community – The Branches

Can Joy and Grief Co-exist?

A personal reflection from Branches Co-Director, Leena Miller-Cressman

It’s my most sincere hope that you can find our classes or events to be a soft place to land, whether it’s back in community or back in your body, and that you can re-realize the joy of practicing together.
Leena Miller-Cressman

You may have noticed that the studio has been busy this past month! We’ve added some classes, and the schedule is feeling more full after such lean times in the thick of the pandemic. Hooray!

None of this is to pretend that our healthcare system is okay or that COVID is gone, but we sure are glad that many people are feeling up for in-person classes. The contrast between this January and the one from 2022 has me feeling reflective…

The Marathon We Didn’t Know We Were Starting

Looking back, even though our classes weren’t busy, the pandemic was the busiest time of my life. For example, I started making sourdough bread years ago (before having kids) and I just made it again for the first time the other week. Unlike some folks who got into it during the pandemic, I had absolutely no time for a cozy and nourishing habit like baking my own bread. Like so many parents, I was juggling work and childcare while schools and daycares closed and opened, and closed again. And I was also hustling more than ever to keep the studio afloat through pivot after pivot.

Over this period, there wasn’t time to slow down, reflect, feel or to grieve what was happening. I just kept moving forward. These days I don’t think too hard about whether I would have gone ahead with everything had I known how long it would all take. But thanks to so much hard work from our whole dream-team, a deeply supportive community, and vital government small business supports, here we are – finally.

When Joy Shines A Light On Grief

The other weekend, a lovely group of 14 people gathered at the Branches for the first of two Deeply Chill Restorative Immersions. In the closing circle, a number of participants remarked on how healing it was for them to be in a group again. One participant shared afterwards, “My heart is overflowing from the wonderful group of humans who shared practice, space and stories. The way TBY co-creates community is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”

Hearing this, it’s impossible to put my gratitude into words – having folks come together in our new studio home ignites my sense of purpose. But the joy I felt from hosting a group of people moving and breathing together was also tinted with melancholy. It felt a little more complex because it was in such high contrast with what it was like during the times we were isolated from one another.

One year ago, we were grappling with a stark sense of emptiness (literal and figurative) during the shut-downs associated with the Omicron wave. Re-encountering vibrant togetherness one year later has revealed the hidden grief that I didn’t have time to process when I was too busy moving forward. It all became quite clear when this song popped up in a playlist and I started crying!

Anyone Else Still Feeling the Effects?

Realizing how much we missed something only after glimpsing it again is such a bittersweet gift. For me, finally giving those emotions some airtime is helping me let go of tension, land in my body more fully, and move forward in a more wholehearted way. Are any of you still working through the changes of these past few years?

It’s my most sincere hope that you can find our classes or events to be a soft place to land, whether it’s back in community or back in your body, and that you can re-realize the joy of practicing together.

Next week we’ll be sharing all the details of our annual Community Week, so stay tuned for info on how you can join in!

With care,
Leena

Noticing Our Confinement

A Story About Outdoor Cats & The Enneagram

This is a guest post by Tamara Shantz, Spiritual Director and Enneagram Teacher. Tamara’s work centres on “practicing incarnation,” with the Enneagram as a key piece of the puzzle.

Our cat Izzy is NOT an indoor cat.

When we first took Izzy and her brother Alex in six years ago, they had been living as outdoor cats for at least a year. We hoped to transition them to being fully indoors, but after months of constant crying and complaining, we caved, and allowed Izzy and Alex to move freely between inside and outside.

Alex died really unexpectedly the other summer, and we were so devastated. As we grieved Alex, we were also trying to figure out what to do about Izzy. There was a possibility that Alex had died from exposure to rat poison, so until we got the results from an autopsy, we decided to keep Izzy inside.

One day of her confinement, she spent about 8 hours loudly petitioning to be let outside. There was nothing pleasant about Izzy’s confinement for anyone in the household. Thankfully, in the end, rat poison was not the cause of Alex’s death and we decided to return to Izzy’s usual state of roaming freely between our indoor and outdoor spaces.

