Yoga: Approach and Philosophy

The dancer’s work is vibrant, athletic, and precise, yet to the viewer, it’s free and though powerful, speaks of masterful ease. It’s quite difficult to entertain the thought that the purpose of life is contained within dance, but in many cultures, dance is the ultimate expression of union with the divine. Ecstatic dance is the […]

Welcome Chinese New Year, the year of the horse. This year, this world will present increasingly more difficult tasks to perform and endure, our ‘horsepower’, more than ever, required to sustain us and our communities. Horses represent a ‘call to action’, and this is a ‘fire’ horse year, the horse that embodies intense energy and rapid

Heads are universally revered in part because they enclose and shield the brain – and we, as a society, are very brain oriented! Similarly, we protect our heads with toques, scarves and shawls, from the cold, from injury, from prying eyes. We also adorn ourselves with headdresses, hair pieces, fascinators, and crowns. The intellect resides

Hello Everyone,   Thank you for your kind, generous, steadfast and unfaltering enthusiasm and support for our yoga (and other) programmes over many, many decades. I was 30 years old when Esther Myers opened her Studio on Brunswick Ave in 1979; Tama wasn’t even 30 when we first met. I remember instructing many of you

The coming of Spring is Nature’s miraculous awakening expressed by a warmer sun, evidence of green, and birds building nests ‘from coast to coast’. Like elementary schoolchildren, list signs of spring in your neighbourhood – are the red winged blackbirds back in their summer home along the railway tracks? Have you spotted red tailed hawks,

Act, allow; grip, let go: hold, release. Let’s take a closer look at one of the most challenging of many human dilemmas. Holding a posture is what we are expected to do in yoga schools that prize accomplishment, where striving is a virtue. We may not realize or want to acknowledge that physical, material progression

In Cree, trees are ‘who’ not ‘what’. – Tomson Highway We are profoundly attached to trees. We were arboreal creatures, after all. We also look like trees – sturdy layered spine/trunk, deeply earthing toe/roots, long demonstrative arm/branches, dexterous nimble finger/twigs, blooming flower faces. Trees support, nourish, oxygenate and hydrate. They sing, soothe, shelter and hide.

There are many songs written with the subject matter of spring, ‘It might as well be Spring’, ‘They say it’s Spring’, ‘You must believe in Spring’, in which the singer’s voice is light and soft and spring is associated with tulips, robins, love and yearnings of the heart, melancholy equally with hope and gladness. ‘You

Very soon, parts of the world will witness an almost total solar eclipse, a phenomenon so powerful, it entrances even the most consummate astronomers already familiar with spectacular celestial events. The untimely nightfall that occurs must have frightened our ancestors into imagining the permanent extinction of the sun, the end of the world, human life

Snowflakes and their study are a perfect metaphor for developing appreciation of our lives and everyone else’s – all of us alike, made of the same material and all unique in design. If we pause to remember that each snowflake is singular, something inside sighs with awe and hums with wonderment. Awe and wonder are

Already a dedicated practitioner, Esther Myers wondered what would happen if she devoted even more time to her personal yoga. Vanda Scaravelli suggested we practise as though there was ‘infinite time and no ambition’. When asked how strong the gravitational force and how deep it’s possible to release in a downward direction, Vandareplied, ‘To the

The Dalai Lama speaks of cultivating hopeful, appreciative, heartening thoughts and feelings and how the vibrations of these thoughts really, truly, exist and affect others. He gives talks on ‘Inner Peace/Outer Peace’ and suggests both are so closely interrelated as to be one. What we do to help ourselves – releasing our physical tension, soothing