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A New Year

By Helen

The beginning of a new year usually brings with it a time of reflection, which can make January a really miserable month! We can often feel a lot of frustration; what have I actually achieved? Or regret; I wish I’d have done this or that. But, for me, the last two years have been very different and I feel that through my yoga experiences I have finally brought about the end of Blue Monday (the third Monday of January is, according to experts, statistically the most miserable day of the year) and here are some of the reasons why.

In the summer of 2011 I made the bold decision to take up the challenge of a three week intensive yoga teacher training course with Jamie at the Yoga Lab. I’d been going to Jamie’s classes for many years and felt that I had (indeed have!) found not just a great yoga teacher but a very good friend. His energy was infectious and I always left his classes feeling invigorated, uplifted and ready for anything. So when he said he was planning to run a teacher training course for It’s Yoga, Larry Schultz’ (the man behind The Rocket) inspirational institution, I was immediately taken.

I had the usual anxieties. Though I had quite a good practice at that time, there were many postures in the Ashtanga Primary Series (upon which the training is based) that always defeated me and I was still to develop a personal practice, something yoga teachers will tell you is one of the best ways to learn. But Jamie was so supportive and encouraging, telling me that every journey begins with the first step, that I decided to take the plunge. After all, as a teacher in a sixth form college, what else was I to do with my summer holidays?

The course was challenging both physically and mentally. It began with early morning self practice which, though I never quite mastered the art of staying on my mat completely during the three weeks, I can now recognise was one of the most important elements of my own growth as a yogi. The psychological battle I went through in trying to remain focused and motivated at 7 a.m., in the quiet of the studio on my own was the start of what is now a regular, confident self-practice. I also had to learn all the Sanskrit names for the postures and, of course, begin to develop my own teaching voice. All of which were difficult challenges that required me to step out of my comfort zone.

The challenges I faced were incredibly exciting ones though. As I reflect on the experience now, eighteen months on, I feel absolutely ecstatic that I managed to face them and can recognise such a huge change in myself that I know is all down to yoga. Jamie was so supportive and motivational throughout the process. He is a patient, caring teacher who knows just how to get the best out of you. He makes you feel like you can achieve anything and will even buy you an M&S muffin when Marichyasana C makes you cry!

So January 2012 wasn’t miserable at all. I spent Blue Monday on the mat feeling energized, invigorated and ready for the challenge of becoming a ‘proper’ yoga teacher with my first class at the Lab.

It was a busy class too. In at the deep end for sure! There were 16 people at my first session, a Beginners Modified Primary. And lots of new people trying yoga for the first time. I’d been practicing my patter on friends and colleagues but nothing really prepares you for your first real class. I was so nervous to begin with but as soon as I started talking people through the sun salutations, I knew I was going to be ok. I remember sitting on the mat at the end of the class waiting for people to slowly come round from their savasana and feeling such a sense of achievement. Watching a sea of calm, content faces emerge from their relaxation gave me such a rush. I felt incredibly proud of myself and of my achievements.

This January, I can happily reflect on a successful year as a yoga teacher and feel proud at what I have achieved during 2012. I am really looking forward to another year of bringing this life changing practice to others. This Blue Monday, I went to see the Principal of my college to request to go part time!

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A Dancer's Yoga

By Jamie

Seeds Sown

When I look back at my physical history, it goes back a long way. I don’t remember ever not being very physical in some way. I started Contemporary dance at around twelve years old and before that I swam in a club and before that I was in a judo club. Most people have similar childhood physical recreation but for most these activities drop away as they get older, for some they intensify. My understanding of physical training and execution of physical technique began in earnest at dance school where I would train for more than four hours a day in Ballet and Contemporary dance technique five days a week for five years, first at Northern Contemporary Dance School then further at London school of Contemporary Dance.

However prior to dance school when I was in 6th form I remember studying the Bhagavad gita. The Bhagavad gita is a major text in the literature of yoga. For me then, as now I am astounded by the story and its pertinence to our situation in life and most importantly to our inner life. I remember contemplating the story for the first time and feeling the attraction to the freedom that it promises. For me The Bhagavad gita holds the full character of the yoga journey for the aspirant, back in 6th form as now the undertaking remains huge. To gain momentary active control of the mind or to even observe one’s individual metal capriciousness is an awesome and fascinating endeavour. Then as now it is also a personal journey, a journey that is difficult to weave into everyday life and into our western culture and value system.

