Join us at The Yoga House on Tuesday nights in July and August for Kirtan, call-and-response devotional group chanting. Kirtan will primarily be led by Yoga House instructor, Seth Lieberman, who will some (or all) weeks be accompanied by other local musician. In this powerful Bhakti Yoga (The Yoga of Devotion) mantra practice, we repeat the names of the divine in the Sanskrit, accompanied by the harmonium and musical instruments. Like other paths of yoga, kirtan works to calm the mind, open the heart, and bring us into closer union with our Self and with others.
This Summer Pop-up Kirtan will connect not only our local community through singing and gathering, but will also connect us to those further away as we will collect donations for RAICES, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization agency that promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees in Texas.
Kirtan is accessible to all and no prior experience with yoga or singing is necessary. All are welcome.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States today. It doesn’t take a diagnosis to feel the impact. Whether it’s your own occasional suffering or a loved one’s persistent condition, anxiety crops up everywhere — draining life of its color, leaving exhausted humans in its wake.
This month we bring you tools to address the anxiety in your life, taught by yogis for millennia. While not a replacement for therapy or medication, yoga offers its practitioners many resources to access calm and peace even when these feel far away.
Some of the many tools of yoga:
Breath awareness, or pranayama practices. Ranging from the simple to the adventurous, yoga’s breath practices offer a way to become grounded and embodied, pulling the practitioner out of head space and into body space.
This month your teachers will guide you through breath awareness and breath techniques.
Gaze points, or drishti. Yoga is very concerned with focusing the mind. Its underlying assumption is that each of us has the power to tame the mind as a charioteer might tame horses. Focusing the eyes on a single spot is just one way to reign in the mind and to bring it under conscious control.
Notice when your instructor suggests where you should gaze.
Movement, or asana. Not everyone feels relaxed or at ease when they sit down, for instance to meditate. Agitating thoughts, like memories and worries, can sometimes be more noisy when all is still. Physical movement provides a way to lull and vitalize the mind and body, bringing them into better connection, stimulating happiness hormones and elevating mood.
The hearty part of any yoga class, consider how breath, gaze, mind and body come into balance when you’re doing asana.
Meditation. Anxiety and related disorders can have the effect of tightening and constricting consciousness. Sometimes done prior to movement, sometimes done afterward, meditation has the power to give you access to a wider field of awareness, bringing stressful thoughts into perspective, calming the nervous system, and kicking on the restorative centers of the brain.
Even a single minute of meditation can have a powerful effect. Your teachers can point you to more opportunities to learn how to meditate, if that interests you.
Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep. Yoga nidra is a restorative practice wherein the instructor guides you into a rested waking state while your body is positioned comfortably. The usual brain centers get a break and the healing centers work their magic.
TYH teacher Susan DeRyder and her partner Shawn are offering Asana and Sound Healing with yoga nidra this month, Friday, Sept. 28th, 7:30-9:30pm.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and yoga’s true impact comes when it is practiced regularly and over the long term as a lifestyle. Tune in to your teachers’ suggestions all month long. Balanced, peaceful, calm and joyful people are especially needed right now, and all the work you do to embody these qualities has a ripple effect “out there.”
Thanks for your commitment to the practice. See you on the mat <3.
We are pleased to offer up our Uptown space to sit silently together in meditation. We will observe silence between the hours of 8:00 & 9:00, but don’t feel like you have to stay for the full duration. Leigha will ring a bell at 8:30 and then again at 9:00am.
The Format
Arrive between 8 and 8:30am.
Donate something or nothing.
Depart any time.
A bell will ring at 8:30.
A bell will ring twice at 9:00 to indicate to closing.
You will find a prompt at the desk.
After 9 o’clock, feel free to ask questions or share insights!
Hosted at our Midtown Studio at 474 Broadway, Kingston
Meditation with sound and yoga is one universal path to Self Realization, accessible to anyone, and appropriate for people of any religion or spiritual aspiration.
All life is relationship, and in this experience we will explore the dynamics between the practice of Yin Yoga and the therapeutic Sound Bath.By uniting our emotional, spiritual and physical bodies in a meditative way, these two up and coming modalities will help you come back to who you truly are: a vibrational being, in tune.
