The Branches

Queer Yoga on Pause for the Fall

This blog post is to acknowledge and celebrate everyone who has helped make Queer & Trans Yoga a reality at QSY. We so appreciate the committee of community members (of varying genders and identities) who helped us envision and promote the program, to everyone who came through the door to attend the class: THANK YOU.

One of the things that felt important to us about this class was the presence of Shannon, a queer-identified teacher. We felt it was important to have a queer-identified teacher to set the context of this class. We are sad to announce that Shannon has decided to move her life to Toronto this fall, and so won’t be able to continue teaching the Queer & Trans Yoga class. (But we are happy for her to pursue her next adventure in life!) After some conversations with her and a few other co-creators of Queer Yoga, we’ve decided to transition the Queer Yoga class back to a Community Class in September. We considered keeping it as a Queer Yoga class, but since we didn’t have another teacher that was queer-identified, we felt that it didn’t make sense to keep it going without someone from that community to hold the context. Thank you Shannon for spearheading this class and sharing your love for yoga in the Queer & Trans Yoga class! Continue reading “Queer Yoga on Pause for the Fall”

Yoga & The Importance of Touch: Self Massage and Massage Therapy

This post is from Katerina, one of our Registered Massage Therapists. Katerina attends regular classes at the studio and in this blog post considers the relationship between yoga practice and therapeutic touch.

Queen Street Yoga is a place of many things for me. It is a workplace, a third place (a place between work and home) and a spiritual place. It is a place where my understanding of anatomy and kinetics of the human body is deepened. It is a sanctuary where my learning from all these faculties meets and marinates and becomes the type of knowledge that can only be called embodied wisdom.

The Importance of Touch

Lately I have been contemplating the question, “How can massage and yoga work together to help us heal?”. This has lead me to think about the role of touch in the health and healing. As a massage therapist my job is to create an environment where my clients feel safe and relaxed with my touch; an individual on my massage table should always feel like they are the one in control. In massage, touch plays the role of a tool in a tool-belt designed to help us journey towards a healthful relationship with our body. Massage can be used as a tool to decrease a muscle spasm, scar tissue and pain, and during the last year I have also seen massage used to help Alzheimer’s patients return to a sense of self and aid anxiety sufferers in feeling control over their symptoms. Massage with a trusted therapist can be an experience of healthy and safe touch. As adults we may experience less touch in our lives than we did as children, and therapeutic touch can be an important part of experiencing our bodies.Continue reading “Yoga & The Importance of Touch: Self Massage and Massage Therapy”

Water Kefir – post by Leena

Gut health has been in the news a lot lately. It seems like every week I come across a new piece of research about the inner environment of our guts and implications of the levels of good bacteria and probiotics in the gut for our overall health. And I’m not just talking about physical health, new studies are showing that probiotics may even improve mental and emotional well being and decrease anxiety. This interview I heard on Science Friday from NPR News discusses how probiotic-laced broth reduced anxiety and stress in mice.

In humans, this interesting study found that four weeks of regular intake of probiotic yogurt by healthy women affected activity in the brain regions that control central processing of emotion.Continue reading “Water Kefir – post by Leena”

Learning to Breathe Again; A Singer’s Reflection

This post is from Marg, who teaches our early morning Sunrise Practice. In this post she shares about her experience of learning to breathe as both a singer and a yogi, and shares a breathing technique to practice in child’s pose.

Many years ago, at the age of 22, I took up yoga. I had recently won a national singing competition. One of the first things my yoga teacher said to me was “I know you’re a singer, so I hate to tell you that you don’t breathe very well.” I was dismayed. I thought I understood a lot about my breath. What more could yoga teach me?

Over 25 years of studying, practicing, singing professionally, teaching and coaching voice, I came to the realization that I did learn at least as much about breath from my yoga practice as from all the wonderful voice teachers with whom I had worked.Continue reading “Learning to Breathe Again; A Singer’s Reflection”

Yoga Tips from QSY – Align Your Shoulders in Downward Dog

Shoulder alignment can be a tricky part of Downward Dog. You might feel like the instructions from your yoga teacher are telling you opposite things. In some ways we might be telling you opposite things, because in a drop-in class we are trying to give alignment information for lots of different types of shoulders (from very mobile to very stable). In this video we get explicit about how to align your shoulders if your shoulders are more stable and have the tendency to “tent” forwards and how to align your shoulders if your shoulders are more mobile or tend to “collapse” downwards.

Have an alignment question about a particular pose or particular are of the body? Leave a comment and we will try to make a video to answer your question!

