Special Events
April 2012
Click an event for a detailed description.
4/8 to 4/22 Click for schedule
Spring Cleanse with Ayurveda with Kate ODonnell
Register Online: $140
(includes 3 Workshops and On-Line Forum from April 10-23)
Schedule
Three Sunday Sessions at Back Bay Yoga from 12:30pm to 2:30pm:
- April 8
- April 15
- April 22
Description
Spring is time to lighten up! The change from winter to the warm season is an important time to clean out the pipes, then begin some simple, preventative measures to clear winter stagnation and weight gain, reduce spring allergies, and create healthy rhythms for spring and summer. Make time in April to join our community of cleansers. Last fall we had 40 join the on-line forum!
$140 Includes 3 Workshops and On-Line Forum from April 10-23
Ayurveda, India's ancient healing system, follows nature's rhythms- seasonal changes, sunrise to sunset, phases of life, etc. to maintain optimal health. The system uses diet, biorhythms, herbs, and therapeutic application of oils to maintain balanced physiology and attitude. This spring cleanse course will guide you through a 2-week detox experience with the safe, time-proven methods of Ayurveda.
Week 1 Expect: to maintain your daily life, learn about Ayurveda, eat good and simple, learn self-care practices you can do at home, personalized cleanse preparation and reintegration plans, community building, and support.
Week 2 Expect: An old habit requires a new one ready to take its place. We will cover Ayurvedic diet and lifestyle routines that you can carry into a bright and vibrant spring.
This will be Kate's sixth cleanse with BBY, and experience has designed this package to work for you, where you are at, making small, sustainable changes to support a healthier mind/body. This is not a fast- you CAN participate! Program cost includes 3 Sundays, and our 2 week on-line forum for daily instructions and 24-hr answers to your questions between meetings.
FAQs and more info available at ayurvedaboston.com
Can't make all 3 sessions? If you can make 2, sign up and I will make sure you get what you miss. Participation in only the on-line forum is open to those who have worked with me before in a past cleanse, or after private consult. Questions? Please visit ayurvedaboston.com
About Kate ODonnell
Kate ODonnell began yoga by accident in South India at age 20. Nine extended trips to India, and over a decade of studying yoga and the wisdom traditions of India support Kate's Kripalu certification as an Ayurvedic Consultant and Yoga Specialist. She is authorized as a teacher of Ashtanga Yoga. Her personal healing with a doctor in Mysore, India led to a love for the ancient healing system and inspires her continued study and teaching in the greater Boston area. Her Ayurvedic lifestyle intensives, diet, and yoga workshops aim to help others come closer to their true nature. Illuminating self-knowledge through Ayurveda, Yoga, and community keeps Kate inspired.
Kate has completed 4, 200-hour trainings on Maui, and a Level-2 training at the Ashtanga Yoga Institute in Mysore. She has been directing the Ashtanga program at Back Bay for 6 years. Her intention in offering Teacher Trainings at Back Bay Yoga is to provide a safe, strong, and hilarious container for transformation. AND she will happily teach you how to use a neti pot and wrap a sari!
Friday, 4/13 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Pick Your Feet Up Off the Floor with Nikki Vilella
De-mystify the art of balancing on your hands in this classic Kula Flow class: Let go of the myth that you need to build bigger biceps in order to enter the world of arm balancing with ease and then pick your feet up off the floor through the help of open hips and a deeply cultivated connection to your core. This class will begin with wrist strengthening exercises and core work geared towards developing the bhandas, followed by a serious Kula Flow class that will prepare you to float and fly with ease as you fearlessly transition in and out of a variety of arm balances throughout the sequence. You will also explore the combination of arm balances to inversions and back again.
