Yoga with Melissa

Hatha Yoga with a Block

This intermediate hatha yoga class is a class with lots of options and choices. Some of them will involve fun options with a block inspired by the teachings of Jenni Rawlings. This class will create strength in your back, legs and core and mobility in your thoracic spine, shoulders and hips.

Perfectionists tend to stay true to their habits and rules. They stick to their routines and they struggle with change. In this class we will attempt to untangle ourselves from the prison of our guilt-tripping shoulds and inject some choice and spontaneity into our yoga practice and by extension into our lives.

When we make a conscious choice it gives us access to freedom. While perfectionists can be quite productive, ultimately there is not a lot of joy in that productivity. The only value that a perfectionist might see in an activity is a sense of accomplishment. In this way, living can be wasted unless it adds up to something.

We do not have to forfeit the joy of the journey just to get to the destination. The traditional conscientiousness that is tied to our habits and rules can be replaced with enthusiasm. The heaviness of obligation can be replaced with the uplifting expansiveness of zeal. The more and more we become aware of the choices we have, the more we can discover the freedom that is available to us.

When we become aware of the options available to us, we start to be aware that we have a CHOICE. CHOICE does three things:

* Takes us off auto pilot

* Restores your freedom

* Gives you an opportunity to change your patterns, habits, rituals and routines

We are fundamentally free, but we do not recognize this freedom at every turn. We repeat the same patterns over and over again and feel powerless to change them. The truth is, we are stuck in our minds.

We are free to the extent that we are aware of our options in each moment. The more options we are aware of, the more free we are. When we are stuck in a should, we only see the course of action that is expected of us.

Acceptable alternatives exist

Resource: Present Perfect Samov Pavel

Restorative Yoga

This restorative yoga class will support you in letting go of guilt and shame through long-held restorative inversions, side bends, forward bends, twists and savasana. You will need all your yoga props including a wall, blankets, a bolster, blocks, yoga strap, eye pillow and sandbags. Don’t worry if you don’t have some or any of these props, modifications will be given.

When you have perfectionist tendencies you feel intense dissatisfaction and regret after you make a mistake. It feels as though you let yourself and everyone in your life down. You tend to feel self-conscious emotions such as guilt, embarrassment, self-disgust and shame. Those painful emotions tend to linger and cause depression, anger and worry. Not only do those painful emotions linger, but they also prompt perfectionists into compensatory striving to make up for their mistakes and imperfections sending us into a vicious cycle of perfectionism that looks something like this:

make a mistake -> feel shame -> strive harder to make up for the imperfection -> set a more ambitious goal that is harder to reach -> memory of the past mistake creates performance anxiety -> make another mistake -> feel guilt ridden, withdraw, snap, maybe self-medicate and withdraw again.

This class will be about post-mistake recover skills and letting go of guilt and shame.

The good news is that as perfectionists, we can practice post-mistake recovery skills that will allow us to:

* Be more self-forgiving

* Learn from what happened without self-loathing

* Make room for self-acceptance

Guilt, shame and embarrassment are emotions that we feel when we think that we are under an unpaid obligation. We will feel guilt when we think we did something that we should not have done. We will also feel guilt when we think we did something we should not have done.

However, whatever you did or did not do was your best course of action at the time. The question remains, why should you feel guilty about your best? Maybe you are feeling guilty because somebody expected you to be more than you could be. The truth is, that nobody is entitled to that expectation. That is someone having an expectation to you not being you. Shame and guilt are toxic emotions. They cause us to hide. At any given moment in time, you are doing your best and therefore you are succeeding.

Letting go of guilt and shame is a matter of releasing the feeling of UNDUE RESPONSIBILITY. Sometimes your best is not good enough for a successful outcome. You can take the time to recognize that you did the best that you could in any given situation. Once you conclude di dnot do anything wrong, you can let the feeling of undue responsibility go.

Perfectionists are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and more prone to guilt. So we can make a conscious decision and intention to not taking on guilt trips.

