Articles from Esther Myers Yoga Studio

There are many songs written with the subject matter of spring, 'It might as well be Spring', 'They say it's Spring', 'You must believe in Spring', in which the singer's voice is light and soft and spring is associated with tulips, robins, love and yearnings of the heart, melancholy equally with hope and gladness.

'You must believe in Spring and love…

And trust it's on its way

Just as the sleeping rose

Awaits the kiss of May...'

- Bergman, Bergman, Legrand

But as spring rolls around, we ...

Very soon, parts of the world will witness an almost total solar eclipse, a phenomenon so powerful, it entrances even the most consummate astronomers already familiar with spectacular celestial events. The untimely nightfall that occurs must have frightened our ancestors into imagining the permanent extinction of the sun, the end of the world, human life dissolving into the void. Indeed, the word eclipse, from the Greek, means abandonment, failure, cessation, omission. The ancients associated these unusual dramatic occurrences with catastrophe, plague, famine, apocalypse, the death of a monarch and even created a specific demon - Rauh or Rahu - ...

Snowflakes and their study are a perfect metaphor for developing appreciation of our lives and everyone else’s - all of us alike, made of the same material and all unique in design. If we pause to remember that each snowflake is singular, something inside sighs with awe and hums with wonderment. Awe and wonder are rare feelings, so fleeting they easily pass unregistered and unnoticed, the signs - spontaneous relaxation, shoulders dropping, a full moment of comfort, a soft smile - often ignored.

Studying the individuality of snowflakes became the overarching vocation of Wilson A. Bentley and ...

Already a dedicated practitioner, Esther Myers wondered what would happen if she devoted even more time to her personal yoga. Vanda Scaravelli suggested we practise as though there was ‘infinite time and no ambition’. When asked how strong the gravitational force and how deep it's possible to release in a downward direction, Vanda
replied, 'To the centre of the earth. Is that far enough?' There are seas on this planet of unknown depths - will they ever be plumbed? Tibetan meditation encourages us to develop a Big Sky Mind and gaze up at the limitlessness, without end and without an ...

The Dalai Lama speaks of cultivating hopeful, appreciative, heartening thoughts and feelings and how the vibrations of these thoughts really, truly, exist and affect others. He gives talks on ‘Inner Peace/Outer Peace’ and suggests both are so closely interrelated as to be one. What we do to help ourselves - releasing our physical tension, soothing the nervous system, slowing down the breath and the activity level of the mind, calming our anxiety, fatigue and sadness, even for a moment - helps everyone: those we know, those we don’t know, those we have yet to meet, those we’ll never meet.

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by Monica Voss

Roses have cheered our mental state, delighted our senses, soothed our nervous systems and stimulated memory and longing for over six thousand years. Their form, that leads us from outside to in, their colour, from the most delicate pinkish to 'flagrant crimson', their scent, delicious and otherworldly - all combine to stir joy, enchantment, even rapture. Roses play a role in our lives almost daily, certainly in summer. Various cultures eat the petals in jam and syrup, use rose water to refresh the skin, bathe with rose petals, and strew them on the path ...

by Monica Voss

Young children learn to sort by colour and shape, later by action and meaning. Do you remember choosing which image didn't fit in? Or playing memory matching games? Finding the monkey in a complicated drawing? In the image above, what links the 4 animals? Making comparisons and noting contrasts, naming and repeating, form large parts of our learning strategies, our maturation and our ability to stay safe.

Use observation games, such as: I often walk down this street and always look forward to seeing...Or, I've walked so many times down this street and not noticed...until ...

by Monica Voss

‘Drishti’ or gazing is a yogic meditation exercise during which one focuses eye attention on a person, an object or a scene, taking in all there is without judgement. In the summer or whenever our schedule is lighter or when we’re on holiday, gazing is easy-going and meandering and the colours and textures, shapes and movements and energy are acknowledged by the brain with direct and peripheral vision and enjoyed objectively. It's not about how much or how incisively we observe. We're not trying to learn or analyse or remember or even understand. There's often some stress ...

by Monica Voss

In Chinese medicine, eating pears helps clear the thorax and lungs of heat and excess moisture. Many of us experience dryness and tightness as we endeavour to breathe deeply or slowly in a yoga class. The air in Canada in December is almost always cold. How do we mitigate the effects of these seasonal contrasts and the variable states of mind inhibited breathing creates?

Learning a little bit about the bio-dynamics of breathing will help us conceptualize, act and embody the realities within. For example, if we practise visualizing the diaphragm as a thin, stretchy ...

by Tama Soble

We begin moving from the spine in utero. Once born, we progress through a series of developmental movements that support our journey toward the complex act of walking.

During this period in our lives we utilize and perfect the four basic movements of the spine: flexion, extension, side bending and rotation. We practice rotation of the neck, turning the head because we are hungry, develop extension and strength in the neck as we lift the head to see the world around us or roll over and rotate the thoracic spine reaching for ...

by Monica Voss

Getting into the body is exactly what Monica Voss intends to do. She does it deliberately, repetitively, as she chooses her words, observant of her students’ abilities, the tenor of the - room and the pacing of her exercises. But moreover, Monica’s class enables a deliberate blurring of the categories that we use to organize our everyday lives: she stirs up the concepts of work and play, drawing together physical structure, creative expression and a certain “come-what-may.”

In our conversation, she recounts not just the vivid, eccentric personalities of teachers whose lives ...

by Monica Voss

One question I have in this predicament called human life is how to thrive in the environment we find ourselves inhabiting. Some people struggle to feel any degree of peace within a "concrete and clay" world dominated by traffic, noise and news of violence. Some live in a quieter, more natural place, but feel isolated, lonely or bored.

For some of us, finding or creating beautiful surroundings is a priority. Daily, I am thankful for the garden I can get out into, rustle through, listen to, or at ...

by Tama Soble

I have been thinking about Francesca quite a bit lately. Francesca (not her real name) was a private student for about two years. I saw her twice a week for about an hour each session. I was part of a comprehensive health care team brought together to help her manage and recover from physical injuries and PTSD caused by a car accident. In addition to my sessions with Francesca, I was involved in many phone conversations and team meetings about her progress.

When we first met, Francesca was in a great deal ...

The teaching of Vanda Scaravelli, friend and pupil of Krishnamurti, Iyengar and Desikachar

by Emina Cevro Vukovic

If a film director wanted to make a historic film on the fascinating first steps of European yoga, I would suggest to tell the story of Vanda Scaravelli. The first scene would show Vanda, young and very beautiful, driving her Lancia Flaminia in the Tuscan hills around Florence next to the handsome J. K. Krishnamurti, an afficionado of automobiles. I imagine they do not talk much, rather, they surround themselves by the silence that unites two people in ...