In my teens the road looked lonely and likely to move me away from the values of my family and strain the close connection I feel for them. I have discovered that the answer for me is balance. To give yourself permission to fuse an appreciation of our western culture with the guidance of yoga’s Philosophical works such as the Bhagavadgita without feeling self-conscious or insecure about this, but to celebrate our individual relationship to the literature, identifying to parts not part and parcel with confidence not self-doubt. I am a beginner in the mental processes and approach the cause of mastering my mental powers with caution and a sense of humour and humility. I hope I pass this character forward to my students. I try to follow my heart and teach only what I practice myself.

Physicality.

Dance training is hard and joyous, an arduous journey towards one’s potential prowess and control over the physical body. The endgame is achieving the ability to express ideas, feelings and energies through exquisite articulation of physical body language.  For ten years my body belonged to this process exclusively, primed and preserved to serve the contemporary dance art form.  It was while training at the Merce Cunningham Dance studio in NYC in 2003 I discovered Yoga by chance. I remember the joy and surprise of feeling new stretches, new areas to open and muscle recruitment pathways in my body that I had not felt before. I remember the excitement I felt at stumbling upon a whole new world of physicality, I had found Pandora’s Box!

This first class I ever attended had been an Ashtanga class and I bought the various DVDs when I returned to the UK as I was not living near any yoga studio. I approached the yoga asana practice as I had my dance training with huge energy and determination to achieve the desired asanas and the flow from one to the other became a dance for me. The aesthetic was perhaps too dry for me so I would practice to music while moulding my body into the new places. I became very adept at the practice very quickly. Unusually I had a self-practice before I attended a regular yoga class. Three years later in 2007 I decided I would train to teach the yoga asana practice that I had been practicing. I investigated the studio I had attended in NYC and found out where my original teacher had trained. This is when I discovered It's Yoga in San Francisco.

It’s Yoga was a very good choice for my yoga training, the ethos at this studio was of freedom to express yoga practice however felt right to you. For me having been trained in a strict dance atmosphere all my adult life this was refreshing and I borrowed the fees and jumped on a plane in time for the next teacher training. The late Larry Shultz the director of It’s Yoga, The It’s Yoga teacher training and creator of the Rocket yoga practice was a big character. He manifested his dream of creating an international collective of It’s Yoga Studios to continue the “silent revolution of yoga” I hold him in high esteem for remaining real and never posing as perfect. Larry was very focused on inspiring all students to reassess their lives, hopes and dreams, to practice yoga and to find our inner guru and discover our authentic selves. Most importantly of all Larry encouraged us to build a constant personal practice. Consistency the key to any long term awareness and vitality gains.

San Francisco was a yoga Mecca! I had any number of styles and studios at my fingertips. We lived in a dormitory above the cavernous yoga studio and lived breathed and ate Ashtanga and Rocket yoga practice training to be teachers. I was again adept at the physical practice of the Primary and Rocket series but the handstand was a major stumbling block for me. My wrists hurt really bad I could barely hold Downward Dog. I seriously considered that I would never hold a handstand! I was assured that over time my wrists would open up and strengthen to support the handstand and sure enough they did, giving me faith in the practice. Not only could I now stand on my hands I could also respect the traditions and disciplines of yoga but I could also respect my own creativity within the practice and the future freedoms too.

I soon found out that I was to be confronted again with the Bhagavad gita and the yoga teachings that I had shied away from so many years ago in my teens. The linking of the physical and the spiritual/mental practices gave me a way into the journey into awareness, harnessing of the mind’s energies forms the Bhagavad gita story.  The physical practice allowed me to remain in the world and not journey away from family and friends emotionally, to fuse my individuality with the yoga philosophies within my personal yoga journey. Larry also guided students to reassess their choices and values, he suggested we live inside our questions and find our authentic path in life and in yoga practice.

Larry’s inspiration I feel just as strong today, he would say “live what you love and teach what you love in yoga and the right people for you will find you.” Larry also taught the commerce of yoga and how we should not be cautious or ashamed about needing to make a living, not to be proud or conflicted scratching by but to create abundance in our lives. It was this freedom that empowered me to practice how I saw fit and with confidence eventually to open my studio The Yoga Lab.

