All drop-in class payments for Friday evening classes at 8 Limbs Phinney Ridge and 8 Limbs West Seattle will be donated directly to Doctors without Borders to aid their relief efforts in Haiti.

Friday, January 22, 2010
8 Limbs Phinney Ridge
6:30 – 7:30pm All Levels Hatha Yoga with Megan Costello
8 Limbs West Seattle
5:45 – 7:00pm All Levels Flow with Amelia Gailey

Drop-ins are $16, please bring cash or checks made out directly to Doctors without Borders.
Please spread the word.

Posted by: 8 Limbs

As the news of the devastating earthquake in Haiti has spread across our office, a staff member directed us to a web page with a list of charitable organizations working in Haiti to help with the disaster. Click here to go directly to the full list, which is from Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC, or click one of the links below (this is a partial list). Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti.

Action Against Hunger
Beyond Borders
Mercy Corps
Yele Haiti (Wyclef Jean’s Grassroots Organization) or Text Yele to 501 501 to donate $5 via your cellphone

Posted by: 8 Limbs

Consider for a moment the way your body feels as you sit in meditation just after shivasana. Perhaps there is a quiet, subtle vibration to your muscles and connective tissue having just moved through an asana practice. Perhaps, too, you experience a crisp clarity in different layers of your being; energy channels, your breath, your thinking. You may leave your mat feeling like you’d just received an all-over body massage – pure bliss. Now imagine that feeling informs your intention with which you begin your day. What could be a better way for setting the tone of your day, each day, than a morning yoga practice?
8 Limbs has always been committed to offering early morning yoga classes to provide an opportunity for you to start your day with a led practice. We want to encourage YOU to commit to yourself and to an early morning practice. This time of year you do have to get up in the dark but you get to enjoy the change of light during class. You may even get to watch the pink light of sunrise suffuse the yoga room.
It is a wonderful time of day to practice!
Capitol Hill
8 Limbs Capitol Hill has adjusted the first morning class schedule to 6:30am-7:45am, Monday through Friday. Join Andreas (MWF) and Jeff (TTh), up on the hill any day of the week!
Phinney Ridge
Due to the strong requests we received for early morning classes before opening our newest studio, there are also daily weekend early morning classes here:
6:00 – 7:00am Mondays & Wednesdays with Megan for you early early birds
6:30 – 7:30am Tuesdays and Thursdays with Brent
6:30 – 7:30am Fridays with Tracy
Wedgwood
Join the longtime community over at Wedgwood for Tuesday/Thursday 6:30 – 7:30am classes with Gregg Turner.
West Seattle
Terilyn serves a vibrant Level II Flow class Tuesday/Thursday 6:30 – 7:30am.

Posted by: 8 Limbs

We’ve been sleeping at the blog wheel for a few weeks while driving another car steadily towards the finish line. 8 Limbs Phinney Ridge is ALMOST complete, and will now open on Thanksgiving Day with a Benefit Class for Solid Ground with Chiara Guerrieri. For info on our Benefit Classes at all four 8 Limbs, click here. They are an 8 Limbs tradition all over Seattle and we are excited to open with this offering to the community. Bring a friend or your whole family!
Our Grand Opening is Friday, December 4th. Doors open at 4:00pm, we’ll play in a Parent/Child Yoga Class at 4:30pm, bless the space with the musical assistance of Gina Salá, and close with an All Levels Yoga class at 7:00pm. Bring the whole family! More info at the Phinney Ridge webpage.
We’ll bring the blog back to life very soon. See you soon!

This morning I sat to practice and it occurred to me that I had passed a milestone without noticing it. On October 13th I confronted a construction issue for the new 8 Limbs on Phinney Ridge, worked with our new Phinney manager Megan, had family dinner, went to Book Club (Olive Kitteridge, it was great), and went to bed without remembering that 13 years ago, on October 13th, 1996, 8 Limbs had its opening party the day before opening for business.
The party consisted of friends who had encouraged and helped me along the way, people like Melina Meza (she was here from the start) Michael Dill, Eben, Roberta, and Suzanne Carlson, Jonna Bracken, Tracy Bartholomew Erbeck, and Megan Jasper.
Spurred on by these folks and Paul Hawken’s book “How to Grow a Business,” I had jumped into the life of a small business owner, and a lease, two months of demo and buildout (most of it by friends and myself!), ads in The Stranger, and a Mac, put 8 Limbs on E. Pike St.
Oh, and incidentally, I was born on Friday the 13th (March, if you are curious, and I will be 40, wow), so I claimed 13 as my lucky number long ago (soccer and volleyball uniforms, that sort of thing).

It’s been a great 13th year for 8 Limbs. We won Best Yoga and Best Prenatal Yoga in The Seattle Weekly, Seattle Magazine, and Seattle Metropolitan Magazine, showing that Seattlites feel at home at 8 Limbs. We maintained and grew our amazing family of teachers. And we are “expecting” our newest member of the clan, 8 Limbs Phinney Ridge, opening in November.

Our best anniversary present was from The Seattle Weekly in its Reader’s Choice section of the Best Of issue:
“8 Limbs is where a local yogi can have a meaningful practice without feeling as if they have to join an ashram or be fully outfitted in Lululemon accessories. Teachers make yoga approachable for the novice and plenty challenging for the pretzel-bodied.”

Thanks to all the 8 Limbers for coming to the mat again and again. We are grateful for and amazed by your strength and loyalty.

