Happy Hols

Enjoy the hols everybody! The pic below is something I took a few weeks ago, along with a wonderful excerpt from the fantastic Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.........



There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE;
There seem'd--and then no more of THEE, and ME

Recipe: Lentil Risotto

a wonderful dish from Meri’s kitchen......

1 cup rice
1 cup green lentils
1 cup split red lentils
1 brown onion
200g mushrooms
200g baby leaf spinach
salt
black pepper
ground paprika
ground cumin
dried or fresh basil, oregano, marjoram
1 cup single cream or soya cream (optional)

Cook the rice and lentils together in twice their volume of water.
Chop the onions and mushrooms and fry on a pan with a little oil. Add herbs and seasoning.
Mix together onion/mushroom mix with rice and lentils. Add the cream and fresh spinach. Bring to boil and simmer until spinach wilts. Serve with parmesan, cottage cheese and/or roasted nuts or seeds. You can substitute the lentils with beans of your choice or marinated tofu and add any other vegetables to your risotto. Yum!

Chris Gladwell in Newcastle...

by Meri Erkkilä

Chris Gladwell, an ashtanga teacher from Bristol, held a workshop at the Buddhist Centre November 20th-21st. Chris has been practising yoga for over twenty-five years and teaches in a way that is especially suited for the Western practitioner.
I attended the second day of the workshop where I met Chris for the first time. The day began with kriyas, methods of cleansing that can be used to compliment the asana practice. We practised kapalbhati (forceful out breath), uddhiyana and nauli kriya (abdominal churning). A lot of the day was spent on looking at hips and knees and discussing preventing injuries to the knees. We did a lot of postures and stretches that are targeted on opening the hips as knee pain is often due to tightness in the hips.
Chris is due to hold another workshop in Newcastle in September 2010. For more information on Chris check out www.radikalfreedom.com.

Meri Erkkilä - Registered Yoga Teacher!

Just a quick note to congratulate Meri who has just completed her yoga teacher training and who is now an official Yoga Alliance member - Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT).

Well done!

Nancy Gilgoff Workshop, Wiltshire 2009

It was a wonderful experience assisting Nancy Gilgoff in Wiltshire this year. The workshop (9th-11th Oct), hosted by Ollie and Daniel Petkoff was held at Slaters Barn, a lovely retreat hidden away in the lush Wiltshire countryside. The workshop ran over the course of a weekend and included a 2nd series session. It is great to see more people moving into 2nd series - a topic which nancy covered in quite some detail over the weekend.

There is always such a deep sense of touching upon something timeless and authentic when Nancy is in the room and, of course, many stories dating back from the early days with Pattabhi Jois were duly told with great enthusiasm. Nancy hasn’t veered away from the original teaching handed down to her from Guruji so you can be sure that you’re getting the time-tested traditional system when working with her.

If you’re serious about ashtanga yoga then you gotta go meet Nancy!

To see all pics of the weekend then click HERE

Visit Nancy's site at Ashtanga Maui

New Health Food Shop opened!

There can't be too many shops that offer environment friendly, fairly traded, dairy-, gluten- and meat-free foods and goods. Now there is even more choice with the opening of Alternatives in Byker! Check out the latest addition to the Newcastle family of health food stores on 109 Shields Road.
Open Mon-Fri 9.30-4.30 & Sat 10.00-5.00
Tel. 07929634709

The Beauty of Mysore...

Yoga mats are lined up next to each other, the space is filled with the sound of the practitioners breathing heavily and little else. From the periphery of your vision you may see the movement of those around you. Now and again the teacher comes to you to adjust.

Doing a self-practice in a group setting is a way of teaching and practicing that is unique to ashtanga yoga. This style is called mysore and it comes from the name of a South Indian city where guruji Sri K Pattabhi Jois was born and where he taught ashtanga yoga according to the tradition that his teacher Sri Krishnamacharya recovered from ancient texts.

In a mysore class, the teacher does not talk the students through the practice but each students moves according to their own breath and pace, following the sequence as far as they in that moment in time are ready for. Teacher gives verbal and physical adjustments and moves the students on when they are ready for more postures. This method enables the teacher to work on each student individually and at best it is rather like a private lesson within a group of people. It enables the student to practice at a suitable pace and focus on aspects of the practice that he or she needs to work on. Every practitioner is unique in his or her way of practicing and mysore style class accommodates the needs of every students. The atmosphere can be very focused with every student doing their own practice but the energy is felt and shared by everyone, including the teacher. It is the best way to achieve the true purpose of this practice, inducing a natural state of meditation through a flow of movements and turning the awareness inward.

This is what students have said about mysore:
“With individual assistance in every pose I can be sure that I am moving correctly and safely. I go much deeper into the stretch and have seen improvements in myself really quickly. Plus, going at my own pace helps me focus inward and be fully aware of how I feel physically and emotionally that day.”

108 Sun Salutations!

Thanks to everyone who attended the 108 Surya Namaskara (Sun Salutation) charity event on Sunday 26th July earlier this year. This took place at the Fairways Community Centre in Newcastle Upon Tyne. 12 Students turned up and did the full 108 sun salutes, an intense practice which usually takes 2 hours if done without taking a break. Most people did a routine of 8 x Surya Namaskara A followed by 1 x Surya Namaskara B, and then did that whole sequence 12 times. 12 x 9 = 108! Thankyou Ally for pointing out that 9 x 9 does not, in fact, equal 108 (like I strangely assumed) and that 12 x 9 is far closer to the 108 bullseye. See Mum? That A-Level in Mathematics didn't come in when I needed it after all.....



The event was partly to commemorate the life of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, who sadly passed away on the 18th May this year, and who has held the torch for Ashtanga Yoga during the last 63 years. Pattabhi Jois was born on the 26th July 1915, so this event was exactly 94 years to the day since his birth. We managed to raise enough money through sponsorship to install 2 showers and a new changing room at the centre, which has just been installed by Jamie - thankyou. Well done everyone! Thanks to all those who sponsored us, especially Northern Rock and a big thankyou to Chris Jameson for taking the photos.

You can view the full set of large pictures by Clicking Here

Yoga the Marvel Way

Some people find Parsvottanasana very difficult. Its a great shoulder opener, working the entire shoulder girdle, helps strengthen the upper back and helping to realign the scapula. However, the most important aspect of this posture that I have witnessed through years of practice, teaching and adjusting is the way in which it encourages lateral structural alignment throughout the entire vertebral column, especially throughout the lumbar and thoracic regions. As the base of the palms move closer towards each other the shoulders become more balanced and almost immediately the pelvic area follows suit. Likewise, better alignment in the hips when folding forward in this pose helps the palms to flatten and move more towards the midline. But don't take my word for it. Let Spidey show you how it is done, he explains it better than I.....

Click here

Jesmond Dene

For any out-of-townies coming to Newcastle for class, then this is the kind of scenery you can expect (if you really go hunting):

This place is called Jesmond Dene, a veritable magical fairy-tale valley hidden underneath the noise and bustle of the busyworld. To view a bigger size click here

House of Ashtanga goes LIVE!

I am pleased to announce the arrival of the official House of Ashtanga website!  We are now going LIVE!  Its been a while trying to get the website sorted, learning webdesign from scratch (for "Dummies"), much study, and many, many, many hours hunched up over a laptop staring at pixels, and photoshop, and BBEdit, and Firefox, and, and, and... gonna need some serious back-bending to fix all of that...

So, please check out the House of Ashtanga website.

Hope you enjoy.  There is also Facebook & Twitter (see links on the right of this page) and, er, this here Blogspot. 

Much love - dan