"My yoga teacher, Judi Spears, is amazing! Her mindful attention to those of us with an illness has been so very comforting."

"What I like most about my gentle yoga class was that the exercises were all easy to do and excellent for seniors."

"This is such a good yoga class. It has improved my overall health."

"Julie is such a wonderful teacher, guide, and inspiration. This course has helped me tremendously and I look forward to continuing."

"Gentle Yoga has helped my mind, body and spirit!"

"I really enjoyed Robin’s Intro to Yoga class and her approach to the practice. I could feel the benefits almost immediately."

Yoga and Beginning Insights
Do you sometimes feel frustrated with wanting to accomplish "more" when you dedicate precious time to yoga? I have, but I have noticed that yoga, for me, leads more to tiny, minute realizations than to giant breakthroughs. Perhaps the most telling insight, and one that has contributed greatly to decreasing my back pain, involved recognizing that relaxation, for me, had been an intellectual concept rather than a felt reality. After taking the beginning yoga class twice and practicing yoga daily for several months, I finally began actually to feel the difference between using a muscle to move into a yoga pose and relaxing the muscle after the pose. The corpse pose with total relaxation was initially too difficult for me. I could lie on the floor, but my back especially would remain tied up in knots. I had to start small, relaxing my tongue and face muscles while in the downward-facing dog (after the instructor's reminder) and finally finding those back muscles that tighten in the cobra pose and learning to relax them.
Note: My next goal is to find and move my sacroiliac joint!


Yoga and Middle-Aged Balance
Have you ever noticed a difference between how young people walk and how many middle-aged people (not all, but many) walk? On a hiking trail, young people seem never to have thought about falling. They move down a rocky path almost on their toes, stepping from loose gravel to ankle-deep mud to knee-high rock as though they are dancing. I-along with many other middle-aged persons-move cautiously, holding our bodies carefully erect, all too aware that an unwary step might send us falling on our faces, that a pebble might give way to a quick back-wrenching jerk that would end our hiking indefinitely.

The yoga balancing poses, even the beginning modifications, gave me an awareness of the stiffness with which I have been walking. As I continue to practice them, I find my body relaxing into walking, my back muscles and bones balancing rather than holding rigid. The tree pose, especially, cultivates both physical and mental equilibrium.