ABOUT HOLNESS YOGA

Haliburton yoga classes
Yoga workshop events
Yoga classes in Minden, Kinmount & Haliburton
Main Holness Yoga studio location on the Burnt River

Thank you for visiting Holness Yoga Studio. If you are new to my site this page will give you some insight into who I am and the power of yoga.

During my studies, in India, we discussed the subtle powers of asanas. In my textbook I made a note and highlighted the words, "Asanas affect our subconscious mind. They force us to face negative issues of the past." On my personal journey with yoga I know this to be true. The more I practised the more insights I had, and with them, came changes to the way I was thinking. Most importantly, I came to know my spirit. I became a kinder person.

My yoga journey began with the advice of my chiropractor. Prior to meeting her, I had been seeing a back surgeon and surgery had been scheduled. Prior to seeing the surgeon, I had been in physiotherapy for two years, sometimes going twice a week. I shared my feeling of both desperation and fear of surgery with my chiropractor. We decided that the best thing to do was leave my scheduled surgery alone and use the time we had to work together. At first, I was seeing her almost on a daily basis; sometimes twice a day. Then we added yoga.

I began taking a Relaxing Yoga Class once a week, for one hour. It taught me to stop pushing and just relax. It is amazing how hard it can be to relax! I learned how to breathe. I learned how to release my jaw and relax my shoulders. I learned to watch my thoughts and to choose my thoughts wisely. I learned that I deserved to be happy. I began to see the connection between pain and what was happening in my life. I began to understand the language of my spirit. The healing that began to take place felt like a miracle. That one hour a week dedicated to my Relaxing Yoga Class changed my life!

my room I needed to understand what was happening to me. They say "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear". The teacher seemed to appear everywhere. Books, magazines, radio and television all seemed to be telling me what I needed to learn. I remarried, sold my business, moved to Haliburton and gave myself the gift of yoga. I travelled to Neyyar Dam, India, where I received my certification as a Yoga Siromani (Teacher of Yoga), from The International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre. This was a period of great self discovery and growth. It was the first time in my whole life that I had traveled on my own and to such a different culture. I tried not to limit myself with expectations. I really had no idea what I was in for. What I did know was that this was the birthplace of yoga and I needed to go there.

temple I had never before set foot in an Ashram, let alone one in India, which is quite different from what you might experience here. I had never before started my day with the sound of a bell ringing, people from surrounding villages chanting, lions roaring or Satsang (silent meditation, chanting and talk). What I was about to live were the five points of yoga.

Proper Exercise – Asanas
Proper Breath - Pranayama
Proper Relaxation - Savasana
Proper Diet - Vegetarian
Positive Thinking & Meditation – Vedanta and Dhyana

Ashram Positive Thinking & Meditation
Like many people, I found it difficult at first to sit still and crossed legged on the floor. While that was challenging, it didn’t really compare with the challenge of learning how to quiet that constant, unintelligent, insecure, paranoid, self centered voice inside my head that I had mistaken for me. Thoughts - we take them so lightly – we just let them happen. The problem is that an unchecked thought can be like a small fire, set in the middle of a dry grass field, surrounded by forest, in the middle of the dog days of summer, with not an ounce of water in sight. Unchecked thoughts can be disastrous. They can become obsessive, leading to heightened feelings of depression, guilt, anger and self hate. I know now that most of the physical pain I suffered was a result of improper thinking.

On the other hand, checked thoughts can be miraculous. Through meditation and yoga I learned to watch my thoughts. I learned to look at them from a distance, like they belonged to someone else. Often in meditation, you will be asked to imagine yourself in a dark room with a blank screen on the far side of that room to imagine projecting the thoughts inside your head out onto that screen, and then, to simply sit back and watch the show, as you would if you were at the movies - unattached to what you are witnessing. Meditation is empowering. We should be teaching it to our children.

Pranayama, Vishnu-devananda wrote, "Pranayama is the link between the mental and physical disciplines. While the action is physical, the effect is to make the mind calm, lucid and steady."

While in India, the main breathing exercises we practised were Alternate Nostril Breathing or Anuloma Vilma and Kapalabhati, which means skull shining and the Full Yoga Breath. Back home in Canada, we worked with Abdominal Breathing and the Full Yogic Breath. I found these two breathing exercises immensely helpful and I highly recommend them to anyone who is experiencing a stressful time of life. I have had students thank me for teaching them how to breathe because they were able to use them to get through high anxiety times such as dealing with breast cancer for one woman and a broken neck for another. As a teacher, I quickly became aware of the connection between the mind and the breath.

