Our new class schedule launches 25th November, with some brand new classes and more of our regular teachers. Our Yoga Manager, Genny Wilkinson Priest, explains the inspiration for these changes below. Plus, don’t forget all new classes are free to attend for the first week. Click here to book your spot.
sa tu dīrgha-kāla-nairantarya-satkārāsevit dṛḍha-bhūmiḥ
Practice becomes firmly established when it has been cultivated uninterruptedly and with devotion over a prolonged period of time.
(Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras 1.14 translation Edwin Bryant.)
Cultivation is an ancient gardening principal and like many old things, is really quite simple – a gardener will patiently break up, loosen and turn over the soil of a garden, tugging up weeds and aerating the beds in order to make the soil rich and fertile.
A little tending to the garden every day will mean less work later trying to battle a garden overgrown with weeds, and more time picking beautiful flowers and hearty vegetables. If a gardener doesn’t tend to his patch regularly, all the hard work can come undone.
A beautiful garden takes time to grow – it doesn’t happen overnight and while even the most avid of horticulturalists are devoted to their passion, they are unlikely to be found laying snail pellets by the light of the full moon. Even the most keen of gardeners take breaks.
Perhaps this is what Patañjali, the compiler of the Yoga Sutras some 1,600 years ago, meant when he said the practice should be cultivated uninterruptedly, with devotion, and over a long period of time. A little bit, maybe every day – even if that’s just taking some time out to focus on your breathing, to meditate, to practise just a few postures in order to take that one step closer to the realisation of the innermost self – one of the purposes of yoga.
We drew inspiration from YS 1.14 as we tried to honour the spirit of uninterrupted, devoted practice when refining our schedules for this winter’s schedule change that begins on 25th November. Many of our teachers have committed to being there for you, their student, more. On the new schedules, you’ll see more of Anna Ashby, Alex Benasuli, Daniel Breakwell, Petra Coveney, Emma Henry, Huma Jalil, Jonelle Lewis, Kwali Kumara, Kathryn McCusker, Bhavisha Pankhania, Vinaya Pinto, Michelle Ricaille, Lisa Sanfilippo and Amy Slevin. Students are better able to build lasting, strong relationships with their teacher when they see them regularly, and this is when the fruits of practice are best realised.
We’ve added new classes, including a later Saturday night class and also:
– A yoga for women class in Camden that provides a space for women to come together and practise breathwork, asana and meditation to support them from puberty to menopause. You’ll learn a range of practices to alleviate symptoms that sometimes accompany PMS, menstrual cramps, and peri/post menopause.
– More jivamukti in Ealing on Monday and Wednesday lunchtimes, and in Shoreditch on Thursday evenings.
– A 45-minute meditation class in Chelsea to seal your night on a Thursday, and qigong class in Chelsea on Saturday.
– Kundalini on Monday night in Shoreditch and Camden – you’ve asked for more of this fast-growing style of yoga and we have heard you!
– Extended ashtanga classes in Soho as Petra Mitidieri’s classes get a little bit longer on Tuesday and Thursdays at 1:30 pm.
It’s our hope that our new schedules will provide you, our students, with the opportunity to cultivate fertile ground that will lead to strong body, a tranquil mind and courageous spirit.
All our new classes are free in the first week of the schedule change, in order to encourage students into styles they might not have practised before, or with teachers they have not met.
We hope you enjoy this refreshing of our schedules and would love to hear what you think.