The practice of Yin Yoga is a slow and deep. Based on the principles of stillness, it encourages students to listen to their body’s individual needs.A yin practice guides students past the muscle and into the connective tissue, joints and areas of tension that are being held in deep layers of the body.Students will learn an intuitive approach to working with the body that cultivates listening, facilitates the release of long held tensions and offers genuine relaxation.Simple postures on the floor will be practiced to relax your muscles in order to stimulate the ligaments, joints and layers of fascia.No yoga experience necessary!
Sound has been utilized in various cultures for thousands of years as a tool for healing.Whether through the use of mantras, medicine melodies or the use of interval and frequency, these various techniques all have the same intention: to move us from a place of imbalance to a place of balance. Each human being is in essence a vibration.The molecule sings, the heart of the atom is tone, and the human has a sound body which comes in and out of tune. Enabling the soul to remember its true divine self, its spirit self, we can re-merge with all that is.Finding connection and balance with all that is, we find ourselves in wholeness and perfect health.
Will Leblanc began his study of yoga after 15 years of professional classical ballet dancing to heal and rehabilitate.He began his study of Sivananda and Kripalu yoga in 1990 and did a 500 hour YTT at the Bikram Yoga College of India in 2003. He was the owner/director of Bikram Yoga Amherst for several years.In 2005 he “fell in love”… with Yin Yoga and has been practicing and teaching with true devotion ever since.He completed a 100 hour YTT with Paul Grilley and a 60 hour YTT with Bernie Clarke. He recently had the opportunity to study the Science & Mysticism of connective tissue with Deane Juhan, author of Job’s Body.Will teaches at Euphoria Yoga and Catskills Yoga House.
Lea Garnier is a certified yoga teacher trained in the Desikachar lineage and specializes in teaching yin and restorative yoga workshops which integrate the therapeutics of sacred healing sound with a variety of different sound tools and voice.She has worked as a Craniosacral therapist for over 15 years and has a private practice at Sage Academy of Sound Energy in Woodstock, NY, a center she directs and co-founded in 2007.She also organizes ongoing sound healing retreats & trainings which cater to an international audience of practitioners working in the healing arts.
Beth Ylvisaker became a partner to Sage in 2010, and co-founded the first east coast Annual SoundHealing Retreat Intensive at Menla, NY.She is a senior teacher and facilitator of all the Sage Academy’s events and trainings.She has studied sound extensively with Jill Purce, Accutonics as well as all of the Sage Academy’s esteemed master teachers.She is an astrology student of Terran Loveware, Mark Borax and Elias Lonsdale.She applies mapping astrology through the mandala of the gong, combining stars, sound and is fulfilling a calling to bring healing to individuals and group settings.
In this workshop on the Chakras System led by Corinne Gervai of Euphoria Yoga in Woodstock we will explore what these energy center are, where they are located, what the sounds, senses, colors, elements, symbols that are associated with each one are and how they relate to various aspects of our lives. We will also explore how to weave this information into an Asana (Yogic Postures) class that relates to the various Chakras.
A hand out with information on the Chakras will be provided, so that you can reference the information during the Workshop with ease, as well as in the future when you wish to incorporate it in your classes once you are a Teacher! * A few fun tips on how to remember some of the information by heart will be offered as well. Corinne is very much looking forward to sharing this time and this rich subject with you!
Corinne Gervai is the founder and Director of Euphoria Yoga in Woodstock and has over thirteen years of teaching experience in New York city and locally. She received her Yoga Teaching certification from the Jivamukti Yoga School in the year 2000 after completing the full one year intensive certification program lead by Sharon Gannon and David Life. Corinne taught all levels at The Jivamukti Yoga School in New York City from 2000-2005. Prior to that Corinne taught the Lotte Berk Method which incorporates element of Yoga, dance and therapeutic stretching in New York city and the Hamptons.In 2005 Corinne received her Advanced Jivamukti certification. Upon moving to Woodstock full time in 2005 Corinne taught locally until 2009 when she opened Euphoria Yoga. Corinne offers much gratitude to her main Yoga teachers Sharon Gannon, David Life as well as to all the wonderful teachers that she takes classes and workshops with which continue to inspire her. Corinne offers deep thanks to her beloved students, family and friends that enhance her life daily and her aim is to do the same to the lives of as many beings as she can reach.