A guilt trip is when somebody else sells you on a particular should or shouldn’t and then you head off on a journey of GUILT AVOIDANCE.

Remember that pattern we talked about earlier?

make a mistake -> feel shame -> strive harder to make up for the imperfection -> set a more ambitious goal that is harder to reach -> memory of the past mistake creates performance anxiety -> make another mistake -> feel guilt ridden, withdraw, snap, maybe self-medicate and withdraw again.

Just because somebody else thinks you should or should not do something does not mean you must do it. You do not have to take on anybody elses shoulds or should nots and make them into your own.

If somebody is trying to shame or guilt trip you into doing something or not doing some...

Hatha Yoga Flow

For this intermediate hatha yoga flow style class you will need the following props: Yoga Blanket, Mexican Blanket, Yoga Blocks, and hardwood floor. It is a unique style class inspired by Jenni Rawlings where we place the yoga blanket between our body and the floor and use it to create slide and resistance. Physically, this class will focus on core strength, thoracic mobility, shoulder mobility and leg strength.

Life is an unstoppable river that continues to flow. Perfectionists are uncomfortable with the constant flow of change that is ever present in our lives. We struggle to gain a sense of control against the constant change.

This is where fantasy comes in again, we imagine that we can arrive at a state of perfectionism. That someday we will be able to keep our kitchens, bathrooms, cars and desks clean once and for all. That we will somehow be able to get ahead and stay ahead. If somehow we just get it right, then things will remain perfect for us from then on.

This is where the metaphor of a river is helpful. Our lives never stand still. Our lives are a story that continues to unfold, but that are never finished. Sometimes we go through some boring parts where there is not much going on, sometimes there is a lot of conflict (which could be quite exciting for the reader of our story, but uncomfortable for us) and sometimes we experience periods of resolution. However, the important thing to remember, is that it keeps unfolding, we continually cycle through.

Reality is not a state, it is a process, which is in constant flux. One day something seems perfect and the next day, poof it all dissolves. Reflect on holiday dinners, elaborate meals which take so long to prepare. Here it is and now it is gone. Everything is like that.

Perfectionists reject impermanence and yearn for the perfect status quo. This view is a set up, because when you achieve these momentary glimpses of perfectionism, reality will not pause to allow you to enjoy it for long. Perfectionism evaporates just as soon as it materializes.

The river of life inevitably changes and fades away. This is a process view of perfectionism. When we open to the process not perfectionism, the practice not perfectionism, the progress not perfectionism we will suffer less. The process view of perfectionism allows us to open from one moment of perfection to another. We can see our entire life as an unfolding journey in process with an ever changing blossoming perfection.

Resource: Present Perfect Samov Pavel

Restorative Yoga

Winter solstice occurs between December 20 and 22nd in the Northern hemisphere and June the 20 and 22nd in the Southern hemisphere. It represents the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Here we sink into the depths of darkness and most likely tiredness envelopes us. It is a perfect time of year to practice the rejuvenating restorative style of yoga. In this class we will focus on restorative yoga poses with props to renew our energy when the darkness and cold of winter envelopes us completely. Legs up the wall, restorative child’s pose, supported bridge pose and supported locust pose with draw your energy back into your kidney and adrenals, leaving your feeling refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to welcome the slow return of the light.

Props Needed: wall, 2 blocks, a bolster, eye pillow and blankets for this restorative yoga class for winter solstice.

Winter solstice occurs between December 20 and 22nd in the Northern hemisphere and June the 20 and 22nd in the Southern hemisphere. It represents the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Here we sink into the depths of darkness and most likely tiredness envelopes us. It is a perfect time of year to practice the rejuvenating restorative style of yoga.

Winter solstice is a time to mirror the stillness and quietude of the dormant earth. All of nature is resting and hibernating and inviting us to do the same. This is a time for us to be patient and wait for the slow build towards the brighter days of spring that will come later.

