Creative Stretch

We finish our August theme of: Reinforce, Shore Up, To Support. Today, we'll dive into a meditation to work on cultivating resilience. Throughout, I read several selections from Danna Faulds' book, Go In & In, Poems from the Heart of Yoga

The American Psychological Association's resilience article: https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience

The Mayo Clinic article referenced in the episode: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-training/in-depth/resilience/art-20046311

All the resources for this month's theme: Reinforce are at http://clara-harris.com/august2019

Yoga Pop-Up at Beagle Ridge Herb Farm & Environmental Education Center: https://www.facebook.com/events/415388602666129/

Do you have a group, workplace, or event where you'd like to add yoga in the Louisville, Kentucky area? Contact me at [email protected]. Also available in the Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta areas.

Current Schedule of Classes & Workshops: http://clara-harris.com/yoga

Upcoming Sessions:
Sweatpants Yoga September 22, 10 AM - Noon
Yoga & CreatiTEA September 21, 9 AM - 12:30 PM

Sign up for the Yoga with Clara Newsletter at http://bit.ly/yogawithclaranewsletter

We continue with the theme of: Reinforce, Shore Up, To Support. This week, we work with practices to support the breath. The breath, which comes to us without thinking, can also support our physical, emotional, and mental well-being. In drawing attention to the breath, we can begin to unlock this powerful force within us.

All the resources for this month's theme: Reinforce are at http://clara-harris.com/august2019

Do you have a group, workplace, or event where you'd like to add yoga in the Louisville, Kentucky area? Contact me at [email protected]. Also available in the Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta areas.

Current Schedule of Classes & Workshops: http://clara-harris.com/yoga

Upcoming Sessions:
Sweatpants Yoga September 22, 10 AM - Noon
Yoga & CreatiTEA September 21, 9 AM - 12:30 PM

Sign up for the Yoga with Clara Newsletter at http://bit.ly/yogawithclaranewsletter

Today, we will do a short, flowing sequence of yoga poses to offer support for the body by strengthening the core and stretching the body. Appropriate for those new to yoga, Clara first walks you through the poses. Then you will be guided through flowing the poses, linking the breath and the movement of the body, three times.

See a video and photos, as well as all the resources for this month's theme: Reinforce at http://clara-harris.com/august2019

Current Schedule of Classes & Workshops: http://clara-harris.com/yoga
There are still a few spots this fall for Workplace Yoga for your workplace or organization. See more at http://clara-harris.com/workplace-yoga
Upcoming Sessions:
Sweatpants Yoga September 22, 10 AM - Noon
Yoga & CreatiTEA September 21, 9 AM - 12:30 PM

Sign up for the Yoga with Clara Newsletter at http://bit.ly/yogawithclaranewsletter

I travel to lead workshops in businesses and with groups who want to discover how yoga can cultivate a life of more ease and more everyday creativity. Bringing an easy-going, non-dogmatic approach to my yoga instruction, I revel in helping you find the best way to have a yoga practice that meets your needs and grows with you.

An avowed anatomy nerd, my own yoga practice is a moving meditation, gathering influences from many yoga traditions and contemporary understanding of the human body. My lessons are infused with creativity, humor, and a grounded calm that comes with being a professional actor, at ease with one person or 1,000. I am a 200-hour certified yoga teacher, registered with the Yoga Alliance, and currently working on my 500 hour certification at Asheville Yoga Center.

For the month of August, we are going to be working with the theme of Reinforce. Today's episode asks you to take a moment of reflection to consider where, in your life, you need reinforcement, support, to shore up something - spiritually, physically, or emotionally. See http://clara-harris.com/august2019 for the referred to reflection tool.

View the Current Schedule of Classes & Workshops: http://clara-harris.com/yoga

Workshops this fall will be held at the Farmhouse at Thomas Jefferson Unitarian. https://goo.gl/maps/hZYsLWnmnUC171NA6

Connect with me on Facebook & Instagram!

I travel to lead workshops in businesses and with groups who want to discover how yoga can cultivate a life of more ease and more everyday creativity. Bringing an easy-going, non-dogmatic approach to my yoga instruction, I revel in helping you find the best way to have a yoga practice that meets your needs and grows with you.

An avowed anatomy nerd, my own yoga practice is a moving meditation, gathering influences from many yoga traditions and contemporary understanding of the human body. My lessons are infused with creativity, humor, and a grounded calm that comes with being a professional actor, at ease with one person or 1,000. I am a 200-hour certified yoga teacher, registered with the Yoga Alliance, and currently working on my 500 hour certification at Asheville Yoga Center.

Today is the halfway point of the Happy Hips Challenge. Sign up at http://clara-harris.com/happyhipschallenge.

In today's practice, I offer a practice to support happier, more supple hips.

Check out helpful photos & GIFs of today's practice at http://clara-harris/podcastpictures17

Practice with the Happy Hips Playlist on Spotify or Amazon Music.

