Summer Retreat at Harmony Hill

We all come to yoga for different reasons. Some of us seek to rejuvenate our bodies and de-stress, some to quiet our minds and gain perspective, others to restore our spiritual connection and sense of compassion. When I first began practicing yoga I needed all of these things without even knowing I could attain them through the practice, but at the end of a really, really, really good class, they would all be there – patiently waiting for me.

Not only did this ignite a burning yoga addiction, it left me wondering … Why did some classes leave me feeling centered, balanced and calm and others much less so? Which poses lifted me up when I was barely dragging myself around? Which ones pulled me back to the ground when I had taken off like a rocket ship in my mind? How could I alter my approach to a posture, breathing technique or meditation to bring myself back to a state of harmony? And what were the underlying principals that would allow me to apply this practice to all areas of my life, rather then just what I do in the studio and on my mat?

If you are at all curious about what I’ve discovered and how you can tailor your yoga practice and daily activities to live a life in balance, I invite you to join me the first weekend in June for a local retreat on the Hood Canal. We’ll explore the synergy between Yoga and Ayurveda to uncover and sustain our whole self!

For more information, or to register, please visit the Retreats page of our website.

Posted by: Jennifer Yaros

Yes, this is a call to action, an invitation to get your butt on a bike. May is the month that the Cascade Bicycle Club challenges our region to step up our bicycle commuting, be it once a week or every day.

Just like any habit, bicycling (or walking!) is one that takes cultivation. Over the next few weeks, I challenge all of you to become more of an Undriver, to walk or bike whenever you can, and let your cars (if you have them) get a little dustier. Whether your motivation is escalating costs (hello parking on Capitol Hill!!!), pollution, physical health, or freedom from the almighty car, increasing your bicycle commuting will help.

I myself put my bike down for almost eight years. After a lifetime of bicycle commuting on two wheels, I got pregnant, moved to Madison Valley, and let my once beloved mountain bike lie dormant in our dark and moldy basement, in the shadow of a seemingly insurmountable hill. Now we are a one-car family with 4+ human-powered bikes and 2 electric bikes in our bike locker. Learn more about my bicycling story and how I overcame several obstacles in the May 2011 Blog and Undriver documentary short.

I am here to say that becoming a regular bicycle commuter has been the most impactful choice I have made in the last few years. I get to work quickly. I get exercise on my way to work (so much for the “I don’t have time excuse” I used for years). I get to wear a crazy polka dot helmet. I don’t have to pay for parking. And my yoga practice has become more focused on pranayama and meditation as I no longer use it as my primary source of exercise.

We would love to have you join Team 8 Limbs, 2 Wheels in the Group Health Commute Challenge. To join please email me, the Team Captain, at annephyfe@8limbsyoga.com and I’ll invite you to the team (the only way to join). Or start your own team at work!

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer
P.S. Don’t forget today is GiveBIG, The Seattle Foundation’s day to stretch your donations to local non-profits like Yoga Behind Bars, Street Yoga, and hundreds more.

8 Limbs is partnering with City Arts Magazine to profile local artists who practice yoga at 8 Limbs. To coincide with the Seattle International Film Fest, May 17 – June 10, in the May issue we highlight Filmmaker, Programmer, and Curator Adam Sekuler, Program Director at The Northwest Film Forum. Adam has brought Northwest Film Forum into a national leadership position in alternative film exhibition, curating individual films, thematic series, director retrospectives and film festivals since 2006. Before arriving in Seattle, Adam was the programmer for the nation’s first and only dedicated non-fiction theatre, The Bell Auditorium. He is also co-founder of Search and Rescue, an ongoing effort to present and preserve discarded archives of 16mm films. Here’s what Adam thinks about yoga, the creative process, and the teachers he has encountered at 8 Limbs.

What brought you to yoga?
I had been thinking about doing yoga for a long time. I received an introductory 6 week program as a birthday gift, and it’s been the best gift I’ve ever received!

How long have you practiced yoga?
Four Months now.

How does yoga support your art?
As someone who spends an awful lot of time in an editing chair, Yoga keep my mind and body in good condition to do my work. Some of the somatic qualities of yoga also come in handy as I find myself frustrated in my own creative process. They really help calm the spirit.

Why practice at 8 Limbs?
I’ve now visited a couple of yoga studios and I must say that the teachers at 8 Limbs really help you find your body’s pathway into the practice.