Protection or Imprisonment?

This experience with Izzy got me thinking about the idea of protection. I’m sure any parents (of human or fur babies) can relate to the choice-making we do for the protection of our vulnerable charges, even when they conflict with the desires of the one we seek to protect.

I have no doubt that Izzy did not feel protected. She felt imprisoned. Like many protective acts or barriers in the world, it really depends on perspective.

What one person sees as an act of protection, for another, is an act of confinement.

We can find this dynamic within ourselves as well.

The Wisdom of Enneagram

The Enneagram is a tool for self awareness that describes 9 basic personality structures. It sees your personality as a collection of coping strategies – defence mechanisms that develop in order to keep yourself safe. Especially when we are children, at our most vulnerable, we need to learn how to protect ourselves in the world. We begin to create a tough outer layer to defend the tender parts of our truest selves.

And so Ones begin to perfect themselves, Twos start to shower others with care and kindness, Threes get busy, and so on. Each one of us believing that these strategies will keep us safe; will bring us love.

Nothing Is Inherently Wrong

What I have found to be so beautiful about working with the Enneagram is that this development process isn’t seen as something that has gone wrong, or that these protective layers are to be judged in any way.

It has been incredibly liberating to be introduced to the Enneagram’s perspective on human development where there is nothing inherently wrong. The structures of our Enneagram type, the ways that we have tried to protect ourselves are necessary, natural, and good.

There is beauty, love, and power at work in the formation of our personalities.

From Protection to Protest

Just as our choice to confine Izzy was rooted in love, it was still confining!

Even as our personality formation is essential and marked by love, these same traits and structures that have protected us can also begin to chafe. They begin to feel confining.

Like Izzy, I have found myself at the closed windows of my being, loudly protesting my confinement.

This is where meaningful work with the Enneagram really begins.

One of the purposes of learning about your Enneagram type is to begin to see these various coping strategies clearly, to notice when they become activated, and to develop the freedom to let these habitual patterns go.

I find my home at point Nine on the Enneagram. One of my primary coping strategies has been to numb out, dissociating from physical sensation and retreat into my daydreams.

For many years this was a necessary habit to keep me safe. But as I moved into adulthood, I began to realize how this numbness also was its own prison, and work with this limitation. My confinement is much clearer and more temporary than it used to be.

Letting Ourselves Be Outdoor Cats

We were a bit anxious when we ended Izzy’s confinement, but we do have some tools we use to keep her (and the birds) safe: a bright, rainbow clown collar and bell, neighbours who keep an eye out for her, and an early ‘bedtime’.

The Enneagram can provide these tools for each of our own processes by helping us to become acquainted with our unique confinement, and offering practices to help us feel supported as we risk venturing outside of our protective walls.

Curious? It won’t kill ya! Join us for a workshop to dive in: The Enneagram: Nine Journeys of the Soul on February 10 and 11. Registration here.

You can learn more about Tamara and her work on her website.

April Policy Update

Re: Vaccines & Masks At The Branches

As of April 1, 2022, the Branches will no longer require visitors to show proof of vaccination. We will continue to encourage mask-wearing as much as possible to limit transmission.

We’ve taken in a good bit of information, considered the risks, and weighed it all against our values, particularly community care.

Just like our decision to initiate our own vaccine policy ahead of the province, we also wanted some control over our own circumstances when it came to setting this policy aside. We applaud individuals who are taking steps to protect not only themselves, but one another as our entire globe continues to navigate the ongoing pandemic.

While our staff and leadership team have chosen to get vaccinated, and we strongly support it as a public health strategy, based on what we now understand about transmission, it does not seem necessary or useful to continue requiring all visitors to the studio to prove their immunization status. We look forward to welcoming new students and welcoming back old community members for whom this has been a barrier over the past six months.