Now is the time to rest and conserve our energy. When we turn inwards we can connect with our inner silence, inner wisdom and listen for the blessings and guidance that are available through deep rest.

In this restorative yoga class for winter solstice we will surrender to the mystery of the darkness. The darkness all around you will support you in exploring your inner world. In the depth of this long night there is space for your intuition, inner wisdom, and creative potential to be born again. However, it is important that we rest in the frozen silence and stark stillness without rushing on to the next big thing. This is the time to go inside, BEFORE, stepping out into the world again.

It is only possible to make the descent into the darkness when you commit to stillness and quiet. Only you will know what that looks like for you. Perhaps it is time in meditation, yoga, quiet contemplation, long walks on the barren paths of the forest, breaks from social media, letting go of social engagements, embracing naps and downtime. However, it is only through deep rest that authentic healing and rejuvenation can be accessed.

If this class resonated with you, you may be interested in our Five Element Theory Course on Water Element:

Water Element Course

Water element invites us inward towards rest. Although it is the most yin of all the elements, it is also highly adaptable. Water can be as deep and still as an ocean, the roaring rapids of a river, a babbling brook, or a meandering river. It is the season of winter, where we wait in the bareness of the season in hibernation.

As we grow inward to the most yin, quiet and still time of year we begin to confront issues of safety. If our capacity to discern safety is unreliable we will drain our adrenals and lose our sense of vitality keeping us in a constantly anxious feedback loop. It becomes difficult to sink comfortably into ourselves. Fear in our contemporary culture looks like:

Do I have enough? Is my future secure? Am I safe? Can I trust?

Fear of failure. Fear of what others think of me. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of not keeping up.

Celebrate Your Unique Perfection

In this one hour yin yoga class we will focus on skeletal bone variation and honour your unique bone structure through the principles of yin as part of our yoga series on Perfectionism. This yin yoga class will focus on the liver and gallbladder meridians with long holds in butterfly, sleeping pigeon using a wall, bananasana and shoelace with a twist. All poses will be interspersed with savasana to feel the flow of qi through your body.

You may have perfectionist tendencies if you have excessive concern with details, you are extremely devoted to work and productivity at the expense of leisure, you are excessively conscientious, you are thrifty, you are inflexible and rigid when it comes to morals and ethics, or you are reluctant to delegate tasks or relinquish control. However, as we learned last week, perfectionism is the result of the culture and families we grew up in, so we do not need to be perfectionist about our perfectionism.

To a perfectionist, life is often either perfect or imperfect, right or wrong, good or bad, but we are often comparing reality as it exists to some imagined better reality. I think many of us can relate to the tendency of comparing our current experience to some imaginary better experience. This is so common in the world of yoga which has been coopted by the image-rich world of media and social media. Everywhere we turn there are “perfect” women performing “perfect versions of yoga postures that we naturally compare our experience of yoga in general and poses specifically with.

It is no wonder that the success of our yoga experience becomes equated with failure and no wonder that we never feel successful. We perceive our reality comparing it against what it is NOT rather than to our present moment experience. On the one hand, you want to accept yourself, but on the other, you are afraid endlessly stuck and never capable of change in your body.

One of the reasons why I love yin yoga so much is that it acknowledges something called skeletal variation. Skeletal variation means that each one of us is unique, both in the length and shape of our bones and the way our bones fit in our joints. What does this mean for those of us pining after extreme backbends, forward bends, and hip openers? It means that often our bones are limiting our movement into poses, not our lack of flexibility. I hope that reality check lets you off the hook.

Skeletal variation is one way that we can offer ourselves ongoing acceptance, nonjudgmental and non comparison. We can constantly judge ourselves against what is, what should be (in our minds) and what could be, but in reality, we might just have a bone structure that is never going to allow a certain pose to be in our body.

Unless you compare your pose to somebody else’s pose, you have no basis for judgement. To conclude that your pose is substandard you have to be comparing your experience of a pose, in this moment in time, to something you deem to be the standard, be all and end all for all time.