Posted by: 8 Limbs Yoga Centers

Teacher Name: Sally Carley

Website: www.sallycarley.com

Where do you teach: I teach 50+ classes on Capitol Hill and in West Seattle; Level 1 CH and Level 2 WS
(also Samarya Center, Eastlake Yoga and Aditi and privately)

Hobbies/Interests: Practicing, teaching and reading about yoga, medicine and health. Hiking, kayaking, traveling. I am so lucky to this Spring be traveling to Carmel, to Jazzfest in New Orleans, and to France, Italy and Switzerland.

One secret that helps you to stay healthy is: Turmeric and naps

What are you inspired by: I am inspired by my students, living with all kinds of challenges, who are devoting themselves to this practice of each of the 8 Limbs of Yoga. Volunteer teaching of yoga to veterans and their families at the VA hospital has proved deeply inspiring to me, and infuses all of my teaching.

Quote I am currently fond of:
“It’s only when we realize that we’re not as vulnerable as we fear we are that we can afford to tell the truth.”
-Ram Dass

Posted by: 8 Limbs Yoga Centers

The first week of every April the 8 Limbs 200-hour Teacher Training Program heads to the old-growth forests in the Oregon Cascades to close the training with a personal retreat at Breitenbush Hotsprings, one of the most nourishing places on the planet. 8 Limbs has been making this trek since 2004, and we now head back in the summer for another Advanced Training Retreat in July. These retreats are both open to non teacher training participants, in fact our friend Bill has attended the last 6 years!

This most recent training we had the grace to hear a fabulous female duo play one of our evenings off. MaMuse is made up of two chicas from Chico, CA who play cello, mandolin, guitar, ukelele, and flute, in addition to their lovely voices. Their music is SOOOO heartfelt and speaks to the vulnerability and awkwardness of being human in a very special way. It’s yoga music that isn’t yoga music, if you know what I mean. During the show, Chiara, Melina and I kept looking at one another in awe, pleased with our good fortune to be in the right place at the right time. Check them out on their website or on Pandora.

We were so touched we invited MaMuse to play at 8 Limbs on their way through town. They will play an acoustic set at 8 Limbs Capitol Hill at 7:30pm (thanks to Tim for graciously moving his class to Chandra to accommodate). Tickets are $10 advance, $15 at door, though no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Kids are welcome, and free. Please bring a cushion or camping chair for your comfort as we have limited seating options.

The info is on our website under Special Events, has a Facebook Event, and advance tickets may be purchased online.

Hope to see you there!

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

Fourteen years ago I saw a flyer for a workshop on the Chakras with a Portland, OR yoga teacher named Shari Friedrichsen. On a whim I signed up for the class and found myself in a small room above an aikido studio on Aurora Avenue with about fifteen other yoga teachers and practitioners. We practiced, we talked, and we sat.

From that day I knew I had finally found my yoga teacher. Shari had the presence I’d been seeking, a style of compassionately addressing emotional content in asana. Soon thereafter I contacted Shari and visited her in Portland for a private on the way to the Oregon coast (where my husband and I decided to get married, quite a weekend!). It was such a relief to finally find a mentor. I had been resistant to follow a big name teacher so Shari was perfect, a humble and unassuming seeker of truth. We had an immediate connection and have been in touch ever since.

Shari now serves on the faculty at The Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, PA, training yoga teachers from all over the world, and lives onsite with her husband Mark. Two years ago Shari agreed to travel to Seattle to teach at 8 Limbs. It has been so rewarding to share her special loving style of teaching with the 8 Limbs community. She returns May 4-6 to teach in our 500-hour Teacher Training and share three mini-workshops for the General Public: Building a Strong Core Foundation, The Chakras, and Weaving The Yoga Sutras into Practice. Many 8 Limbs teachers have enjoyed classes with Shari, including Tra

Early bird pricing ends this Friday, April 20, so register now through 8 Limbs Capitol Hill (note: the workshop is at 8 Limbs Phinney Ridge). Click here for info on our website.

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer

Several years ago I was obsessed with padmasana, or lotus pose. I’d had the good fortune of having taken classes with a woman who, at the time, was the only Iyengar certified yoga instructor in Latin America. She’d shown me a beautiful way of working towards the posture, and as I admit to being very goal-oriented, it was enlivening my yoga practice. At the end of every class I would practice the pose, although often, if I was truthful, it felt a little forced. Then one day, as I sat in full lotus at the end of a class, I heard a quite audible “pop.” I could immediately tell something was wrong. In the next couple of days my knee became swollen with a dull continuous ache.