In addition to taking in updated information about transmission, we have also been attempting to learn about disability justice. Many immune-compromised people feel as though their lives are not being valued appropriately, as they are not able to simply “move on” from COVID-19. We’re also holding uncertainty about the likelihood of developing long-COVID, which is basically a chronic-illness disability.

With these thoughts top of mind, and knowing that it does appear helpful to wear masks to prevent transmission of a virus that spreads through both droplets and aerosol, we will continue to require all visitors to wear a mask to the studio, and encourage students to continue wearing their masks as much as they can while practicing. We will maintain this policy at least for the month of April and reassess as we go.

Inside the practice rooms, we will be running our fresh-air return system consistently – this means that the air in the building will be on a constant refresh cycle, expelling indoor air outside and bringing in fresh air as it heats/cools. While on their mats, our teachers may wear their masks less to optimize for clarity and hearing accessibility .

We strive to consider the importance and influence of scientific experts, disability justice, and the relative risk of small-group 60-75 minute classes in our decisions going forward.

Finally, the Branches will continue to offer robust virtual teaching, including drop-in classes, courses, Branches On-Demand streaming subscriptions, and teacher training for those who feel best accessing our offerings from home.

Self Care Is A Band-Aid Solution In A Broken System.

Band-aids have their place, but they don’t really support deep healing. And in a broken system, self-care routines are like minnows swimming upstream against the raging currents of neoliberal hyper-individualistic capitalism.

Caring self-regard and self-loving actions do matter – but practically, it’s the more well-resourced among us who reap the benefits of self-care habits. The time, money, and education required to identify helpful strategies and act upon them is not equally accessible to all.

Obsession with the Self in Self-Care

Hustle culture, grind culture, self-help and self-improvement culture all tell us that “no one is going to save you.” Yes, we should all do our best to treat ourselves as though our health matters, but this hyper-individualistic attitude is dissociated from the fact that as human animals, we heal and grow in relationship and in community. Doing everything yourself is not only near-impossible, it’s not even in our nature.

Many wellness influencers and coaches use our (justifiable) fears of illness and unworthiness to capitalize on our desperation to optimize our wellbeing and desirability. They reel us in by performing their own wellness, which is often bolstered by genetics and their existing resources, making promises of a better life through discipline, early-morning routines, and of course, unshakeable dedication to the self.

There’s nothing wrong with a morning routine, but emphasizing this self-focused approach has us wondering – what about the capacity for single-moms, low-wage workers, neurodivergent, chronically-ill & disabled folks, and individuals of marginalized identity to fight to swim upstream?

Imagining A New Way of Being

We’re wondering whether self-care would even be a thing in a radically transformed society, where we might live in accordance with the reality of interrelationship: where child-care was provided for, where everyone had enough good food to eat, where rest and leisure were truly recognized to be just as life-giving as exercise, achievement and production.

Could networked systems of care provide the support we all need for collective wellness?

We don’t advocate for giving up on self-care, but we do believe in an approach to wellness that uses the lens of the social determinants of health, and that emphasizes Community Care as a more ethical and more effective approach.

What Can Wellness Spaces Do?

We see the ways in which yoga studio culture can also be full of wimpy little band-aids, and we hope to be more, do more and influence the broader culture towards recognizing and acting on our innate state of deep interrelationship.

Our mission is “to create a better world with Yoga as our common ground.” Part of this means doing business in a way that embodies our values. We value compensating our staff and teachers fairly and generously, and we alue offering more equitable wellness opportunities.

This orientation to business and community leads us to offer things like no-questions-asked sliding scale pricing, scholarships for 1 in 5 spots in our YTT, and Community Care Week.

You can read more about Community Care and our approach here.

Here’s our new name, you can take it or leaf it

A Post from Leena Miller Cressman, Queen Street Yoga Owner/Director

We needed a new name. But how to choose?

After the weighty decision to move from our home of 15 years, 44 Queen Street South, the decision to find a new name was obvious. However, what to rename ourselves ended up feeling like a monumental task. It took several months of brainstorming, testing, and soul-searching before we finally reached a decision. I felt a huge responsibility to rename this studio, since Queen Street Yoga has been a special place for many people for a long time – including me. This task felt akin to renaming a teenager.