Skeletal variation allows us to find acceptance. Acceptance that each one of us is different, unique and our own perfect selves. You have to feel from the inside how the posture feels for you. That is why we spend so much time with the principles of yin: choosing the appropriate edge, softening, being still and staying for awhile.

Acceptance is witnessing your own unique experience without comparison and acknowledges your experience just as it is. Your experience will be unique and different from anybody else. Celebrate the uniqueness of your experience. It is part of the ordinary perfectionism of all that is.

Resource: Present Perfect Samov Pavel

Celebrate Your Unique Perfection

In this one hour yin yoga class we will focus on skeletal bone variation and honour your unique bone structure through the principles of yin as part of our yoga series on Perfectionism. This yin yoga class will focus on the liver and gallbladder meridians with long holds in butterfly, sleeping pigeon using a wall, bananasana and shoelace with a twist. All poses will be interspersed with savasana to feel the flow of qi through your body.

You may have perfectionist tendencies if you have excessive concern with details, you are extremely devoted to work and productivity at the expense of leisure, you are excessively conscientious, you are thrifty, you are inflexible and rigid when it comes to morals and ethics, or you are reluctant to delegate tasks or relinquish control. However, as we learned last week, perfectionism is the result of the culture and families we grew up in, so we do not need to be perfectionist about our perfectionism.

To a perfectionist, life is often either perfect or imperfect, right or wrong, good or bad, but we are often comparing reality as it exists to some imagined better reality. I think many of us can relate to the tendency of comparing our current experience to some imaginary better experience. This is so common in the world of yoga which has been coopted by the image-rich world of media and social media. Everywhere we turn there are “perfect” women performing “perfect versions of yoga postures that we naturally compare our experience of yoga in general and poses specifically with.

It is no wonder that the success of our yoga experience becomes equated with failure and no wonder that we never feel successful. We perceive our reality comparing it against what it is NOT rather than to our present moment experience. On the one hand, you want to accept yourself, but on the other, you are afraid endlessly stuck and never capable of change in your body.

One of the reasons why I love yin yoga so much is that it acknowledges something called skeletal variation. Skeletal variation means that each one of us is unique, both in the length and shape of our bones and the way our bones fit in our joints. What does this mean for those of us pining after extreme backbends, forward bends, and hip openers? It means that often our bones are limiting our movement into poses, not our lack of flexibility. I hope that reality check lets you off the hook.

Skeletal variation is one way that we can offer ourselves ongoing acceptance, nonjudgmental and non comparison. We can constantly judge ourselves against what is, what should be (in our minds) and what could be, but in reality, we might just have a bone structure that is never going to allow a certain pose to be in our body.

Unless you compare your pose to somebody else’s pose, you have no basis for judgement. To conclude that your pose is substandard you have to be comparing your experience of a pose, in this moment in time, to something you deem to be the standard, be all and end all for all time.

Skeletal variation allows us to find acceptance. Acceptance that each one of us is different, unique and our own perfect selves. You have to feel from the inside how the posture feels for you. That is why we spend so much time with the principles of yin: choosing the appropriate edge, softening, being still and staying for awhile.

Acceptance is witnessing your own unique experience without comparison and acknowledges your experience just as it is. Your experience will be unique and different from anybody else. Celebrate the uniqueness of your experience. It is part of the ordinary perfectionism of all that is.

Resource: Present Perfect Samov Pavel

Hatha Yoga

This intermediate hatha yoga class will be a lot like last week’s class working with steady and rigorous foundational yoga postures to help prepare your body for warrior poses. These movements help to build greater mobility, flexibility and strength in your body. This is the kind of approach I am going to be taking with the short hatha yoga classes I will be releasing in our membership community in January. The yoga poses in this class will build from the foundation of your feet, leg strength, hip mobility, core strength and back strength. We will spend time in Warrior One, Warrior Two, Warrior Three, Goddess Victory Squat and variations on those poses.