About Nikki Vilella
Nikki has been practicing yoga for the past decade and teaching for the past six. She is a senior teacher at Kula Yoga Project in NYC and recently partnered with Kula Yoga founder Schuyler Grant to open the new Kula Williamsburg in her home borough of Brooklyn. Nikki's goal is to help you find freedom in the most challenging of asanas through a disciplined, intelligently sequenced, alignment based flow that manipulates your body in a way that will ultimately free both your spirit and your mind. Nikki grew up a sports junkie, and developed a passion for movement at a young age. She is attracted to the ability yoga has to combine precise physical movement, intelligence, and intention into one sweaty, uplifting experience.
har·ness [hahr-nis]
* the combination of straps, bands, and other parts which form the working gear of a draft animal.
The first part of a strap-on setup is the harness. A good harness should be sturdy yet comfortable, and bring the wearer under ideal conditions for effective use. You may not be a draft animal, but there is nothing like knowing how to use a good strap throughout your practice in order to help gain control over your body with a particular end in mind.
In this workshop you will become best friends with a yogic strap and learn how to incorporate it effectively into all parts of your practice. From navasana to handstand, caturanga dandasana to a sublime pranayama setup, you will learn how to pull yourself together through the use of a strap. In working with the strap you will be able to navigate often unexplored parts of postures while habitually overworked parts of your body can work less within the support system created by the strap.
This does not mean things will be easier; you will just work in a different way that will inevitably allow you to go deeper. Expect enhanced alignment, expect to Kula Flow, expect to think outside the box. Do not expect Nikki in a dominatrix outfit, although she did contemplate it...
About Nikki Vilella
Nikki has been practicing yoga for the past decade and teaching for the past six. She is a senior teacher at Kula Yoga Project in NYC and recently partnered with Kula Yoga founder Schuyler Grant to open the new Kula Williamsburg in her home borough of Brooklyn. Nikki's goal is to help you find freedom in the most challenging of asanas through a disciplined, intelligently sequenced, alignment based flow that manipulates your body in a way that will ultimately free both your spirit and your mind. Nikki grew up a sports junkie, and developed a passion for movement at a young age. She is attracted to the ability yoga has to combine precise physical movement, intelligence, and intention into one sweaty, uplifting experience.
Pink Floyd was onto something. Explore how working at the wall can completely transform your practice. The wall is a plane of truth that does not waver. It relentlessly gives you feedback and priceless alignment information that allow it to function as the best teacher you have ever had. The entire class will be done at the wall: opening sequence, surya namaskar A and B, standing sequence, balancing postures, inversions, backbends, twists, and your seat. Expect to go deeper in each posture than you have ever been able to on your own accord. The result will be enlightening and cathartic.
About Nikki Vilella
Nikki has been practicing yoga for the past decade and teaching for the past six. She is a senior teacher at Kula Yoga Project in NYC and recently partnered with Kula Yoga founder Schuyler Grant to open the new Kula Williamsburg in her home borough of Brooklyn. Nikki's goal is to help you find freedom in the most challenging of asanas through a disciplined, intelligently sequenced, alignment based flow that manipulates your body in a way that will ultimately free both your spirit and your mind. Nikki grew up a sports junkie, and developed a passion for movement at a young age. She is attracted to the ability yoga has to combine precise physical movement, intelligence, and intention into one sweaty, uplifting experience.
Sunday, 4/15 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Yoga for Runners, Pre-Marathon Workshop with Sarah Sturges
Join Sarah Sturges for a special 2 hour pre-marathon Yoga for Runners Workshop Sunday, April 15th from 3-5pm. ‘Take a load off’ your mind and your feet the day before the marathon! Sarah will take you through a guided meditation incorporating soothing SATYA work, as developed by Tias Little or Prajna Yoga, to heighten your somatic awareness and soothe your pre-race jitters. This class will also include some gentle slow flow (keeping it low) to prepare your muscles for the rigors of your 26.2 mile journey. And unlike the BAA, you don’t need a race number to participate. Bring your friends and family--runners and non-runners alike!
