Author Archives: The Branches

Formerly Queen Street Yoga Yoga & movement. Rooted in community. We’re here to create a better world with Yoga as our common ground. We lead down-to-earth classes, expert teacher training, and an engaged intergenerational community. We opened our doors in 2005, and have become known for our highly experienced teachers, our innovative approach to movement, and our efforts in community care and social justice. Our aim is to make the practices of yoga and meditation more inclusive, more accessible, and more relevant for your day-to-day life.

Staff Spotlight – Get to know Leslie and Jason

Leslie and Jason are two of the organizers/hosts behind Queen Street Conversations. Leslie has been a work trade at the studio since November (she makes the graphics for the QSY newsletter) and Jason was a work trade for about seven months before he started working at Community Justice Initiatives (he was on the front desk on Friday mornings). They are both super passionate about yoga, community engagement and looking at the big issues head-on, which is why they love planning for and hosting Queen Street Conversations. Read on to learn a bit more about them, and don’t be shy to approach them at the studio to talk about Game of Thrones (they are both big fans) or share your thoughts about the complex issues facing the world. You know, just casual water-cooler talk. Meet both of them at our next Queen Street Conversations event coming up on Saturday Sept 27, from 1pm-3pm at the studio. (This event is free and open to all.)

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September Sequence for Hips & Shoulders

I am relishing every last bit of these warmer August days, but it’s undeniable that September is on its way. In the yogic and Ayurvedic understanding of the seasons, autumn is the season of wind and movement. It brings cool and blustery days, crisp nights, the bustle of back-to-school, and the intensity and pace of work often increase. To help yourself stay grounded and even-keeled for whatever the fall brings, commit to more regular yoga practice, make time for coziness and cuddles with loved ones, and nourish yourself with warming stews and root veggies. Here is a sequence that helps to cultivate over-all strength and release tension shoulders and hips. I hope you’ll find it both energizing and grounding as we savour the end of summer and transition to September.

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Your Yoga Teacher Isn’t a Magician

In this post Leena reveals some trade secrets of her profession…

Have you ever been in a pose and your yoga teacher came along and said one tiny thing to you or gave one little adjustment to you that changed the entire pose and made it feel better and way more possible? Sometimes that moment feels a little bit magic. Though it’s kind of fun for people to think we are psychic wizards, here’s the truth: yoga teachers aren’t magicians. Teachers that study alignment-based yoga have systems of understanding the mechanics of the body, and there are reasons why that little adjustment made all the difference. When applied carefully, and in sequence, these biomechanical principles can help make an impossible pose feel more doable, help you stabilize when you feel you’re about to collapse, or help you open up just a bit deeper in a pose.

In a survey of our 2014 teachers-in-training, we asked: What are the most helpful things you’ve learned so far in the training? The most common response was: Learning about the Loops! The 7 Loops (which are a foundation of alignment methodology from Anusara Yoga), are a concept that help us align our body and support key joints and junctures in the body.

Realign with Gravity

The the aim of Mountain Pose (Tadasana) in our yoga practice is to find equal standing (Samasthiti). The knees are stacked over the center of the ankle, the pelvis is centered over the legs, the spine is elongated with its natural curves, and the head is centered on top of the spine. When our bones “stacked” in this way, then the force of gravity moves through down a central vertical axis evenly, our joints can decompress and our muscles can be fairly relaxed.

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How I Fell in Love with the Tensegrity Repair Series

In this post Leena reflects on what she has learned from practicing the Tensegrity Repair Series, and shares a bit more about what the term “tensegrity” means and where it comes from.

Grease for your Rusty Parts

Photo by mtneer_man on Flickr

Ever get up from your desk, and feel your joints creak like a rusty old car? Perhaps due to the amount of time we spend sitting in chairs, seats, and couches in North America, the average person I see has core weakness. This instability in the core is often coupled with tightness and lack of mobility in the hip joints and shoulder joints (and by core, I’m not solely referring to the abdominal muscles, but also muscles of the pelvis, deep core and back muscles.)

The Tensegrity Repair Series is a set of 20 simple exercises designed to restore healthy range of motion to the hips, shoulders, and spine. It helps to build supple strength in the core muscles, and balance and stabilize the pelvis. Overall, I’ve found it to be an amazing antidote to the most common structural and postural imbalance issues that I have personally, and that I see in the general population. It brings that little bit of grease back to our creaky parts.

It wasn’t love at first sight…

I was first introduced to the Tensegrity Repair Series a few years ago by my friend Christi-an, and I was intrigued but also annoyed by it. Trying it was a total hit to my ego. The exercises looked so simple, yet seemed to point a finger directly at all the little places in my body that were weak or not fully participating in my yoga practice. Unlike yoga asana (postures), in the Tensegrity movements, it was much harder for me to cheat. So, in the way that you often do when you encounter something truly good for you, I completely ignored our brief encounter and kept doggedly doing what I was previously doing.

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Tips For Going Fragrance-Free

What is Scent Sensitivity?
A number of QSY community members (students and staff) have reported being impacted by scents present at the studio. As we seek to be an inclusive, welcoming place for all, we would like to do our best to reduce the risk of our students and teachers being negatively affected by scents in our studio.

4064421092_5eb7d671aa_z — Perfume Bottle (ii) by Stuart Heath

The vast majority of fragrances are synthetically created, and many contain ingredients that can be harmful to your health. These fragrances are added to everything from shampoo, to laundry detergents, to candles and household products. Many chemicals used in synthetic fragrances are derived from petroleum and include benzene derivatives, aldehydes and many other known toxins and synthesizers capable of causing cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders and allergic reactions.

Scents enter our bodies through our skin and our lungs. The chemicals in scents can cause many different reactions. While some people are only mildly affected by scents, others have severe reactions. Some common symptoms include: headaches, migraines, dizziness, weakness, shortness of breath, nausea, asthma.

