What is Yoga?

Yoga is an ancient path of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual development which is at least five thousand years old in India, and is practised by millions of people worldwide.  It can be practised by anyone irrespective of age, sex, culture or religion and is suitable for all levels of ability.

What can it help?

Yoga brings an inner ease and harmony.  The word "yoga", from "yuj" in Sanskrit, means union, and one aspect of that union is that it brings union, harmony of the body, mind, heart and spirit.

It is a holistic path of self healing and thus can help alleviate and treat many disorders, physical, mental and emotional.  It can effect change on many levels from the outer to more subtle bodies.

It works with the musculoskeletal system bringing strength, stamina, stability and an increase in flexibility and joint range of motion.  It  brings strength, focus, flexibility and balance to the mind and emotions.  It has significant benefits in managing stress, brings the ability to relax and restore at the deepest (cellular) level, and improves sleep.  It brings vitality to the mind, body and spirit and restores energy.  It improves posture.  It awakens the spine thereby also balancing the whole nervous system.  It massages the internal organs to improve their function.  The breath is one of the closest links with mind and body and yoga focuses very much on the breath through the postures, specific breathing techniques (pranayama) and meditation.  Working with the breath renews the "prana" or "vital force" in the body.  It can help with whole system "dis-eases" such as Cancer, renewing  the "vital force", particularly through the breathing, meditation and relaxation.  It strengthens the immune system. 

Yoga can help and support mothers in pregnancy on many levels, from pre pregnancy, through the nine months up to the birth, particularly the last two trimesters, during the birth, and afterwards.

Yoga aims to effect change not just on the yoga mat but to our very being and so out into our everyday lives.

How does it work?

Our body has the intelligence to know how it needs to move.  The classical yoga postures or asanas developed from this intelligence. The structure developed for the asanas is known as Hatha Yoga.

Inner Yoga combines the practice of the classical asanas with the philosophy and spiritual aspects of yoga, teaching them in a way that can transform the body, mind and emotions, touching the heart of our being.

It works with the so called "eight limbs" of yoga, combining the other "limbs", namely the ethical disciplines, the breathing and the meditation with the practice of the postures themselves.  It focuses very much on bringing awareness of the body, of ourselves as we practice the postures, developing the intuition, our "knowing" from within.

Inner Yoga has a strong influence of the following schools of yoga:

B.K.S. Iyengar – a strong focus on the precision and alignment in the postures

Vanda Scaravelli – a softening, releasing of the outer muscles, to be able to bring the bones back in to alignment; bones are there for strength, to support the body, the muscles are for movement and can then find their place around the bones. All of this allows the inner energy in the body to be released and rebalanced.

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