For years I’d had some of the best yoga teachers in Seattle. They’d always told me to listen deeply to my body and never to force or strain. I’d heard it so many times that I’d tuned it out – it’s like those safety demonstrations you get at the beginning of a plane flight. How often do we really listen to those things? In the case of yoga, how often do we honor that voice that tells us to come out of a pose? How often do we allow ourselves to do that simpler variation that the teacher offered? Life’s funny like that: sometimes if we don’t listen to our teachers, whether it’s the outward manifestation or more importantly, our own inner voice, life often gives us a teacher with a louder voice that we’re more likely to hear. In my case that teacher was an injury.

About the only thing I could think to do was call up a couple of friends who were physical therapists. They shared with me what many of the most common knee injuries were and gave their best guess outside of a formal diagnosis what I’d done. It turns out that yoga includes all of the exercises and stretches that a physical therapist would give to someone to rehabilitate from a knee injury or to keep their knees strong and injury-free.

Now, years later, my knee has mostly healed. I no longer have the option of taking it for granted though. It speaks loudly to me if it’s out of alignment. I have no choice but to come out of a pose if I feel my knee. I had to let go of lotus pose.

Sharing this experience, I’ve been approached time and time again by students with their own knee issues. Although it’s important to remember that yoga teachers are not trained to diagnose or treat an injury, there are quite a few things we can do within the practice to keep our knees happy and healthy. It’s also quite possible for some injuries to heal.

Posted by: Adi
Adi will be sharing the wisdom of his experience in his workshop entitled “The Bee’s Knees” this Sunday, April 15, from 12:30 – 2:30 at 8 Limbs Wedgwood.

One of my main jobs as Education Director at 8 Limbs is the creation/management of the class schedules at each of our four neighborhood yoga studios. Three times a year, in January, June, and September, we print new schedules. I spend about a month taking in change requests and talking with teachers and managers to fill open slots and come up with new classes or a class focus. I am currently in the midst of this process. It’s quite a jumble at first, but I’ve found that if I have plenty of meditation time, and get to a few yoga classes a week, the answers eventually come to me (with plenty of processing with other staff members!).

One of the core concepts that directs me in this endeavor is our name. 8 Limbs was chosen to honor the full range of yoga practice, or sadhana, available to the seeker, the sadhaka. There are eight aspects, or limbs, only one of which is the almighty asana. Ideally, our teachings at 8 Limbs combine several if not all of these limbs of yoga: ethical principles and ways to be in the world (yamas and niyamas), yoga postures (asanas), the freeing of the breath (pranayama), restraint of the senses (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and absorption (samadhi). Learn more about the 8 Limbs in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, which you’ll find shared in Jen Yaros’ classes and when it strikes the fancy of our other teachers.

The other main principle I aspire to is variety, both of types of classes and of teaching styles. What guided me in founding 8 Limbs was the awareness that there are many ways to practice yoga, just as there are many types of people. While one could say there is a unifying “feeling” at 8 Limbs,” we like to offer options that allow you, the practitioners at 8 Limbs, to address your phase in life and changing energy levels each day, and to follow where your interests in yoga are taking you. We offer a core schedule of “flow” classes for the movers and dancers. We have many Hatha classes that allow for more stillness in postures. We’ve added Yoga Nidra, Gentle, and Restorative options to support you in managing the stress load of urban life. Our teachers share their extensive knowledge in philosophy and the non-physical aspects of practice in their drop-in classes and in workshops.

We know that in Seattle you have numerous options for your yoga practice. Yoga can be found almost every street corner, in most fitness centers/gyms, and in many workplaces. We want to be your home for yoga, the place you are able to meet yoga in new and exciting way, the place you surround yourself with a sangha, a community of others interested in this ancient practice.

Let us know how we are doing. Write a Recommendation on Facebook. Post a class or teacher request or review on our Facebook Wall. Or send me an email at annephyfe@8limbsyoga.com. As always, the full range of feedback is encouraged and welcome. This month you can win a free five class pass: on April 15th we’ll pull a name out of a hat (or bowl from all who post one of the above from April 2-15.

Posted by: Anne Phyfe Palmer, 8 Limbs Owner & Education Director