My yoga practice transformed from a dance of aesthetic moves into a flow of meditational precision, immersed in a fun beat of music, not overly serious but exciting and irresistible, ultimately calming and centring. Through yoga I reclaimed my body from the single assault of dance training and the pursuit of physical artistic aesthetic and gave myself the gifts of yoga practice; physical therapy; strength and relaxation. I returned from my yoga teacher training changed, more myself than ever and a little too open to the world, as I was about to discover...

I returned to Leeds from San Francisco in 2007 and arrived full of beans with my fresh, positive yoga state of mind, a fully qualified yoga instructor registered with the Yoga Alliance. It’s Yoga Studios had been established in San Francisco for 18 years and I felt honoured to have been a part of their training. I headed to the only yoga studio in Leeds to introduce myself and to give them my C.V. I asked about possible teaching opportunities and I was met with a very frosty reception by a senior teacher and told in a very unfriendly manner that my “American teacher training certificate was not worth the paper it was written on”. I was not only disappointed and hurt but my confidence was shaken about yoga. In America wherever I ventured all the yoga studios and yogis were friendly and welcoming, they would ask what kind of yoga I was into etc.

I decided then that if this was one of the senior teachers in the Leeds yoga community it was not for me. I later went to a few classes at the same studio as I really wanted to relate to other yogis and teachers, I felt a little lonely in my yoga. Each time I experienced what I could only describe as a yoga atmosphere I did not recognise. I did not reflect at the time that I had been living and training in London and had spent time training in New York and San Francisco and that obviously a provincial Yoga studio in Leeds might be a little different. I wish I had had this awareness at the time and been a little more generous in my judgement, but yoga here, it felt to me, like a middle class club that was not eager for diversity in its membership.

I had started teaching by now and began to think about opening a studio of my own that would reflect those that I had experienced in San Francisco. A studio without an air of seriousness and superiority but with a warm and friendly casual atmosphere. I now have built such a studio, The Yoga Lab, created to introduce yoga practice in the most free and friendly manner, without bamboozling people with Sanskrit and yoga philosophy but introducing yoga through students' bodies and working through toward the mind with no judgement how far one wants to go down the yoga path. Essentially a western yoga practice to suit our western lifestyle with all its vast benefits but tempered with the depth of a yoga practice, physical or spiritual or both maybe eventually.

Yoga Lab delivers the practice of yoga in a current and relevant character, here the yoga practice is fun and accessible and this is what the studio is about. I have manifested something special at the studio and I thank all the personalities that bring themselves and share themselves in creating this yoga vibe. Long may this continue.

Personally I consider myself still at the beginning of my yoga journey and this is the most exciting prospect. I am changed by yoga practice, through yoga I have taken ownership of my body and no longer wish to force it to change rapidly to suit the needs of my art form but to encourage strength and vitality to grow with patience and consistency. I have learned that in yoga asana practice function trumps form which stands in direct opposition to sport and dance training.

Before yoga I was a personality of extremes and I relished them, for an artist this is important. To be able to channel these extremes and not live inside them day to day, to find peace and equanimity in the everyday chaos. Illuminated in this way, the dynamic extremes of my art form are all the richer and my yoga practice even more essential.

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Are you scared of Yoga?

By Lorena

Are you scared of yoga?  I used to be!  I’d wanted to try it for years, but felt too shy - plus I wouldn’t be any good… And the classes would be made up of über skinny girls with long limbs, who could sit cross-legged in Lotus position forever, without getting pins and needles!

I thought, "why start doing yoga if it's just going to highlight what I can't do, right?"  Wrong!

I started going to the Yoga Lab after a few of us at work decided that we wanted to do Pilates in our lunch break (it was January 2011 and we all shared the NY’s resolution; to exercise more!).  We put out a few tweets looking for an instructor and got nothing back really - apart from the local coffee shop, La Botegga Milanese saying we should get in touch with one of their customers, Jamie - he might be able to help.  We didn’t realise, but Jamie had opened the Yoga Lab in October 2010 and it was the only yoga studio situated in the city centre.  I got in touch with Jamie, who told me that they could look into offering Pilates, but if we wanted to come and try a yoga class (based on a type of yoga called Rocket) free of charge, we might just be impressed…. and we were!

After that first class, we were quite amazed!  We could barely bend down to pull up our jeans! It felt like every muscle in our body was aching – we were shocked that after just a 45 minute class (including relaxation time), that we could get such a full work out.  That was it then - we were hooked! 