Tips for Going Upside Down — A Handstand Post from Aimée

I love doing handstands. I love kicking up and feeling my heels tap the wall. I love pressing down through my hands and up through my tailbone and my feet. I love the way the reversal of gravity feels on my spine. I love how free my toes feel. I love that feeling of trying out my (very wobbly) balance and feeling the whole length of my legs balancing from my pelvis. I love that a tiny wiggle of one of my fingers can send me all the way over to one side or another.

I do handstands as often as I can, just for the sheer joy of it.

I used to take gymnastics when I was a kid (I was never any good at it at all, ever, but I LOVED it) and as a result was always doing cartwheels and somersaults and wheel poses and handstands at the wall in my living room during the commercial breaks of TV shows. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t do this. I know I was still doing it in high school–here’s a picture of me doing a headstand against the wall that somehow wound up getting taken and ultimately placed in a family album.

Continue reading “Tips for Going Upside Down — A Handstand Post from Aimée”

Canada Day: It’s Complicated. Celebrating and Remembering at the Same Time

Leena shares a reflection about Canada Day, complexity and how the practice of yoga can invite us to lean into bigger questions.

This week, life has been inviting me again and again to embrace complexity and paradox.

If Facebook asked me to set my “relationship status” to my participation in representing yoga in the media, to practicing and sharing yoga, and to being a resident and a citizen of Canada, the status would read “It’s Complicated.”

Monday, the local Grand magazine hit the shelves, with me on the cover. I feel excited and honoured. I appreciate the amazing opportunity to tell my story and to share the story of our Queen Street Yoga community. I also feel conflicted. The title of the article is “Yoga for Everyone” and the story speaks to the diversity and inclusivity that we are trying to nurture at QSY. I’m proud of the ways that we’re already doing that, and there’s more work still to do.

As I see it, one of the barriers to the yoga community being more inclusive to all genders, races and classes in our community is that similar types of bodies are portraying yoga in the media over and over- in yoga books, magazines, advertisements, etc. If you line up every magazine with someone doing a yoga pose on the cover, I would venture that over 90% of the people portrayed are thin, young, able-bodied, cis-gendered, flexible and female. The vast majority of them are white.

Continue reading “Canada Day: It’s Complicated. Celebrating and Remembering at the Same Time”

A Summer Sequence for Strong Shoulders- FREE Printable Download

For me, a summer in Ontario isn’t complete without at least four or five days of back-country canoe camping in Killarney Provincial Park. Killarney is about five hours north of Kitchener-Waterloo on the north side of the Georgian Bay. It boasts some of the most beautiful lakes, scenic mountains and dramatic rock faces that I’ve had the pleasure of canoeing and hiking along.

If you’ve never been canoeing, let me teach you a new vocabulary word: Portage (noun or verb). I’m glad Canadians are at least bilingual enough that you can pronounce it the more elegant way en francais up here. Honestly, Americans butcher this word. Pronunciation aside, when you hear portage think carrying a huge pack on your back and a canoe on your shoulders for anywhere between a few dozen meters to a kilometer or more! Given that I’m only 5’3” and the canoe is 17’ and about 50lbs, a little extra prep for my shoulders and upper body before heading on a trip is super helpful.Continue reading “A Summer Sequence for Strong Shoulders- *FREE* Printable Download”

Bring Me Little Water [Emma’s Savasana Songs + Free Download]

This song is called “Bring Me Little Water Sylvie” and was written by American folk and blues musician Lead Belly. It has been performed and recorded by many groups. Some of my favourite recordings are by Sweet Honey in the Rock and The Wailin’ Jennys.

I love the quality of soft yearning this song evokes. I usually sing it at the end of classes when there is a strong quality of stillness. I hope you enjoy my version of this song!Continue reading “Bring Me Little Water [Emma’s Savasana Songs + Free Download]”

Finding Your Soul-Mat: a guide from Queen Street Yoga

Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun! I hope this post is a helpful guide to finding the mat of your dreams.

A quality yoga mat that suits your preferences can really enhance your practice. Ideally, if a mat is serving your needs, it should be functional and supportive enough that it becomes unnoticeable, so you can focus on enjoying your practice.

We carry four different types of mats at QSY and choosing the mat that is most suitable for you is really up to personal preferences and priorities. In this post, I’ll give what I consider to be the pros and cons of the mats we carry, so that if you’re in the market for a new mat, you can find one that feels like the best fit for your needs.Continue reading “Finding Your Soul-Mat: a guide from Queen Street Yoga”