Abdominal Breathing is a great place to start. Lying on your back, you begin by breathing in and out through your nose. Place your hands lightly on your belly and, as you inhale breathe deeply into the bottom of your lungs, feel your belly expanding like a balloon. Exhale and feel your belly falling, like a balloon with the air being released from it. Some people place a book on their belly and try and make the book rise and fall with their breath. During a course I took on Thai Yoga Massage, my teacher said that, as a child, his mother would make him do "heavy book breathing" to calm him down.

Once you have mastered abdominal breathing, you can move to Full Yogic Breathing, AKA, The Three Part Breath or The Wave Breath. With this breath you begin to gain more control of your muscles. Begin by lying on your back, place one hand on your belly and the other on your chest. Breathe in deeply through your nose and take the breath down to the belly (belly rises), then into the chest (chest rises) and finally into the high chest around the collar bone (high chest rises). Exhale and feel your belly fall, chest fall and high chest fall. Remember that the stomach initiates the movement and the chest completes the movement. This is a wonderfully relaxing breath for your brain and your body, because it encourages you to use your full lung capacity and invites more oxygen into your body, while at the same time, removing more stale gases. I like to tell my students to linger in their exhalation because that’s when your body relaxes.

Alternate Nostril Breathing or Anuloma Viloma requires a little more discipline and breath control. Begin by closing your right nostril with your right thumb and breathe in through your left nostril while keeping the right nostril closed. You should count to 4 as you do this. Then, you hold both nostrils closed and retain your breath for a count of 16. Release your right nostril and exhale out the right nostril for a count of 8. Inhale through the right nostril (keep the left nostril closed) for a count of 4. Close both nostrils and retain your breath for a count of 16. Exhale out the left (keeping the right closed) for a count of 8. This completes one round.

The first time I experienced this breath was on Lake Michigan with a woman who was well into her eighties. I had yet to discover yoga. She was teaching it to me because she knew I was in a great deal of pain. This was a very stressful time of my life and I found this breath almost impossible to do. I know now that this is not uncommon. I believe that the more stress one is under, the more difficult this breath will be. If you find it difficult, begin by breathing in and out of one nostril only (In through the right, out through the right). When you feel comfortable, try retaining your breath for a few seconds after your inhalation. Then, try breathing in and out the left, adding retention when you are ready. When comfortable with that, try alternating as explained above. You might start with an inhalation of 4, retention of 4, and exhalation of 4 and gradually work yourself up to inhalation of 4, retention of 16 and exhalation of 8. As you advance, you can increase your count but stay in a ration of 1 - 4 -2.

While there are more breathing exercises in yoga, the last one we will talk about is Kapalabhati. This breathing exercise is also considered one of the Shad Kriyas (six - cleansing exercise). It removes carbon dioxide and other stale gases from the body. Deep sea free divers use it to maximise the oxygen levels in their blood so that they can hold their breath for incredible lengths of time. Sitting up tall, you begin with 2 or 3 deep breaths. After the last inhalation, you contract the abdominal muscles quickly. This forces the diaphragm into the thoracic cavity and pushes the air out of the lungs forcefully. Relax the abdominal muscles and air automatically comes back to inflate the lungs. You repeat this movement quickly, between 10 and 20 times. At the end of the round, you take 2 or 3 deep breaths, and retain your breath for as long as it feels comfortable. Exhale slowly and repeat the whole cycle another 2 times. The more comfortable you get, the more pumping breaths you would take, working up to 50 – 100 times in a round.

Asanas Class Asanas - Yoga Postures
Asanas are what most people think about when they think of yoga. An asana is a posture that we hold. The more advanced - the longer the hold - the more powerful the posture. It is always important to be in a posture that feels right for your body. This knowing of what feels right for your body is probably what makes yoga so powerful. My personal experience with my body had been one of complete disconnect. I knew I was in pain, but often it was hard to describe where my pain was. I found it often moved around and I was mentally aggravated by it. I often ignored it until it became so intense that ignoring was impossible. I felt like a victim.