Workshops this fall will be held at the Farmhouse at Thomas Jefferson Unitarian. https://goo.gl/maps/hZYsLWnmnUC171NA6

Current Schedule of Classes & Workshops
Upcoming Sessions:
Sweatpants Yoga August 9, 2019
Yoga & CreatiTEA August 11, 2019

I travel to lead workshops in businesses and with groups who want to discover how yoga can cultivate a life of more ease and more everyday creativity. Bringing an easy-going, non-dogmatic approach to my yoga instruction, I revel in helping you find the best way to have a yoga practice that meets your needs and grows with you.

An avowed anatomy nerd, my own yoga practice is a moving meditation, gathering influences from many yoga traditions and contemporary understanding of the human body. My lessons are infused with creativity, humor, and a grounded calm that comes with being a professional actor, at ease with one person or 1,000. I am a 200-hour certified yoga teacher, registered with the Yoga Alliance, and currently working on my 500 hour certification at Asheville Yoga Center.

Yoga can be practiced in so many places - for example, at a traffic light, when a gaggle of geese keeps an entire line of cars waiting through two cycles of the light. In this meditation, great for beginners, we practice patience - because patience is absolutely an ongoing practice. It is in a regular, ongoing yoga & meditation practice that we can cultivate more patience, more ease, and more creativity.

Current Schedule of Classes & Workshops: http://clara-harris.com/yoga

Happy Hips Challenge Beginning July 29th: http://clara-harris.com/happyhipschallenge

Upcoming Sessions:
Yoga & Everyday Creativity 12-week series beginning August 1, 2019
Yoga for Better Sleep 12-week series beginning August 6, 2019
Sweatpants Yoga August 9, 2019
Yoga & CreativiTEA August 11, 2019

Readings from:
Yogi Tea: https://www.yogitea.com/en/
Storyteller by Morgan Harper Nichols: https://morganharpernichols.com/
Limitless by Danna Faulds: https://kripalu.org/about/kripalu/staff/danna-faulds

I travel to lead workshops with businesses and groups who want to discover how yoga can cultivate a more ease and more everyday creativity. 

This week we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing. Today's practice marks that anniversary through a Yoga Lunar Launch. This gentle physical yoga practice explores side bending and lengthening to support easeful breath, leg strengthening, and balancing to work on our playfulness (and our core). Join me and launch to the yoga moon! You will need a blanket or towel. You may need a chair or a yoga block (or an equivalent prop, like a book). What to do with these things is explained before the practice begins.

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/
Video of Yoga Lunar Launch Practice: http://clara-harris.com/podcastvideo15
Pictures of Yoga Lunar Launch Practice: http://clara-harris.com/podcastpictures15

Current Schedule of Classes & Workshops: http://clara-harris.com/yoga

Be sure to check out how you can practice with me in person at my website, http://clara-harris.com

Upcoming Sessions:
Yoga & Everyday Creativity 12-week series beginning August 1, 2019
Yoga for Better Sleep 12-week series beginning August 6, 2019
Sweatpants Yoga August 9, 2019

Thanks to NASA and ESA for making their audio recordings available in the public domain.

I travel to lead workshops in businesses and with groups who want to discover how yoga can cultivate a more spacious, more peaceful, more creative life. Bringing an easy-going, non-dogmatic approach to my yoga instruction, I revel in helping you find the best way to have a yoga practice that meets your needs and grows with you.

This article from Tricyle is the inspirition for this week's practice: http://bit.ly/yogawithclara14

Photos of the poses - aka shapes, aka asanas - available at http://clara-harris.com/podcast-pictures-14

Be sure to check out my website for the fall schedule this Friday, July 12th! Classes and workshops for August, September, and October will also be posted on the Yoga with Clara Facebook page. 

Now booking private lessons, semi-private lessons, and other individual appointments for August through December. More information is available at my website, http://clara-harris.com, or email me.

Want feel-good, stretchy yoga in your office or at your event? Holler at me! [email protected]

I'm coming to the UK and Ireland in November! I'd love to connect with you and I am currently booking workshops and classes. If you are based there, email me to schedule a workshop in your hometown.

Be sure to Like and Follow the Yoga with Clara Facebook page to get regular tips and interesting articles to support your more calm, more centered, more creative life.

On this week when we, in the United States, are celebrating Independence Day - while simultaneously seeming anything but united in our political discourse - I considered what my role, as a yoga and meditation teacher, could be during this time of conversational crisis. This is a metta-style meditation practice that I have found very supportive of how I want to engage with people in my own life. 

Check out Pantsuit Politics for "grace-filled political conversations."

You can study with me in a private or semi-private session at my home studio in Louisville, KY. 

I travel to lead workshops in businesses and with groups who want to discover how yoga can cultivate a more spacious, more peaceful, more creative life. Bringing an easy-going, non-dogmatic approach to my yoga instruction, I revel in helping you find the best way to have a yoga practice that meets your needs and grows with you.

An avowed anatomy nerd, my own yoga practice is a moving meditation, gathering influences from many yoga traditions and contemporary understanding of the human body. My lessons are infused with creativity, humor, and a grounded calm that comes with being a professional actor, at ease with one person or 1,000. I am a 200-hour certified yoga teacher, registered with the Yoga Alliance, and currently working on my 500 hour certification at Asheville Yoga Center.

Halfway through 2019, let's take stock of our goals and our accomplishments as we practice peeling off being busy and what it feels like to sit still and listen to our inner wisdom.