QSY aims to be a scent-free environment.

We ask that all students and staff refrain from wearing any scents to the studio. This includes: scented deodorants, hand creams/lotions, perfume or cologne, scented lip balm and other scented products. If at all possible, we ask students who come regularly to our studio if they would consider switching their laundry detergent to an unscented product. Laundry detergents cause some of the most severe allergic reactions for some of our students.

Fragrance-free options at local Kitchener stores:
Full Circle Foods
-Desert Essence Organics Shampoo & Conditioner, fragrance free
Shoppers Drug Mart
-Life brand Body Wash, fragrance free
-Live Clean brand Shampoo & Conditioner fragrance free
-Balea brand Bar Soap, fragrance free
-Dove brand Bar Soap, fragrance free

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How the Hillside Festival brought Acrobatic Yoga back to QSY

This post is brought to you by Emma Dines!

The Magic of Hillside

If you’ve never been to the Hillside Festival in Guelph, you are missing out. This weekend festival that takes place on in late July on Guelph Lake Island has become a beacon of environmental sustainability, creative expression and wonderful music. Where else can you find crocheted covered bicycles, workshops happening every hour of the day on everything from home fermentation to hula hooping, with incredible musicians and poets performing on four different stages?

Hatching the Perfect Plan

In March of this year, I began hatching my plan to offer a unique workshop at Hillside. Workshop spots are coveted by many people, as being selected to offer a workshop means a complimentary weekend pass and a chance to contribute to the magic of the festival. I had submitted workshop proposals a few years in a row (without success) but this year I felt like I had a royal flush. I submitted a proposal for Acrobatic Partner Yoga, and then sat back and waited. Plain old yoga workshops were a dime a dozen, but I hoped that I would be the only one submitting this particular workshop topic. In April, I got the good news. I had been selected! I worked on my workshop description and waited until July.
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Take Your Yoga With You – A Guide to Practicing on the Road

This post is by Aimee Morrison, one of our wonderful yoga teacher trainees. Aimee travels a lot for work, so she wrote this post to share what she’s learned about bringing yoga along on her travels.

Summer time is travel time! Maybe you’re at the cottage, or visiting family. Maybe you’re taking a big road trip or going camping or waiting to see which city has the best summer festival to go to. If you’re out of town, you can’t come practice with us at the studio. And it’s hard to maintain a home practice when, well, you’re not home. But you can still incorporate yoga into your travels, no matter where you are.

I travel a lot for work, taking between five and ten trips a year, and I’ve discovered I’m a lot happier (and less kinked up from air travel) when I do yoga. There are a lot of ways to do this, from studio practice to self-practice. Here are some of the ways I incorporate yoga on my travels–and some ways that you might, too.

Find a studio

I like to practice in at least one studio in every city I visit. Most studios in most places accept drop-ins, with rates from $15-25, depending on location. Some studios even have introductory pricing, like first class for $10, so this can be pretty inexpensive.

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Looking Behind the Drama Curtain: A Path to Resilience

This blog post is by Danette Adams, who will be facilitating a workshop on “Building Personal Resilience” on Sunday August 10 at Queen Street Yoga. Explore how the beliefs behind your drama curtain may be impacting your life choices and experiences without your awareness . You will leave with practical strategies that you can implement even before you leave the workshop. Read on for some ideas on beginning to look behind the “drama curtain”.

Summer Stress in the Self Check-out Lane

The pace was summer slow on this particular summer day when my sister and I wandered through the grocery store near her home. Once we agreed that we had all we came for, my sister indicated that she was going to go through the self-check lane with her items. Without even taking a breath, I scrunched up my nose and told her that I was going to go through the express lane where a tired-looking cashier was distractedly checking out a customer in front of me. “The self-check option is too stressful”. My sister lifted her eyebrows and twisted her face incredulously at me and said “Seriously! How do you make it through the day?”

I am peculiarly sensitive to stress and work hard to avoid it even though I absolutely know that some stress is completely natural and even beneficial for me.

But what was interesting to me was how reactionary I was to this insignificant event and so unaware of the process behind the scenes. It led me to consider how indicative my quick and unprocessed reaction was of how I handle more compelling situations that hold more meaning.

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Teaching Yoga in Public Spaces: The Power of an Outdoor Practice

A Post by Leena Miller Cressman

Taking Yoga Outdoors

Practicing and teaching yoga outside is a big highlight of my summer. I love to take my own practice to the park as soon as it gets warm, either by myself or with friends. I love how soft and forgiving the grass is when playing around with new things like arm balances or handstands. I love feeling the breeze on my skin and looking up at the tree tops while I’m in a pose. To me yoga is about relationship and connection, and in practicing yoga outside the feeling of connection to the environment and the world is more palpable and sweetly profound. I’ve been teaching yoga outside for the past few years (partnering with the City of Kitchener for Wednesday classes, and sharing Queen Street Yoga love on Sundays) and I love sharing the practice of awareness, breath and movement with new people.
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Handstands Don’t Lie

A Post by Emma Dines

“Is handstand the ultimate yoga pose?”

A yoga student recently asked me after class, “Is handstand the ultimate yoga pose?” This really surprised me because I try to say plainly in all of my classes that practicing yoga isn’t about achieving shapes with your body — it’s about being in a learning relationship with yourself and your body-mind’s capacities and limitations. In a recent class I described yoga as “truth-telling” and as “a practice of paying attention to the way that our physical and personal truth can shift and change from moment to moment”. The poses help us tell the truth to ourselves. Early on in the practice, or at the beginning of working with a pose, the truth is more black and white; either you are doing a handstand or you are not. Continue reading “Handstands Don’t Lie”