It was this attitude that got me to the point of almost having back surgery. During this time of my life, I suffered with many ailments; neck, shoulder and back pain were the just the beginning, hives, teeth grinding and clenching (that lead to 3 root canals and the removal of one tooth that I managed to crush), reoccurring bladder and yeast infections, numb and tingly fingers and hemorrhoids. This was happening while I was in my twenties and thirties. Fitness had always been part of my life. I was a certified fitness instructor. I was an avid mountain biker, hiker and swimmer. I loved to be active! However, what I needed was to be still. This is one of the greatest differences between the exercise that we know it in the west and Yoga.

Yoga postures require you to be focused on your inner body; the sounds and feelings that are happening inside you. You have to give your body your full attention. The more closely you listen, the more you hear. This is when you tap into the power of yoga. This is when you begin to understand the language of your spirit. Our bodies communicate to us constantly through pain and pleasure. Before yoga, my body and my spirit were screaming at me to get my attention. Now my body and my spirit need only whisper and I will be listening. Now in my fifties, I am enjoying the most pain free time of my life! It feels so good!

There are few basic postures in yoga but millions of variations. This is why it works for everyone. I like to think of a posture as a destination I am moving towards. At any point of that journey, I may discover a place that feels good for my body and it is here that I will rest. If I don't get to my final destination, that's OK! There's another day. I once read that if you have difficulty squatting that you should pile telephone books on top of each other and use them to support yourself. Each day, remove a single page. Yoga is a practice in patience. Listed below are some of the classic yoga postures and their Sanskrit names.

Headstand - Sirsasana
Shoulderstand - Sarvangasana
Plough - Halasana
Bridge - Situbandhasana
Fish - Matsyasana
Forward Bend - Pashchimotanasana
Incline Plane
Cobra - Bhujangasana
Locust - Salabhsana
Bow - Dhanurasana
Half Spinal Twist - Ardha Matsyendrasana
The Crow - Kakasana
Standing Forward Bend - Pada Hastasana
Triangle - Trilonasana

Prior to doing our postures, we would warm up with leg lifts and Sun Salutation. Sun Salutations are a series of 12 different spinal positions that you move through quickly with your breath. They encourage rapid improvement in flexibility.

Savasana - Relaxation
The mind and body are intimately connected. We are under constant stimulation by the world around us and the world around us continues to move at an ever faster pace. We are on demand 24/7 and we expect the same from others. Advances that were supposed to make our lives easier have made our minds busier (not smarter) and our bodies weaker (not healthier).

Most of us go through the day and night with our adrenalin flowing - our senses signalling our minds to be alerted, in the "fight, fright or flight" mode. This call to action is necessary in danger but to live our lives in this constant state is literally sickening. Instead of using energy at night time to rejuvenate and heal and repair our bodies, we clench, grind and tense. Many of us wake feeling exhausted. During savasana or final relaxation, we learn to consciously relax our mind and body. Learning to relax was a key factor in my healing. My first attempts at savasana were difficult. I would quickly begin to think about everything and anything I had to do and how urgent it was to get it done. I would fidget and feel uncomfortable. However, this slowly began to change. My breathing began to slow down as did my thoughts. With every body part I was asked to relax, I seemed to melt deeper into the ground. Savasana is done on your back on the floor. At this time, I was unable to feel comfortable lying in my bed or sitting in a chair. Yet here I was lying on a hard floor feeling like I was floating in air. The 10 minutes I spent in savasana quickly became the highlight of my entire week! Many of my own students often tell me how they hear my voice guiding them through savasana as they fall to sleep at night. The ability to relax is truly a wonderful gift.

Diet
graduation feast Another thing I had never experienced before going to India was a vegetarian diet. I returned from India a vegetarian. Meals in India were scooped out of stainless steel buckets onto a stainless steel plate as we sat cross legged and silent on the temple floor. Meals began with prayer. We ate in silence. The major component of our diet was rice, twice a day. While our diet was simple, it was nourishing. I learned the value of eating to live as opposed to living to eat.

You will be hearing more and more that the best thing you can do for the environment is to become a vegetarian. In Ted Trainer's "The Simpler Way", he states the following about meat. "This is a very resource-expensive form of food. For each kg of meat we get, the animal has eaten 5 to 10 kg of food. Worst of all is feedlot production of meat where all the food the animals eat has to be transported in. More than 70% of the food produced in Europe and America is used to produce food for animals that will be eaten by humans. Home gardeners and Third World peasants are more than 100 times as energy efficient in producing food as modern "agribusiness" farmers are."

