This new year brings more ways to learn and grow :  

To meditate, to set a personal yoga practise, to explore your self through principles of Ayurveda for wellness and good health.

So much depends on finding balance, even when our world seems upside down.

Look for discipline and routine in this  winter setting that can be dry and cold and windy. The weather can be unsettling, especially for yogis inclined to Vata excess, but the end of winter into spring is a time to learn, re-group, grow.

Here we have a list of dates to note, beginning 2018 in Lancaster PA. I am cutting back on group classes so that I can focus on work with individuals. Private lessons are available on an occasional schedule or with small groups of like folks.

Noontime Yoga Class.  TUESDAYS.

 January 3 through March 27, 2018.

This hour-long midday class is suitable for all levels of yoga practice.

We incorporate many ways to breathe, moments of stillness on the path to meditation, with stretches and poses to relax the body for the afternoon ahead.

How to Find this Class:

Find your way downtown on a Tuesday,  also a day for buying fresh food at the Central Market.

( A plus to walk to market before or after class.)

The address for Saint James Parish House is 119 North Duke Street. The building is across from Lancaster City Hall, next to the downtown Library, and at a midpoint between Saint James Episcopal Church at Orange and Duke Streets and the popular Square One coffee shop near the corner of North Duke and East Chestnut St.@ Duke Street Garage.

*  Plenty of meter parking: Behind the library and often in front of our building. Parking meters take coins or credit cards.

* Plan to feed the meter the first time and we will give you tips on how to find free parking with a little walking.

Truth be told: This below-ground, large room has a wonderful energy, conducive to focusing, to forgetting the woes of the day, and to resting in its stillness.

The Cost:

Buy a 6-card ticket for $75. for the best bargain. The Six-class card will have a generous expiration date, but it will expire because it is designed for getting you to follow a carefully sequenced pattern of learning.  Drop In Fee is $15.

I am hopelessly entwined with the old style of teaching yoga in a way that helps you develop a personal practise. Heat is generated and sustained from within by accessing prana through the breath.

Props are available to help you find the pose without straining to be perfect. We lead up to complex poses with a series of simple poses. Just like sentences. Each person can stop at his or her comfort level and then move on to new achievements.

You get as much personal attention as you want or need and you decide when to stop the pose because you understand it now. Or just perhaps it is too difficult today.

Try it this way and give it your resolve for the new year.

So here we are ready for position 4 of the joints warmup. That’s the side- body -long stretch where we all bend to the right and, later, to the left, while dragging our knuckles all the way up — from knees to arm pits – massaging that long line of lymph nodes and emphasizing the wonderful feeling of ” Side Body Long.”

I can’t get these chimps to do lateral stretches. But you get the picture; it’s about the arc of the body , the entire primordial body.

If you haven’t read the previous post ( below ) you will want to be familiar with Vishnu’s Couch pose. This week we are going to add The Gate, another lateral bend.    Here it is.

See you next Tuesday, noon, at 119 North Duke Street, for the next step in our yoga sequences.

Our last class in December, in the midst of all the hurly burly of holiday life, as well as change in weather, will be a fun trip to the famous sequence of All Animal Poses.  This class plan come  complete with a blizzard of animal-themed corny jokes.  Put it on your calendar as a relief from busy-ness.  As usual it involves fun, learning, meditation, in a very quiet space.