“If you can’t feel excited by your own creative output, you have to try something new. No one can innovate without destroying or dissolving what came before.” These words came to me from a deeply trusted ally in the Spring of 2015. I was questioning my impact. I was vacillating about signing up for Yoga Union…
Hello everyone! We are seeing signs of spring in the lovely blooming trees and gardens of our neighborhoods. Here at the Hive, we are collaborating with egg and nest themed collages. Younger children practice choice and manual dexterity through coloring and gluing. While older children experience planning and self expression through cutting, drawing, painting, and collage.…
We make the primordial appeal together
A collect call to great mystery
will she answer?
Do I listen?
In therapeutic yoga, no two sessions ever look the same because your body is always different. We’re able to be in the moment and assess the situation as it is.
Yoga and Thai massage feed each other. Getting to be in a yoga class and watch people in their active form moving and breathing. Then, in the Thai massage room I work with people in their passive form. So, a lot of people who I work with in my Thai massage room I get to see in the yoga classes and understand their body even more.
When I started teaching yoga, it was a natural thing to be thinking about how yoga and music are related. If we say yoga is an act of joining the mind, body, and heart; my first experiences with that feeling was through dancing to live music.
Kiara Boch shares about learning flow, pranayama, and new perspectives from renowned yoga instructor Shiva Rea.
Instructor Dana Rivkin shares about teaching yoga to teenage girls through Yoga Union’s empowering 10-week Teen Yoga series.
Our Chinese medicine practitioner and yoga teacher Kileen Swenson explains the similarities and differences between yoga and qi gong to the Yoga Union community. Yoga is part of Ayurveda, as qi gong is an aspect of Chinese medicine. Historically, yoga and qi gong have different movements and postures and focus, but they both similarly use the…
Yoga teacher and Chinese medicine practitioner, Kileen Swenson, sat down with Jenna Lynne Roberts to talk about these ancient healing medicines. How did you become a Chinese medicine practitioner? My interest in Chinese medicine came from teaching yoga and seeing how yoga affected people so profoundly, including myself. Being an introvert, teaching didn’t feel like I…
Each time the yogi gets a taste of union with all things, she is rewired with greater sensitivity to the joys and the suffering of the world, and her compassion grows deeper. The effect over time is cumulative. Each experience is a little more real and results in a greater appreciation for the intricacy and preciousness of life, a desire to live it with higher regard, and a passionate lifestyle better aligned with the understanding that all things are connected.
Angelina Vasile shares with us about the power of breathing properly in your yoga practice and your daily life. How did you come to find yoga? I was a dancer and came to Pilates through my dance studies. I quickly got interested in injury prevention and recovery in my Pilates teaching. I started working in a…
Only through committing do we build the consistency necessary to support growth for ourselves and others. Just as the bark of a tree forms layer upon layer, each passing year reinforces the promises of our past and we grow stronger, more dependable, and more capable of holding up life and love. This is a rebirthing of our purpose in life.
People get busted even if they’ve surrounded themselves with an insulated bubble of believers, money, and power. The truth has a way of revealing itself. That is grace. Sometimes it’s really not pretty and people often get caught in the crossfire and that’s tragic. This is true of website – J.F. Exposed
July brings us a new pose of the month- Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, or, Bridge Pose (setu = dam, dike or bridge, bandha = lock). This is a great pose for yogis in all stages of practice, and the benefits are extensive. The pose can alleviate stress, improve digestion and rejuvenate tired legs.
Happy 4th of July weekend fellow Yogis! Do you have plans to BBQ, enjoy the sunshine or watch the fireworks? In case you’re still wondering what to do with all this nice weather, here are some holiday happenings in the Portland area:
Chris has been practicing yoga for the past six years and has recently begun teaching in Portland, Oregon. He has been listening to music since Poison overtook his heart at age 12. Yoga and music, yoga and music, yoga and music! Jai!
Have you had a chance to check out the statue, or “Murti”, in the front of the bamboo room at Yoga Union? Perhaps you’re like me and you’ve used it as your focal point during a difficult balance sequence but don’t know much about it. In order to appreciate more than just the beauty of the murti itself, I asked Todd to answer a few questions about the dancing deity he chose for his studio.
Summer in Portland is… unbeatable. When the sun comes out, the streets fill with smiles, exposed flesh and the smell of backyard BBQs. An open patio seat is hard to find and bodies lay strewn about in parks- victims of the Vitamin D assault. We even seem to forget the 8 months of incessant rain that only just stopped yesterday. It’s on these glorious days that it can sometimes be a challenge to take our bodies out of the sun and into the studio. So instead of compromising one for the other, why not take your practice outside? Yoga is, after all, about unity. When it’s practiced in nature, your connection to the universe may feel more readily available and your sense of awareness will have room to grow and evolve.
If you frequent the Yoga Union studio, then there’s a fair chance you’ve passed by a large van bearing the name “Flying Fish Co.” on the corner of 50th and Hawthorne. But have you stopped to peek inside and see what that van is all about, and who’s actually driving that thing around Portland?