events – Page 2 – The Branches

100 Faces- 10 Years of QSY

This post was written by QSY Director, Leena Miller Cressman.

This fall, Queen Street Yoga turns 10! It’s a significant milestone as a small business and as a community. According to this article by Forbes, only about one-third of small business survive 10 or more years. Yippee, beating the odds! In addition to throwing an awesome party to celebrate (more on that later on), I wanted to share some of the story of how Queen Street Yoga came to be what it is today.

Just over ten years ago Meaghan Johnson, a Kitchener native, founded the studio. From the story I remember Meaghan telling me, at the time she wasn’t planning to open a large yoga studio. However, someone tipped her off about this beautiful space with glowing hardwood floors, big windows and high ceilings that used to be a dance studio, but now was sitting vacant. (Before it was a dance studio our space was a club called Pop the Gator- if anyone has photos or stories about that send them our way!) Meaghan arranged to visit the vacant space, and upon walking into the space she exclaimed, “Well shit, now I have to open a yoga studio. This space is too perfect.”

The studio opened with a staff of several other teachers in addition to Meaghan, and always had an emphasis on mindful, alignment-based yoga, with a grassroots community feel. Meaghan once told me that she opened the studio with about $1,000 and slowly invested and grew the business from there. This gradual model of growth, alongside a lot of community support, thoughtful offerings, and caring, dedicated students, teachers and administrators is why we’re still open and still growing today, ten years later.Continue reading “100 Faces- 10 Years of QSY”

Emma says Goodbye to Wednesdays and Saturdays

When I first started teaching at Queen Street Yoga in January of 2011, I felt like the luckiest person alive. I had just finished my teacher training, and Meaghan (QSY’s founder and then-owner) came to a class I was teaching in Uptown Waterloo, and hired me on the spot! I was nervous and excited to start teaching at QSY. The first regular class I taught was a Thursday community class at 6pm.

A year later I was teaching drop-in classes on Wednesdays and Saturdays. When I first started teaching on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the class sizes were much smaller. I often taught classes of 2 or 3. Now the classes are full of regular students, usually no less than 15 (and the occasional Saturday is overflowing at 35!) It has felt so rewarding to build relationships with so many people over the years. I have often said to students that my teaching is a co-creation – I couldn’t do it without them! (Really. I would just be talking to an empty room.)

My teaching schedule has been getting fuller and fuller in the past few years. I teach a number of pre-registered courses (Intro to Yoga, Yoga for Round Bodies) and I oversee the Intro to Yoga program, mentoring our new teachers in how to most effectively teach beginners. I love teaching Rest & Renew, and the pace of teaching Basics classes really appeals to me (lots of time to get exploratory in the subtle movements and sensations of the poses.) This September Leena and I will begin teaching our second Yoga Teacher Training program, with an amazing group of enthusiastic learners.Continue reading “Emma says Goodbye to Wednesdays and Saturdays”

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”

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”

Yoga for Your Voice?

We are excited to be hosting music therapist Sarah Pearson at Queen Street Yoga for a new workshop called “Voicing Your Practice”. She will be collaborating with Emma Dines to bring yoga and voice work together. In this blog post she shares about her passion for exploring the human voice, and how adding sound to our yoga practice might deepen our self-awareness and growth.

The voice is a universal human instrument. Almost all of us speak, and many of us sing (even if no one’s listening). Voices are also personal and emotional: like our bodies, they reflect our values and culture, our self-perceptions, and the ways we want others to perceive us. Using our voice is as mundane an activity as, say, reaching for a jar of almond butter. We do it without thinking. But our voices, like our bodies, are also shaped by habits. By bringing awareness to those habits, we can determine what habits we want to release, in order for free expression to flow through us.

What I love most about yoga (if I really had to pick!) is how it tunes me into a deeper awareness of what already is. If it wasn’t for yoga, I wouldn’t know that I happen to have relatively tight hips but really flexible shoulders, or that I tend to tighten my jaw when I go into a backbend. I wouldn’t feel the connection between my fingers and my toes when I reach for that jar of almond butter. Yoga has cultivated this awareness, and through it, habits have begun to be released, and more flow has entered my life.Continue reading “Yoga for Your Voice?”

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.
Continue reading “How the Hillside Festival brought Acrobatic Yoga back to QSY”

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.

Continue reading “Looking Behind the Drama Curtain: A Path to Resilience”

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.
Continue reading “Teaching Yoga in Public Spaces: The Power of an Outdoor Practice”

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”