We are what we eat, and in North America, this thought can be unnerving. When we eat meat from animals that have been raised in overcrowded conditions, we eat the stress hormones they have circulating through their bodies. When their food is filled with antibiotics and growth hormones, we eat them too. The quality of our food supply is deteriorating. In an effort to make our food visually appealing and to get ever larger yields, we have scarified nutritional quality. We are paying the price with our health. This is the first time in the history of man that children will live a shorter life than their parents. You need only look at the skyrocketing cases of childhood obesity and diabetes. It is time for change. My personal experience as a vegetarian has been one of health.

Yoga teaches that we have three bodies;

The Physical Body - Stula Sharira, is the food sheath or Annamay Kosha, which is made up of the five elements, earth - prithivi, water - apas, fire - agni, air – vayu and ether – akasha. On decay, the physical body returns to the earth.

The Astral Body - Linga Sharira or Sukshma Sharira, is how we experience pain and pleasure. It is made up of the:

Vital Sheath - Pranamaya Kosha "Etheric Double" which is make up of 5 Pranas

Prana - function is respiration
Apana - function is ejection or urine, faeces and reproduction
Samana - function is digestion
Udana - Function death and separates the physical body from the astral body
Vyana - function is the circulation of blood.

and the 5 organs of action;
Mouth
Hands
Feet
Anus
Genitals

Mentle Sheath - Manomaya Kosha - here we think and experience emotions. It is made up of;
Mind - Manas, think and doubt
Sub-conscious - Chitta, our store house of information
Organs or knowledge - Jnana Indriyas, our senses - sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.

Intellectual Sheath - analyse and determines the true nature any object and ego. It works with the organs of knowledge.

Blissful Sheath – anandanmaya, experiences bliss, joy calm and peace.

The Chakras are the centres of subtle vital energy. They store energy forces and act as centers for consciousness. Each chakra represents a state or level of consciousness. The more conscious we become, the more we move up through the chakras. The chakras are as follows;

First Chakra - The Malundar	It relates to our tribal instincts and survival, it has been compared to the sacrament of Baptism, Sefirah- Shekhinah - Gaia, creation. It is found at the base of the spine, the sacral plexus.

Second Chakra - The Swadhisthana	It relates to personal power, and has been compared to the sacrament of communion, Sefirah- Yesod- Foundation. It is found at the genitals, the prostate plexus.

Third Chakra - The Manipura	It relates to self, individuality. It has been compared to the sacrament of Confirmation, Sefirah - Hold and Nezah - majesty and endurance. It is found in the solar plexus at the navel.

Fourth Chakra - The Anahata	It relates to love. It has been compared to the sacrament of Marriage, Sefirah- teferet – beauty. It is found at the heart in the cardiac plexus.

Fifth Chakra - Vishuddha	It relates to personal will and truth. It has been compared to the sacrament of Confession, Sefirah - Gevurah and Hesed - Judgement and mercy. It is found at the throat in the laryngeal plexus.

Sixth Chakra - Ajna	It relates to mind and clarity. It has been compared to the sacrament of Ordination, Sefirah - Sbinah and Hohmah - Understanding and wisdom. It is located between the eyebrows (third eye) in the cavernous plexus.

Seventh Chakra - Sahasrara	It relates to a sense of oneness with all creation. It has been compared to the sacrament of Extreme Unction, Sefirah - Keter - crown. It is found at the crown of the head.

When we are having difficulty in life; when negative emotions start to rule our brains, we suffer physically. This was the case with me. By practicing yoga I began to tap into a deeper understanding of life and began to realise the importance of right action and right thought. Things that had happened in my life began to surface, and as they did, I began to choose the right choice. I began to choose forgiveness over anger, love over hate and trust over doubt and uncertainty. I began to release control over things I really never had any control over, and at the same time, I took back my power over things I did have control over. The tension and the pain in my body began to slowly melt away. It took time but it was evident that I was moving in the right direction. When I asked my students how yoga had changed their life, one person said, "I feel like I am kinder person." I too feel like I am a kinder person.

I have shared a small portion of my life with you. I hope it helps you on your yoga journey. I hope you are able to find a teacher who inspires you to look within, to find your true perfect self.

Shanti (peace) .... gail