I wanted a name that felt true to who we already are, and would lead us into what we can become. This has been an opportunity to think carefully about why our studio exists. And now, I am proud to introduce you to our new name: The Branches.

We wanted this new name to connect to our values. The branches of Yoga include so much more than just asana (postures). It is meditation, community service, and a spiritual pathway to wholeness. In addition to being a way to care for our bodies, we believe Yoga and movement practices can be a catalyst for social and environmental justice. Yoga practice can help us recognize our interconnectedness. Yoga can give us sustenance to care for ourselves and others. With Yoga as our common ground, we can learn to engage with the world more wholeheartedly.

Our studio has been around for 16 years and we hope “The Branches” conjures the image of a huge, mature tree. We’re not a young sapling. We’ve got deep roots, a sturdy trunk, a big canopy, and we’re home to lots of life. The Branches represent the diverse people who have gathered in our community for the past decade and a half, and the many new people we are connecting with in online classes. Our new name speaks to the many people who have graduated from our Yoga Teacher Training to seed their own classes in schools, prisons, community centres, backyards, and seniors’ homes. Our strong branches reach far beyond a physical location.

We’re not a young sapling. We’ve got deep roots, a sturdy trunk, a big canopy, and we’re home to lots of life.

The Branches is a place of growth and nourishment. In our new location, no longer beholden to landlords and threatened by ever-increasing rent prices, we have more freedom to put down roots and create inclusive community space. We are working to build a ramp to make our ground-floor studio accessible. To remove financial barriers, we’re now offering sliding-scale prices for all our classes. We hope that our space can become a hub for community action by offering low-cost meeting rooms. Our new location is easily accessible by public transit, walking and biking. We’re in the middle of major renovations and have invested in a small environmental footprint by eliminating natural gas and retrofitting our building with energy-efficient heating, cooling and insulation.

Come practice yoga with us outside under the branches of the maple, linden, and spruce trees

So welcome to The Branches. We’re so excited to practice together with you in our brand-new yoga space, whether in person or online. It’s going to be beautiful! This summer, as we await the hopeful resolution of the pandemic and our renovations, come practice yoga with us outside under the branches of the maple, linden, and spruce trees on our spacious back deck.

P.S. We have a brand new website to match our name launching soon!

Meet Our Grads: Nadine

Nadine Quehl graduated from our Yoga Teacher Training program in 2018 and is dedicated to sharing yoga as a form of community care. We admire her work as an advocate for the incarcerated women she teaches, and are so glad she is sharing her warmth and knowledge in the community. Here’s what she had to say about her experience.

What is happening in your yoga teaching life?

Before the pandemic I was teaching yoga to women at Grand Valley Institution (GVI). Since the pandemic started, I have led free Community Care classes for QSY with my friend Sara. I’m grateful that we were able to share those yoga class recordings with the women at GVI, since it hasn’t been possible to teach in-person there since the pandemic began.

I have been leading mindful movement sessions for my choir Inshallah once or twice on Zoom to keep us connected. I have also shifted teaching yoga for my colleagues at the University of Waterloo to an online format. This year I started the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Practicum at the Centre for Mindfulness Studies, which I love incorporating into my classes.

“I have had a shift in my personal practice of gratitude, self-kindness and community care – a journey that has deepened significantly as a result of YTT.”

What was your biggest takeaway from our program?

QSY teacher training enabled me to witness and embody the power of connection and compassion, as well as confidence. I started the program thinking that I would deepen my practice only, and not teach afterwards, but I have been teaching consistently since I graduated (and in a prison, which I never would have envisioned). I have had a shift in my personal practice of gratitude, self-kindness and community care – a journey that has deepened significantly as a result of YTT. QSY also gave me a whole new understanding of what ‘yoga’ is and the importance of making it accessible and inclusive and taking it ‘off the mat’ to address issues that need transforming in our world.

