Workshop: How to awaken the flow of Prana and build your home practice

You’ve been regularly going to yoga classes for awhile now, maybe even my Prana Flow Yoga classes at Pump Dance Studios. You love how you feel after class, and you’re thinking you’d like to start practicing some yoga at home, but where to start?

Never fear – it’s far easier than you think to start practicing yoga at home.

In fact, your biggest challenge is simple unrolling your mat in a quiet space and stepping on to it.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll find that your yoga practice flows effortlessly and you’ll be wondering why you waited so long!

The best thing about practicing yoga at home is that you get to listen to the perfect yoga teacher for you – your own inner yoga teacher. And trust me, every single one of us has one. Inside of you, you know exactly what yoga asana you need to do in order to open and strengthen your body. All you gotta do is start tuning in.

So where do you start?

My advice?

Start in child’s pose.

It’s the same way I start most of my classes, for the simple reason that most everyone can do it, and it’s an ideal way to connect to the breath. Child’s pose is an easy pose to remember from class too. It begins to open up the spine, it gets you thinking about the principles of alignment – (a-line-ment. Simple things line up. Hips, knees, ankles. Shoulders, elbows, wrists). And by connecting to the breath and beginning to follow the breath around the body, you begin to connect to prana and to your internal yoga teacher.

If you just want to do ten minutes of child’s pose, and then turn over and take savasana, that is a great home yoga practice. Super simply, super effective, and a super solid beginning.

So first up – this is what I suggest you do, give yourself permission to get on your yoga mat and just do those two postures – Child and Corpse.

But you’re thinking, I went to all the trouble of rolling out my mat and getting on to it – I want to do more than that!

Awesome!

So let’s add on another very simple vinyasa (postures that are linked together in flow with conscious breathing.)

Sun salutations.

You know you do them in class, sometimes over, and over, and over. In my classes, we do endless variations of sun salutations too, adding in lunges, variations of Warrior including Dancing Warrior, hip openers in three-legged dog, rounded planks… ah, so many choices…

But at home, all you need to do is remember the most basic sun salutation and work with that. And you’re thinking, I don’t know if I can remember it! Well start with what you do know, tadasana. Mountain pose. Standing tall. And then allow muscle memory to take you from there.

Playing around with child, sun salutations and savasana will give you a thorough home practice that can take as litte time or as much time as you like. Depending on how you allow your sun salutations to unfold you can focus on hip opening, shoulder opening, long restorative holds, constant moving meditation… the options are endless.

But there is one more vital tool that really helps in developing a solid home practice. This is adding in pranayama, meditation and mantra. While regular asana practice can awaken the flow of Prana within, and allow that prana to begin directing your practice, regular practice of specific pranayama, meditation and mantra is like turbo-charging this process.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been using a set kriya that takes about 25 minutes, and is specifically designed to awaken the flow of prana. Done in three parts, the first part uses alternate nostril beathing (or nadi shodhana), the second part uses bandha pranayama, and the third part uses a silent om meditation. If I’ve only got time to do either an asana practice, or this pranayama kriya, I’ll usually choose the kriya. It’s just far more powerful for where I am at right now.

And if right now you’re thinking… kriya? bandha? nadi shodhana? what on earth is this woman talking about… Well you’re right, it is difficult to use words to describe yogic practice. The best way to transmit this information is to demonstrate it, and to work with you as you learn it.

So with that in mind, Taisuke and I are doing our first Prana Flow Workshop – Awakening the Flow of Prana. It will be held on Saturday May 30th at Pump Dance Studios, from 12.30pm until 5pm.

Designed for the student who has no experience of Prana Flow Yoga, and the student who wants to deepen their Prana Flow Yoga practice, this workshop will give you the tools you need to develop a Prana Flow Yoga home practice.

The workshop will consist of:

A warm-up Prana Flow yoga class introducing students to the main components of Prana Flow, including music, mudra, mantra, asana, pranayama, meditation and kriya. The warmup class will include a three stage pranayama kriya designed to awaken the flow of prana within students, and end with a discussion about all the various elements and why they matter, including taking questions from students.  This will take about 2 hours.

After a short break, we’ll head into the second part of the workshop, which will explore how to develop a home yoga practice using the principles of Prana Flow. We’ll look at how to base a home practice on variations of sun salutations, and how to structure a home practice based on personal needs.

By the end of the workshop, students will know:

• What Prana Flow Yoga is all about
• A three stage kriya that they can practice at home to awaken Prana
• How to base a home practice on variations of sun salutations
• How to structure a home practice based on their own personal needs

We’re limiting the number of people to 20, and the cost for the workshop, payable on the day in cash, is $50. This include the cost of handouts covering the material we’ll be teaching, like the three stage kriya and variations of sun salutations.

To book your place (and please only book if you truly intend to come as spaces are limited), use the form below.

Plus we’re also giving away one space on the workshop for free to a nominated student. So if you know of someone you think would love to come, but doesn’t necessarily have the finances right now to pay for it, please nominate them via the form below. We’ll pick one person from the nominations to attend the workshop for free.

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