is why I am always so grateful for the small clearings that can suddenly appear even in the midst of a busy day. These accidental, hallowed scraps of time offer us a break from the outside world, at least for a few moments…

 

Having reaped the blessings of these accidental moments of grace, I am learning to leave some space around the edges of our days. There is no peace to be found in our culture. So I try to build the margins in, to keep our days from being inscribed too deeply…When I come to a stop myself, when I draw a circle of stillness around me, my children are drawn into that peaceful place. The impact of just a few minutes of quiet attention can be profound, changing the mood of an entire day, restoring equilibrium to a distressed child, and to a frazzled mother as well” (p. 24).

- Katrina Kenison Mitten Strings for God, 2000

 

 

Fiona, Susanne & the team at Williamstown Yoga Centre