Did you have any hesitations about doing the program that you had to address? Or obstacles you had to overcome?

After spending way too many years in graduate school and getting burned out, I was hesitant to enter an intensive program of study, but QSY’s encouraging and caring community made a huge difference in my ability to learn and thrive. I also wondered if I would have enough time to commit to the practice and homework. I was concerned that an academic study of yoga might sap the joy from the practice but, happily, it made me love and appreciate yoga even more. I was terrified of teaching, but going in with an open attitude and intention to do the training to enhance my own practice helped.

What would you say to someone who is trying to decide whether or not to do our training? What could you say to help them decide?

I would suggest considering your availability, as it is a big time commitment and you will get the most out of the program if you can make time not only for the readings and classes, but also for the home practice of yoga. Talking to grads is a great start, and I am happy to chat with you if you want to reach out. Connecting with the faculty, be curious and ask lots of questions about the program.

Choosing a Yoga Teacher Training program is a big decision. Learn more about our dynamic and empowering program on our website, and register for a Virtual Info Session to connect with Emma, Leslie and Leena, YTT Directors.

Meet Our Grads: Chris

Chris Bourke graduated from our Yoga Teacher Training program in 2016 and has gone on to teach and work with several leaders in the yoga and movement world, and is innovating his own approach to yoga for mental health. We are so proud of how Chris is flourishing in his career, and can’t wait to see where he goes next. You can connect with Chris @anchoredtides on Instagram. Here’s what he had to say about his experience.

What is happening in your yoga teaching life?

The QSY YTT gave me an incredible launchpad into many movement training and teaching opportunities. This was in large part due to the way Emma and Leena fostered our unique teaching voices and interests. I remember our final teaching assignment allowed us to pick the ideal community we wanted to teach to, and how we would want to teach. That creative space opened the door for me to explore movement for mental health. I am currently teaching with GOODBODYFEEL and Mindful Strength as well as my own mental health focused practice, Anchored Tides.

What was your biggest takeaway from our program?

QSY was one of the first yoga studios that put a strong focus on anti-oppression and inclusion in their training. We had some remarkable guest teachers that taught us about anti-racism, LGBTQ2S+ spaces, and body inclusivity. That was one of the biggest takeaways – how to build spaces that are welcoming and inclusive to folks. They bolstered the confidence in holding those spaces and the humility it takes to make mistakes, and learn as you engage this work.

Did you have any hesitations about doing the program that you had to address? Or obstacles you had to overcome?

I remember when I first considered signing up for the training I thought “Do I practice yoga enough to do this and become a teacher?” I quickly learned that being a teacher and space holder is less about the postures or the movement, and much more about how we show up compassionately (ourselves included). This training taught me so much about building confidence in front of others from a place of embracing imperfection and not having to know it all.

“That was one of the biggest takeaways – how to build spaces that are welcoming and inclusive to folks. They bolstered the confidence in holding those spaces and the humility it takes to make mistakes, and learn as you engage this work.”

What would you say to someone who is trying to decide whether or not to do our training? What could you say to help them decide?

A Yoga Teacher Training is a really wonderful experience regardless of whether it yields a road towards teaching. You spend a whole year in this loving community of people who support one another and nurture each other’s personal/professional growth. During these wild times of disconnection and change, feeling supported by a community is incredibly invaluable. Aside from that, this training is going to give you some of the most innovative, progressive and up-to-date teaching strategies. Leena is a pedagogy GENIUS! Emma is a whiz in creativity and compassionate sequencing. Leslie is a strength and nervous system powerhouse. You are going to feel SUPER supported and SUPER smart afterwards.

Big News!

Dear QSY Community,

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. Thanks for all the ways you have supported us over the course of the pandemic: from sending encouraging words, to joining our virtual memberships, to coming to outdoor yoga this summer, to supporting us with your holiday shopping, you have shown up for us. While we aren’t out of the storm yet, it is truly thanks to you that this email is not a closure announcement.