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

Join 8 Limbs for a free outdoor yoga class:
Wednesday September 9, 2009, 10:00 – 11:15 a.m.
Gas Works Park, 2101 Northlake Way, Seattle
Gas Works Park will be a beautiful setting for yoga as artist and master kite flyer Seth Abramson launches 121 brilliant white kites into the air that will fly over the city all day long. Commissioned by the Credit Unions of Washington, the Kites Over Washington project is a moment of calm, created to give people a peaceful hiatus in the city. Join us to enjoy asanas in the park and experience this spectacular art project. The Kites Over Washington will also be the subject of an upcoming documentary art film. Please wear as much white as you can, 8 Limbs logos welcome but avoid other logos or patterns. You are giving filmmaker permission to use footage by participating in class.
Reservations are suggested but not required at annephyfe@8limbsyoga.com
Even if you can’t make it to the yoga class, look up in the sky over Gasworks on Wednesday, it should be an amazing sight!

Posted by: 8 Limbs

The name 8 Limbs comes from a central tenet in yoga philosophy that names eight limbs, or aspects, that give us a full kit of tools to work with any challenge we come across. These eight limbs are divulged in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali at the end of Chapter II and throughout Chapter III:
1. Yama (Attitudes towards others)
2. Niyama (Attitudes towards oneself)
3. Asana (Postures)
4. Pranayama (Breath Practice)
5. Pratyahara (Sense Withdrawal)
6. Dharana (Concentration)
7. Dhyana (Meditation)
8. Samadhi (Absorption)
Richard Freeman describes the usefulness of this eight-pronged approach as being akin to having eight legs, like a spider. The more ways we have to navigate our obstacles, the more agile we become. As Sutra II.28 says, “By dedicated practice of the various aspects of yoga impurities are destroyed: the crown of wisdom radiates in glory.”
This fall teachers at 8 Limbs will be using monthly themes in drop-in classes to spin a web, if you will, to bring you deeper into the philosophy of yoga. We’ll begin by moving through the eight limbs of yoga, from September to January. This month we’ll focus on the Yamas, attitudes towards others and the world around us. Look for a blog about the five Yamas this month.

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

I’ve decided to take some time off teaching to focus on my family and practice. When I came to 8 Limbs at the opening of the West Seattle location in 2005, I was based in a strong, dedicated practice of Ashtanga. It was the only yoga I had been doing for 10 years and I benefited so much from this practice.

I stepped into the room to teach what I knew and what turned out 4 years later is that I am not the teacher, but the people and fellow teachers who have walked into my classes have been teaching me. My eyes were opened to all different types of practitioners, various styles of yoga and many levels of the practice. The kindness that generates from everyone’s hearts and minds has been so amazing to see and witness. I am truly honored and am leaving with knowing so much more about yoga not from a physical practice, but from an internal practice.

My last morning class is August 27, Thursday, at 6:30am. To celebrate the present moment and what lies ahead for all of us in the future, this will be a benefit yoga class. Chaz Hastings, tabla player, and Brandon McIntosh, sarodist player, will accompany me in a live performance to the last class. I am donating my pay to the cause of helping dogs on chains with the amazing group, Dogs Deserve Better. This group works tirelessly to free dogs off chains and locked in pens and they work very closely with the state and county legislators to pass better laws for the treatment of man’s best friends.

I am honored to have passed on what I know of this lovely practice and I am so truly blessed to have been given the gift of being a student through all of you these last years.

Please join us Thursday, August 27, 6:30am, West Seattle 8 Limbs.

Vande Gurunam caranaravinde.
I bow to the lotus feet of the Gurus.

Posted by: Kelly Page

This summer we launched a new class at 8 Limbs West Seattle. On Wednesday nights, Senior Level teachers, all with at least 10 years of teaching experience, teach the 7:15pm Level II Flow class for one-month blocks to a chosen theme. Anne Phyfe kicked off the series in June with the Chakras, Melina shared her passion for Ayurveda in July, and Jenny is teaching the Yoga Sutras for August (Anne Phyfe is subbing for her Wednesday, August 19th and will focus on Chapter 3 and the last three limbs yoga).
The response has been terrific so we are extending the class into the fall. Here’s the line-up:
September 2 – 30: The Koshas (Sheaths) with Anne Phyfe Palmer
October 7 – 28: Ayurveda and Yoga with Melina Meza
November 4 – 25: Four Noble Truths (Buddhism) with Jenny Hayo
December 2 – 23: Divine Abode of the Heart with Denise Carrico
Class is $16 for drop-in and included in 8 Limbs memberships and class cards.
If it continues to be a hit we’ll keep it going into the New Year!

Posted by: 8 Limbs

If you’ve ever happened to drop in on one of my yoga classes at 8Limbs you might notice that I like to end each and every practice with the salutation “Namaste.” There are many variations in translation of this traditional Sanskrit greeting; however, my favorite is “I honor that divinity within you that is also within me.”

When I take the opportunity to perceive the deeper meaning behind Namaste, its meaning extends far beyond a typical “hello” and “goodbye,” or a routine ending that we might give to our yoga practice.

It can instead be something that inspires our lives by inviting us to look further than external differences such as gender, sexual preference, race, age, and social class to seek the divine spark that is present in each and every one of us.

In the spirit of celebrating Namaste I am honored to be co-teaching an all levels 1 ½ hour Yoga class with Troy Lucero and Matt Meko to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall, the event that sparked the gay rights movement. This is anticipated to be the largest outdoor yoga event Seattle has ever seen. I truly hope you can be present and share your practice for positive social change. Register TODAY online or come early to register on Saturday. Don’t forget your yoga mat and your Namaste!!

EQUALITY YOGA
Saturday June 27th
Cal Anderson Park
Gates 9AM – Flow 10AM
$15.00 to benefit the Stonewall Organization
www.celebratestonewall.org/yoga

P.S. Steve and Anne-Emilie Gold, two of the musicians accompanying Equalityoga, will sing at the end of Anne Phyfe’s Thursday 10am class at 8 Limbs Capitol Hill.

Posted by: Maygen McGrew