Sarah has completed four marathons (three of which were Boston) and is an avid running enthusiast. She understands, firsthand, the strain and stress that training can put on your body and the fears and concerns that arise the day before. She’ll guide you on a meditative journey to ready your body and spirit for the one that lies ahead
About Sarah Sturges
A lifelong health and wellness enthusiast, Sarah Sturges has over ten years of experience teaching group and private fitness classes. Her first taste of moving meditation was through running and she went on to finish four marathons. Subsequently, to balance the physical rigors of high impact exercise, Sarah began a regular Pilates and yoga practice. But it was in 2005 that the mind breath and body connection became clearer for her and, as a result, began to direct her yoga practice towards Vinyasa. For the past five years she has been teaching various forms of mind body exercise throughout the Boston area and has taught yoga internationally at Ashiyana Yoga Retreat Centre in Goa, India. Sarah attributes her 200 hour Yoga Alliance Certified Training to Rolf Gates. She has recently begun study towards her 500 hour training at Prajna Yoga with Tias and Surya Little.
Friday, 4/27 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Master Class: Smart Sequence Flow with Ame Wren and Georgia Reath
Ame and Georgia join forces to create an intelligent sequence that will deliberately and creatively build into a peak pose or open and strengthen a specific area of the body. Known for teaching sequences in their classes that are fun, empowering, unique and rooted in proper alignment, the dynamic duo will alternate teaching the sequence in an off-the-cuff manner that will respond to what is taking place in the room at the moment. Interesting transitions, pranayama (or breath work) and bandha (or internal locks) work will link together asanas (or poses); music will inspire and delight; and well-earned sweat will cleanse the system. After a 90-minute flow and sweet sivasana, Ame and Georgia will open the practice to a dialogue about the sequence's development and intentions as well as a more general discussion of how to create a smart sequence. Smart Sequence Flow is meant to channel authenticity and creativity, and instill inspiration. All levels--teachers and practitioners--are welcome and encouraged.
About Ame Wren
Based in Boston, Ame is a self-proclaimed "yoga mutt." Her teaching is a hybrid of many styles of yoga and heavily influenced by her own practice and teachers. She is known for lacing her classes with humor and wisdom while instilling the importance of proper alignment and smart transitioning to craft a long-term, safe asana practice. Continually humbled by the practice and its devotees, Ame hopes to aid students in finding their own quiet space on their mat. She is greatly indebted to all of her teachers past and present and is continually inspired by her NYC home away from home, Kula Yoga Project. Ame was recently named Best Yoga Instructor in the 2010 Boston magazine "Best of Boston" awards. She leads teacher trainings and retreats nationally and internationally and is a featured teacher at Wanderlust Festival.
About Georgia Reath
Georgia received her 200-hour certification at Sonic Yoga in New York City where she studied under Jonathan Fields, columnist for YogaFit, and Lauren Hanna, assistant to Shiva Rea. Soon after, she found Schuyler Grant, developer of Kula Yoga and co-creator of Wanderlust, at Kula Yoga Project, where she is currently working towards her 500-hour certification. She has also studied with David Life, Sharon Gannon, Shiva Rea, Tias Little, Richard Freeman, Ana Forrest, Glenn Black, Elena Brower, and Desiree Rumbaugh. Upon completing her teacher training, Georgia taught at Sonic Yoga until she relocated from New York City to Boston in 2008.
Georgia teaches flow classes with a strong emphasis on alignment. She is known for her smart, creative and authentic sequences that are challenging yet accessible. Through the use of repetition, pranayama (or control of the breath), bandhas (or internal locks), groovy tunes, and with a deep respect for the cleansing power of sweat, her classes are designed to ease her students into a transformative space where she lovingly encourages and guides them across boundaries into unknown territory. Georgia tries hard to acknowledge and honor all transitions that occur in her classes, whether in physical poses, state of minds, or state of beings. Her intention is for students to learn and find inspiration in every class.
In addition to being a certified yoga teacher, Georgia is a Columbia University trained mental health counselor, an adoring wife, and an ever-loving and ever-grateful mama.
