home practice – The Branches

Explore Resilience in Your Body & Mind with an Interactive Yoga Sequence

This post is by one of our wellness practitioners, Natasha Allain.

As complex beings we process information through multiple lenses: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. So, what happens when we use multiple lenses to process at the same time, for example when we practice yoga and meditation? Here we can apply what we learn through action, such as yoga, and kinesthetically condition our muscles and our mental thought roads to spaces of resilience.

Below I have paired resilient building lessons with 5 familiar Hatha Yoga postures. Now, this isn’t just any yoga practice. With each pose you can contemplate and explore an aspect of resilience. Through intentional postures, breath, and contemplation, resilience researchers state that it is possible to rewire our brains and guide our bodies towards more resilient responses and behaviours.

Your Yoga for Resilience Sequence

Continue reading “Explore Resilience in Your Body & Mind with an Interactive Yoga Sequence”

Re-Post: 3 Reasons our Restorative Immersion is for you

This post was originally published on our blog in January 2017.

My name is Emma and I am a Restorative yoga evangelist. 🙂

In our busy world, Restorative yoga is an effective way to learn how to slow down and deeply rest. Restorative yoga can help you to reduce stress and support your body’s innate responses toward balance and health. As a very gentle form of yoga, Restorative yoga integrates resting postures, breath techniques, and meditative relaxation. I want to share with you three reasons why our upcoming Restorative Yoga Immersion is for you.

After this immersion you will be able to:

CUSTOMIZE a restorative yoga sequence to meet your specific needs

MEDITATE in a restorative pose

GIFT this practice to friends and family

CUSTOMIZE – Learn to design a sequence that meets your specific (and changing) needs

Continue reading “Re-Post: 3 Reasons our Restorative Immersion is for you”

Re-Post: Establishing a home practice

We originally posted this article and ten tips about establishing a home practice on our blog in 2014. These tips are still relevant now, and with our building a home practice workshop around the corner, we have been thinking about home practice a lot lately.

No matter who you are, keeping up a home yoga practice can be difficult at times. Heck, even our Yoga Teacher Trainees struggle with it sometimes! We showed our YTT’s this article on 10 Tips and Tricks to Establishing a Regular Home Yoga practice and asked them what they thought.

For short, the ten tips are:Continue reading “Re-Post: Establishing a home practice”

3 Reasons Our Restorative Immersion Is for You

Restorative yoga is a powerful healing tool that helps to reduce stress and support the body’s innate responses toward balance and health. As a very gentle form of yoga, restorative yoga integrates resting postures, breath techniques, and meditative relaxation. Read on to discover more about our upcoming immersion into this practice.

Here are three reasons why our immersion into Restorative Yoga is for you.

After this immersion you will be able to:

CUSTOMIZE a restorative yoga sequence to meet your specific needs

MEDITATE in a restorative pose

GIFT this practice to friends and familyContinue reading “3 Reasons Our Restorative Immersion Is for You”

Festive Suggestions (Holiday Gift Guide 2016)

img_20161122_115116 — Mat Carry Strap, $15

If you like to celebrate this time of year by gifting friends and family with tokens of your care and affection, stop by Queen Street Yoga for a few gifts. You might leave with some sweet-smelling beeswax candles or a gift certificate to treat someone to a yoga workshop or class.

ALL RETAIL IS ON SALE!

Get 15% off all retail items at QSY between Nov 27-Dec 24. If you want a product in a different colour or pattern, we can also special order any props from Halfmoon for you. Our last order will go out in time to have all items arrive before Christmas.

Please check out shophalfmoon.com and email us by Dec 4th with any requests you have.

Gifts under $10 – SHOP THE ULTRA LOCAL

Continue reading “Festive Suggestions (Holiday Gift Guide 2016)”

Yoga Tips from QSY: Begging Dog for the Wrists

This fun video features Jesse Enright, who teaches therapeutic vinyasa yoga in Toronto and is a member of the QSY Teacher Training Faculty.

In yoga asana practice there are many positions where we weight bear with the wrists in extension. Think of table pose, downward dog, plank or handstands. In all those positions the wrist joint is in what we call extension. Our wrists are also often stiff and weak from having our wrists stuck in one position for long time when using keyboards, or from other repetitive movements. If we don’t work to re-strengthen and stretch the wrists in different positions, this overuse can lead to pain or even longer-term issues like carpal tunnel syndrome.

This fun Begging Dog exercise is a great way to increase range of motion and strengthen your wrists. We recommend doing repetitions of the exercise regularly throughout your day, especially when you’re working at a computer. Sound effects are optional, but encouraged. 🙂

Yoga Tips from QSY: Legs-Up-the-Wall Pose Variations

Have you been missing QSY teacher Emma while she’s away on sabbatical? Catch her in this helpful video with several different versions of one of her favorite restorative yoga poses.

“Legs-Up-the-Wall Pose” (Viparita Karani) is a great way to cool down your body, gently stretch your hamstrings, relax your legs, reduce swelling in the feet, and calm your nervous system. In this video, Emma shows a number of variations, with and without props, to help you find a way to make this pose super comfortable for yourself at home or at the studio.

Pro Tips:Continue reading “Yoga Tips from QSY: Legs-Up-the-Wall Pose Variations”

Free Your Feet

Here’s a quick video with Leena on a great way to stretch your toes and bring some more mobility to the joints for your feet.

Each foot and ankle has 26 bones, 33 joints, and more than 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments! One quarter of all bones in the human body are in the feet. This means our feet are exquisitely designed for weight-bearing and movement, and they are the foundation for whole body alignment and healthy movement patterns. Unfortunately, due lack of movement and poor footwear choices many folks have lost healthy mobility in their feet and have related pain in the ankles, knees, hips, and back.Continue reading “Free Your Feet”

Yoga Tips from QSY- Hip Flexor Stretch

hip flexor muscles The hip flexors (the group of muscles that bring your leg towards your torso) often have decreased range of motion from all the sitting we do. Simultaneously, your lower back, bum and core muscles get weak from sitting and slumping. This quick video with Leena demonstrates an effective way to gently stretch and regain range of motion in the hip flexors, and emphasizes important actions to engage the core and keep your lower back safe and well aligned. Building the muscles in the back (ie your butt and hamstrings) will also often help correct imbalances around the hips and pelvis that cause the hip flexors to feel “tight”. Couple this stretch with a few sets of well-aligned squats to build your glutes, and also lots of walking with arms swinging and a full stride.

Easing the Burden you Shoulder: The Yoga Tune Up® Shoulder Series

By Tara Kachroo, Certified Yoga Tune Up® Instructor

Many of you know that shoulder and neck pain (and the tension headaches that they lead to) can be debilitating. But even if you aren’t suffering pain, the effects of poor posture can be insidious.

You might be familiar with the TED talk in which the scientist Amy Cuddy discusses the link between physical posture and emotional state. Her conclusion was that assuming a “power posture” (for example, upright, chest thrusted out or arms raised), can have a significant and positive impact on behavior and state of mind. Even just two minutes can result in better results in a stressful job interview. Click here for a link to this video.

But what if posture is restricted by pain? Or the ability to assume a power posture is limited by range of movement in one’s shoulders?

If one’s body is permanently in a defensive or hunched position from years spent at a desk or writing a PhD Thesis, will this affect the ability to confidently ask for a raise? Or present the results of a Thesis during the Defense? Poor posture does not just wear at your body; it wears at your mind.Continue reading “Easing the Burden you Shoulder: The Yoga Tune Up® Shoulder Series”