You may have perfectionist tendencies if you have excessive concern with details, you are extremely devoted to work and productivity at the expense of leisure, you are excessively conscientious, you are thrifty, you are inflexible and rigid when it comes to morals and ethics, or you are reluctant to delegate tasks or relinquish control. However, as we learned last week, perfectionism is the result of the culture and families we grew up in, so we do not need to be perfectionist about our perfectionism.

Perfectionism can lead to anxiety, worry and depression. It creates performance anxiety and leads to procrastination. Perfectionism often will stand in the way of our creativity.

Often times our perfectionism is an attempt to gain control or certainty in our lives. The reality is, as many of us have experienced, that our lives are full of the confusing and unexpected. Our lives often frustrate our assumptions and expectations.

With perfectionism we crave certainty and yearn for control rather than surrender to the chaos of our lives. In Present Perfect, Pavel Somov says that perfectionism is a hunger for approval, validation, acknowledgment, control and certainty. The good news is that we can feed the hungry ghost of perfectionism with ACCEPTANCE.

Pavel Somov suggests accepting reality for what it is in all its imperfect perfection, however he says, this actually takes great COURAGE.

The ideal reality exists only in our minds. Our real world experience pales in comparison to the world that we imagine is perfect. For perfectionists the ideal, fictional, and imaginary is always better than the real, factual and existent.

Every moment we experience, as theoretically imperfect as it may be, is beyond modification. This very moment we are experiencing is beyond improvement. It is too late to add anything to this moment or to make it better. We can start to notice the ordinary perfection in what is, not in what could be.

To which most every perfectionist will say, how is change possible? How will I ever improve upon myself?

In Present Perfect, Pavel Somov suggests that we recognize ACCEPTANCE as COURAGE not SURRENDER. When we accept this moment, we are actively engaging in the moment. Accepting the moment as it is requires a great deal of COURAGE rather than an ESCAPIST FLIGHT into FANTASY of what could be or what has been. When we acknowledge what is then there is actually the possibility for improvement as well.

It is possible to accept what is AND change. It is not an either or choice. You can accept that in this very moment you are doing the best that you can. Having learned from the experience you can improve in the next moment to the extent that you can.

In today’s yoga class we are going to practice a tone of creative progressions and different creative expressions of warrior poses. This will allow us to accept the moment as it is unfolding, perfectly imperfect. We will embrace practice, not perfect, process, not perfect, progress, not perfect and recognize the courage that it takes to open to our e...

yoga and perfectionism

In this intermediate hatha yoga class we will be working with steady and rigorous foundational yoga postures to help prepare your body for half moon balancing pose. These movements which will focus on your feet, legs, hips, shoulders, core strength, neck and balance will help to build greater mobility, flexibility and strength in your body.

This is the first of a fourteen class series on perfectionism. In this class we will answer the question, Why does perfectionism develop?

Many people who have perfectionist tendencies are conscientious, hardworking and are eager to meet other people’s expectations. Part of holding high standards for yourself means that you feel valuable and indispensable. The downside of perfectionism is that you have to constantly strive to meet everybody’s expectations.

Growing up, it is important that we are mirrored. That means that are actions are seen, acknowledged and attended to. If we eat our dinner when we are young we are praised, if we push in our chair, we are acknowledged, if we clear our dishes etc. Perfectionism can often been an adaptation due to a deficit of mirroring.

If you grew up in a home with an insecure or narcissistic parent, your job may have been to be a mirror for their hungry ego. As a result, you may have adapted by trying to stand out by being perfect.

For me it has been useful to mirror myself, to acknowledge myself and to attend to myself and parent myself as I have grown into adulthood.

Today we are going to practice half moon balancing pose since the moon reflects the light of the sun. In this way we can mirror our own internal light as well. The moon reflects the light of the sun. When we practice half moon balancing posture we can connect with our innate capacity for mirroring our own internal light, the preciousness of our human lives, our uniqueness and value, our perfect imperfection. That is the intention behind this class.