Instead, I want to share a very big decision we’ve made, one that affirms our deep commitment to continuing the work we’re doing:

We will be moving to a new location!

Our current space on Queen Street has been home to our community since the beginning, in 2005. Because of all that history, this is not a decision we made lightly. I know this space carries deep meaning for so many of you, just as it does for me. But, we aren’t in a position to stay at 44 Queen and stay financially viable for the foreseeable future.

I want to acknowledge that this year has already brought so many challenging transitions, so if another change feels hard for you too, I get it. But over the course of this pandemic, it became crystal clear to me that the magic of QSY isn’t the space. It’s the people who come to move, breathe, rest and laugh together that makes it so special.

We can create that magic together wherever we go.

We are working our butts off to make our new dream location a reality. Running the studio and teaching is not a side gig. The studio provides full-time employment to three of us, and part-time work for a dozen other teachers. With the help of government subsidies and your support, we’ve been able to continue our work, and this has meant the world to us.

We can’t give you all the details yet, but in the meantime, here’s what you can count on:

We will be in Downtown Kitchener, and continue in-person classes
All of our amazing teachers and staff will come with us
We’ll stay online too, offering virtual classes, courses, and retreats
We’ll still offer high-caliber training for yoga teachers
We’ll have full continuity of our virtual offerings, and hopefully only a short pause of in-person classes while we move
Later this winter, we will share details of our moving plans and host an event to say farewell and honour our time at 44 Queen

With your continued support, and alongside this plan to move locations, I’m hopeful that our yoga community will continue to be here long after this pandemic is a distant memory. Wishing you and yours a safe and cozy holiday season!

In Community,

Leena Miller Cressman, QSY Director

Big Body Yoga: Reflections on The “Weight” of Words

This blog post is written by Carol Kennedy, who is joining our staff to teach Yoga for Round Bodies for the Fall 2020 season.

Big, Body, and Yoga are three words that exist as distinct spaces for judgment. A whole gamut of adjectives are ascribed to Yoga, much like our bodies, and the construct of being “big.” This blog is a challenging one to write for me, as these three words, especially in conjunction with one another, conjure up so many emotions and images.

Yoga has been described as exercise, movement, cult, appropriation, commodity, ritual, sacred, Eastern, and Western, just to name a few – and these descriptions are quite often shifting and morphing at the same time. Yet these descriptions of Yoga, and debates surrounding its definition remain external to us as individuals, allowing space for objectivity. This threshold of objectivity is crossed when the word “body” is connected to Yoga. Our bodies move us; hold our thoughts, our emotions. They nurture us, and can do the most miraculous of things, and they are what contain ‘us’ as embodied whole beings.

The body is what makes Yoga subjective, and this seems almost redundant when put together. I mean, we all have bodies, and each of us have a dynamic relationship with it, and through it. So, what is Yoga without the embodied human? Is Yoga a tool for the body? Or is the body a tool for Yoga? Continue reading “Big Body Yoga: Reflections on The “Weight” of Words”

Let’s make community care the new buzzword

Self-care is a buzzword, and we use it liberally at Queen Street Yoga. It can be an important practice of slowing down, taking time for yourself, and caring for your heart, body and mind. However, self-care and yoga practice can be inaccessible to many people. What we need to complement self-care and enhance overall wellness is community care, where people “are committed to leveraging their privilege to benefit others. ¹“

Community care takes the onus off of the individual to take care of themselves, all by themselves, and places the responsibility for care within the community, in friend networks, or through structured groups or organizations. For true wellness, “people should receive community care from both their government and their friend networks.” Of course, we know that that doesn’t always happen. And recently, with drastic cuts to provincial healthcare, education, and the arts, more and more community care is being taken away from those who need it most.

We want community care to become as strong a buzzword as self-care. We also want it to mean something, and to actively practice and embody it. Two ways that we are amplifying the principle of community care at Queen Street Yoga are:

Continue reading “Let’s make community care the new buzzword”