Join Peter as we break down, piece by piece, the components of strong successful inversions and arm balances. In this behind the scenes look at the construction of some of the more popular strength poses, your practice will become more confident and fulfilling. Peter will reference the necessary strength, physics, and breath that comprise these poses. Through a step by step immersion, we'll address and practice Hand Stand, Forearm Stand, Crow, Scissors, Gravity Surfing between poses and more! Bring your questions and your enthusiasm!
About Peter Crowley
Peter has practiced yoga since 2002 when he took his first class at the newly opened Back Bay Yoga Studio. His classes incorporate ten years of yoga training in Ashtanga, Vinyasa, and Forrest yoga systems.
Peter has a reputation for teaching dynamic, powerful yoga sequences that include inversions and arm balances and techniques for accessing the inert strength to achieve these poses. On the flipside, Peter offers an opportunity to slow down and feel the effect of an embodied practice that pursues safety and alignment as much as strength and sweat. While his classes are a physical workout, Peter encourages inquiry into deeper aspects of a meditative practice that nurtures introspection and self-discovery in a non-competitive environment. Peter’s classes address practitioners of all-levels. His sequences cultivate strength and flexibility yet set strong roots for a safe and lifelong practice.
As a child and young adult Peter led a fairly sedentary life and struggled with eating disorders as well as other addictive behavior. Having built up these coping mechanisms to endure severe depression and the abusive and fearful environment in which he was growing up, Peter entered his twenties with emotional and physical pain.
Peter believes that his yoga practice began years before he ever stepped on the mat when he discovered the power of ecstatic movement through dance. Immersed in club culture throughout his college years, Peter found physical and emotional FREEDOM when surrounded by high-energy music and crowds of dancing bodies. This FREEDOM to move and transcend the stuck and sedentary provided a path of healing where Peter could strip away layers of physical and emotional shielding and discover the first glimpses of profound JOY.
A few years later, Peter attended his first Vinyasa yoga class at the recommendation of a dear friend. Peter grew physically strong and spent a year practicing Baptiste Power Vinyasa and Ashtanga Primary Series. In 2003, he moved to San Francisco to participate in a 200-hour Ashtanga Yoga teacher training with Larry Schultz of It’s Yoga and began teaching later that year.
Following a neck and shoulder injury brought on by habitual patterns of holding stress and tension, Peter discovered Forrest Yoga in 2004. He embarked on a four year process of physical and emotional healing that helped him confront both his shoulder injury as well as his compulsive and addictive behavior. Ultimately, this led to his participation in the Forrest Yoga Foundational and Advanced Teacher Trainings with Ana Forrest. In 2008, Peter left the field of architecture to pursue a full-time career teaching Forrest Yoga and Core Vinyasa.
In 2009, Peter fused elements of an embodied and celebratory yoga practice with the ecstatic dance and music that inspired him ten years earlier to create Freedom Joy Yoga (FJY). FJY promotes the serious pursuit of fun and is the “ultimate exercise in letting go”. Peter offers FJY on Friday nights at Back Bay Yoga to help others let loose and discover, through fluid yoga and non-choreographed dance, true FREEDOM and profound JOY.
Grateful for the authenticity and discipline of his mentors, Peter’s approach has been non-linear. He encourages exploration, practices humility, teaches authentically and dances the stress away every week at Back Bay Yoga. Apart from yoga, Peter is training with the Upledger Institute and offers Cranio-Sacral Therapy to his private clients.
Intense, delicious and nourishing, come explore what it means to truly practice yoga while you're on your mat, and locate the abundant but elusive freedom inherent in your body and your daily life. We will unravel the following quote to experience it on a cellular level: "Our deepest self, highest self, essential self, however you want to say it, is relaxed. Not collapsed, but relaxed, open, flowing with life force. All the benefits of yoga practice come by aligning with this essential beingness." -Heidi Fokine
About Elena Brower
Jonah's mama, Certified Anusara® yoga teacher, founder and co-owner of Virayoga in New York City, Elena has been teaching yoga for 14+ years. More than ten years of study with John Friend, Douglas Brooks and Hugo Cory led her to collaborate with Handel Group™, bringing day-to-day relevance to the practice of yoga. Elena's classes are a masterful, candid blend of artful alignment and attention cues; they bring patience to your mind, articulation to your body and empowerment to your heart.