From that very first session, I was so impressed with Jamie - not only did he learn our names immediately, he also took note of our ‘quirks’ (for lack of a better word).  My main ‘quirk’ is my tight hips (I've also just remembered that I used to have tight shoulders but they seem to be a thing of the past thanks to regular practice – hurrah!).

Since the age of 14, I thought there was something wrong with my groin. When I used machines at the gym, I would get a little pain if I extended too much.  It wasn't until my first yoga class with Jamie (20 years later), that he told me that my hips were quite tight.  Hallelujah!  I didn't have anything wrong with my groin after all – it’s just that my hips need gentle encouragement.  Jamie explained that by coming to class regularly and sitting on yoga blocks at home, they would become more open – and they have.  It’s not a bad thing having tight hips, nor is it the end of the world!  It's probably just down to genetics and my build.  I don't feel less able than my fellow yogis and anyway, I’m not the only one!  Plus every day is different – things like stress, that time of the month or a busy week at work or with the kids can all have an impact on how your body responds.

I’ve been going to the Yoga Lab for just under two years now and since then I've suffered less from sinusitis and sciatica.  This is definitely because of yoga, but it’s also because of the tips Jamie has given me and things I need to be aware of.  With his help I’ve changed the way I sit at my desk, the way I walk and even the types of bags I carry.  I slouch less, my shoulders don’t ride up around my ears and I’m not wearing out the heels of my shoes so quickly anymore – a budgetary bonus!

Yoga has taught me that everyone's range is different and there's no such thing as a 'perfect shape'. It's all about stacking the bones on top of each other, and stretching and extending within our own, personal range.  We all come in different shapes and sizes - sometimes it's genetic; sometimes it's because of the job we do or the sport we fell in love with when we were at school.  Who cares! As long as we come to class, leave our hang ups at the door and come into the session with our best intention to commit to our practice, we should feel energised, relaxed and ready to get the most out of life.

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The Power of Three.

By Tamsin

There’s so much to think about in a yoga practice; the marrying of movement and breathe; the bandhas; the seemingly mystical concept of feeling ‘light’ in your asanas. 

Before I fell in love with Yoga Lab, I had gone about my yoga practice with a fair amount of dedication and desire to improve.  I’d enthusiastically thrown myself into a variety of shapes (or tried to) and whilst generally enjoying the practice, I didn’t make much progress in terms of strength and flexibility. 

Now this isn’t a tale of Christmas miracles; I haven’t suddenly developed transformational yogi abilities, it’s about appreciating the small, yet powerful, shifts in perception that can make all the difference to a yoga practice and how this happened for me.

One of the instructions that Jamie often gives, particularly in downward dog, is to focus on an area of the body that you wouldn’t normally.  For me, this means shifting my attention away from all the obvious tight bits, trying to enjoy the longest-count-of-five-breaths-known-to-man and instead focussing on… the power of the triceps. 

If I think about my yoga practice in terms of Before Yoga Lab (BYL) and At Yoga Lab (AYL) the only passing thought I gave to my triceps BYL was the imminent party season bingo wing panic, usually mitigated through alcohol.  These days AYL, I almost have defined triceps as well as a deep respect for how hard those bad boys can work!

There’s a simple beauty in appreciating and developing a relatively small muscle group.  Anyone familiar with attempting the smooth push-back from chaturanga to downward dog 15 times in a row will recognise the importance of strong triceps. 

The point I’m really trying to make is that turning your attention away from the frantic desire to get better at bending and focussing instead on the small and achievable, may actually result in a more profound understanding of your own body and yoga practice.  I know it did for me.

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Welcome to Yoga Labs!

Yoga Lab is a Leeds City Centre based studio offering a contemporary yoga practice for the beginner student and onwards. We are light on meditation and the more esoteric practices and more focused on having a physical and fun yoga practice set to an upbeat rhythm. A visit to The Yoga Lab is more than a class, it is an experience; you will wake up your back, arm and leg muscles, release tightness and tension in the spine and all the joints of the body. We have a beautiful reception in which you may relax before classes along with a bright and airy studio where all equipment is provided. The yoga studio is gently heated to provide the perfect temperature for effective yoga practice. All classes finish with a guided relaxation/adjustment that will leave you feeling calm and refreshed in body and in mind. Practicing yoga is not easy at first but all you need to do is come in to class, do what you can, and we promise you will leave feeling better for your efforts. You should leave just one of our classes feeling more relaxed, more centred, and revitalised. You should also have some fun too!

Visit our site here: http://www.yogalabs.co.uk

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