Articles from Esther Myers Yoga Studio

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 individualized route to circumventing the intellect and entering another realm of thought or non-thought. Sufi whirling is a deliberate, structured repetition of a circular action in order to experience an in-body/out-of-mind state more attuned to the inner vibrations and the spiritual source. Spontaneous ‘shaking’ and ...

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 change - no better time to mobilize strength and commitment than now.

Horses are known for fierce independence, yet they're loyal, social, and form lifelong emotional bonds with each other. They understand group dynamics and necessary cooperation amongst all members. 'Horses are herd animals, ...

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 in the brain and we think the mind lives there, too (although in the ancient past, the heart was the mind's dwelling place). Many cultural groups believe the innermost essence of a person is in the head. Certainly, the senses are there, perception is ...

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 in those early days, your children, and now I'm meeting your grandchildren, and happy if you meet mine. It's been a long, varied, wonderful ride, with tears and heartache, celebration and fantastic adventure - on Harbord St behind Parent Books in 1986, 390 Dupont ... Read more →

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, floating on the updrafts? Plangent bird cries are a universal wake up call in song and story, dispelling darkness and despair and signalling the arrival of hope and illumination.

As if in perpetual winter, much of the time we are oblivious, we're ...

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 depends upon time and space and ceases eventually. Living includes undoing - we all face decrepitude and loss. Determining what is possible to retain, keep close, even develop and what deliberately to set outside, put away, give away, shapes our thinking and ...

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. They grant focus, speak of longevity and balance the landscape. Trees symbolize evolution, potential, self-renewal and creativity. They appear dead and as if by miracle, come vibrantly alive. They are bridges from the unplumbed crystalline centre of the ...

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 must believe in Spring and love…

And trust it's on its way

Just as the sleeping rose

Awaits the kiss of May...'

- Bergman, Bergman, Legrand

But as spring rolls around, we ...

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 dissolving into the void. Indeed, the word eclipse, from the Greek, means abandonment, failure, cessation, omission. The ancients associated these unusual dramatic occurrences with catastrophe, plague, famine, apocalypse, the death of a monarch and even created a specific demon - Rauh or Rahu - ...

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 rare feelings, so fleeting they easily pass unregistered and unnoticed, the signs - spontaneous relaxation, shoulders dropping, a full moment of comfort, a soft smile - often ignored.

Studying the individuality of snowflakes became the overarching vocation of Wilson A. Bentley and ...

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, Vanda
replied, 'To the centre of the earth. Is that far enough?' There are seas on this planet of unknown depths - will they ever be plumbed? Tibetan meditation encourages us to develop a Big Sky Mind and gaze up at the limitlessness, without end and without an ...

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 the nervous system, slowing down the breath and the activity level of the mind, calming our anxiety, fatigue and sadness, even for a moment - helps everyone: those we know, those we don’t know, those we have yet to meet, those we’ll never meet.

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by Monica Voss

Roses have cheered our mental state, delighted our senses, soothed our nervous systems and stimulated memory and longing for over six thousand years. Their form, that leads us from outside to in, their colour, from the most delicate pinkish to 'flagrant crimson', their scent, delicious and otherworldly - all combine to stir joy, enchantment, even rapture. Roses play a role in our lives almost daily, certainly in summer. Various cultures eat the petals in jam and syrup, use rose water to refresh the skin, bathe with rose petals, and strew them on the path ...

by Monica Voss

Young children learn to sort by colour and shape, later by action and meaning. Do you remember choosing which image didn't fit in? Or playing memory matching games? Finding the monkey in a complicated drawing? In the image above, what links the 4 animals? Making comparisons and noting contrasts, naming and repeating, form large parts of our learning strategies, our maturation and our ability to stay safe.

Use observation games, such as: I often walk down this street and always look forward to seeing...Or, I've walked so many times down this street and not noticed...until ...