Resource: Present Perfect Samov Pavel, Ph.D.

Restorative Yoga for Depression

Restorative yoga for depression can be part of an overall support network including your medical doctor, psychiatrist, therapy, and perhaps other complementary medicine such as naturopathic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and other forms of body work from rolfing, massage to osteopathy.

When depression is causing constant sadness for no apparent reason, feelings of worthiness and excessive guilt, dark thoughts, loss of interest and pleasure in your favourite activities, low energy, difficulty sleeping, loss of interest in food, restlessness and difficulty making decisions and focusing, it can be incredibly difficult to see depression as anything other than a problem to escape.

When I am connecting with students who are going through health challenges, sometimes I hear from them a longing to get their old life back. The thing is, there is no old life to retrieve. Whatever health challenge you are facing, whether it be depression, or something else, it is leading you to something different.

Depression, like many emotional rights of passage is not something to be avoided. Rather it can be a right of passage that leads us through transformation, despite the pain and struggle. When depression is suffocating us, it can be difficult to see it as a vehicle of metamorphosis.

Depression, like other inittiations in our lives, ask us to open our eyes, be present to the suffering. Initiatory experiences call us to awaken and challenge us to the depth of our being. The suffering of the initiatory experience strips away the identity, dignity, and comfort that we would not have normally given up. The pain and loss of depression make it difficult to recognize it as an awakening. Part of depressions it trusting the pain and allowing it to break us open.

In our membership community, I teach five element phase courses every quarter to some of my more advanced students. I have so much respect for these students. At the beginning of each course we take the time to talk about how the courses are an initiatory journey. Most of my students who go through the courses seriously find the journey painful, however they come through changed, having left something behind and opened to something deeper and more meaningful inside of themselves.

There is a wisdom deep in your body that has brought the depression forward as a way to heal. Your body never does anything without a reason, it is always protecting you and looking out for your best interests. From this perspective, depression can be a healthy response to your life. Depression is your body’s healing response to help you get better. Your body is responding in the most appropriate way to support you in your life right now. “Allow your body to do what it already knows how to do.” Bo Forbes

With depression it is common to struggle with negative and self-defeating thoughts. Our inner world can be flooded by overwhelming thoughts, sensations and emotions and it is common to be lost in a labyrinth of negativity. Yoga is not going to erase your difficulties, it will illuminate them.

When you relax your body, difficult emotions will arise. I teach a style of meditation in our community that brings people deeply into their bodies in a relaxed way. Of course when that happens, our body feels free to bring forward what it has been holding onto for days, maybe weeks, months and even years. One thing that saddens me in our community students who step away from practice because it is too painful for them to meet the challenging emotions that their body is offering up.

When we step into these kinds of practices like restorative yoga and meditation, it is important that we listen and honour our body when it speaks. I urge you not to let your mind tell your body what to do. Your mind’s need to override your body’s wisdom and comfor...

Hatha Yoga for Focus

In the attention economy we are competing for our own attention because many markets and social media platforms are skilled at capturing our attention, sometimes for upwards of two hours a day. Of course we all want autonomy, mastery and purpose in our lives.

Research is conclusive now that the more time we spend on social media, the more we experience anxiety, depression, social isolation, narcissism and the more we lose the ability to self-regulate. In other words, we lose the ability to focus and be productive.

The cost of spending more time on social media is a disconnection from our higher aspirations and intentions. This leads to emotional and mental fragility as we have more and more information to process with no way to filter it and less time in the day to reflect on the information that we are taking in.

The intent of technology is to consume your time and monetize your attention. Yet, there is a misalignment between our distraction on the time we spend on social media and our deeper purpose in life. Social media platforms to undermine our aspirations so we have to redirect our focus to match our intentions.

Whatever we would like to achieve, the attention merchants generally do not have the same goals. We must act individually and collectively to make our attention our own again. When we connect with our own mission and vision, we can cultivate a more coherent, authentic and whole experience of our being.