From the Museum of Modern Art to the Great Lawn at Central Park in New York; from the playa at Burning Man to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, she is honoured to offer larger-scale experiences of yoga, but Elena's true service is in shifting awareness within the smallest interactions; one family, one household at a time. She holds Reiki Levels I/II Certification and practices Pranic Healing. She loves collaborative teaching, alongside colleagues such as Sianna Sherman, Christina Sell, Noah Maze, Christy Nones, Amy Ippoliti, Ross Rayburn, Elizabeth Rossa, Schuyler Grant, Nikki Costello, Kelly Morris, Faith Hunter, Dana Flynn, Seane Corn, Leila Astarabadi and Kathryn Budig. She's been featured in the New York Times, Yoga Journal, the Element Yoga for Beginners DVD series, FitYoga, ABC News, NBC News and is the voice for Deepak Chopra's groundbreaking video game LEELA, which blends meditation with game play. Elena is also the Executive Producer of ON MEDITATION, a series of short films regarding the reality of meditation, to be released in 2012. Recent classes are available online at Yogaglo.
Along with her own Art of Attention writings, Elena contributes to the Huffington Post, Kris Carr's CrazySexyLife, elephant journal, TheDailyLove, and is an original board member of YogaEarth. Elena's recently developed an essential oil blend called GIVE that proudly benefits her favorite global cause, Women For Women International. Locally, she supports Akasha Project and Bent On Learning.
The Art of Attention is about creating space within ourselves for listening - and really receiving - without reaction. The Handel Method™, which I've incorporated into my practice and teaching, offers us an incredibly careful and caring set of tools for looking and listening, to ourselves and to others, and communicating more clearly in our lives. This workshop will summarize how to precisely, almost scientifically, hunt down the source of those beliefs and behaviors in order to finally let them go without blame or shame, in order to sound out a grounded confidence within ourselves. Make art of your attention, and you clear the way for a fresh vantage point to emerge, in every aspect of your life. This class will include asana, discussion and meditation.
About Elena Brower
Jonah's mama, Certified Anusara® yoga teacher, founder and co-owner of Virayoga in New York City, Elena has been teaching yoga for 14+ years. More than ten years of study with John Friend, Douglas Brooks and Hugo Cory led her to collaborate with Handel Group™, bringing day-to-day relevance to the practice of yoga. Elena's classes are a masterful, candid blend of artful alignment and attention cues; they bring patience to your mind, articulation to your body and empowerment to your heart.
From the Museum of Modern Art to the Great Lawn at Central Park in New York; from the playa at Burning Man to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, she is honoured to offer larger-scale experiences of yoga, but Elena's true service is in shifting awareness within the smallest interactions; one family, one household at a time. She holds Reiki Levels I/II Certification and practices Pranic Healing. She loves collaborative teaching, alongside colleagues such as Sianna Sherman, Christina Sell, Noah Maze, Christy Nones, Amy Ippoliti, Ross Rayburn, Elizabeth Rossa, Schuyler Grant, Nikki Costello, Kelly Morris, Faith Hunter, Dana Flynn, Seane Corn, Leila Astarabadi and Kathryn Budig. She's been featured in the New York Times, Yoga Journal, the Element Yoga for Beginners DVD series, FitYoga, ABC News, NBC News and is the voice for Deepak Chopra's groundbreaking video game LEELA, which blends meditation with game play. Elena is also the Executive Producer of ON MEDITATION, a series of short films regarding the reality of meditation, to be released in 2012. Recent classes are available online at Yogaglo.
Along with her own Art of Attention writings, Elena contributes to the Huffington Post, Kris Carr's CrazySexyLife, elephant journal, TheDailyLove, and is an original board member of YogaEarth. Elena's recently developed an essential oil blend called GIVE that proudly benefits her favorite global cause, Women For Women International. Locally, she supports Akasha Project and Bent On Learning.