Sun & Moon Yoga Studio

As autumn arrives, imagine yourself on a weekend stroll through meadow and forest, enjoying delicious seasonal homemade meals, breathing in and breathing out with energizing and restorative yoga, roasting marshmallows by an evening fire, meeting new friends and bonding with old ones. That's what we've got in mind for our third weekend retreat to in West Virginia, Nov 4 -6. JOIN US! Space is limited to 12 people, and spots are already filling up.
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Link in bio to sign up!

Life throws us out of balance, and being out of balance often brings aches, pains, and fatigue. Sometimes the causes are obvious, but when those causes linger and become persistent, they begin to feel more like "normal" and we cease to recognize them for what they are. Beyond what we hear of yoga being about ‘union,’ it is also about balance, particularly within the body. In this way, yoga offers us practical tools for reestablishing and better maintaining balance, stability, and freedom of movement. 

Join for a four-part weekend exploring ways to get back in balance. Themes include: Feet as Foundation: New Perspectives & Connections to the Knees and Hips (Friday afternoon), Loving the Low Back:  Fundamental and Functional Support for Movement  (Saturday early afternoon), Opening the Wings of the Breath: Keys to the Shoulder Girdle (Saturday late afternoon), and Breath, Self-Mastery, and Tools for Practice in Meeting Contemporary Health Challenges (Sunday early afternoon)
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Register for full weekend or a la carte. Workshop will be presented in-person and livestreamed on Zoom, with a recording available for one month.

For a yoga teacher, those quiet moments in the room just before students arrive can be sacred. We take a moment to remember that human nature is unpredictable, and the laws of impermanence dictate that every class will be a new experience, a new co-creation, and a chance for potential unfolding in many different directions. Our sincere wish and prayer is that each one who enters this space will find ease in the moments they spend here, relief from suffering, and some semblance of peace.
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SHIFTING ON AXIS.

Known as the Axial Age, the second half of the millennium before Jesus was born was a time of great human flourishing and spiritual curiosity – a field day for thought leaders and renegades. It saw Socrates drink poison hemlock rather be intellectually censored by the Greek state. It had Confucius clarifying morals and ethics, Hebrew prophets waxing poetic about individual accountability, and Yogis challenging ritual sacrifice that dictated how they could commune with the divine.

And it saw Siddhartha Gautama meditate his way to enlightenment under a tree after renouncing his own privilege that shielded him from the real suffering in the world. The Buddha's awakening coincided with awakenings that swept the globe and changed the way ordinary people considered their own awakened spirits.

It's hard to know how history will view our current times, but it's not hard to feel and see the numerous data points currently shaping our own axial moment. The pandemic and the concurrent socio-political-economic upheavals of the last few years have shifted the axis of the status quo.

Huge shifts are vibrating in and all around us, affecting everything from how we work professionally and how we relate inter-personally, to how we co-exist with nature and how we organize our civil structures.

Like the Buddha and thousands of his contemporaries, we need embodied practices, supportive community, and wisdom-driven opportunities to settle our minds to help us ride these waves of change. We hope you'll join us this fall for yoga, meditation, contemplative practices, and workshops to feed your mind/body/community/spirit.

“Find the place that has the right amount of sensation for you - not too much and just enough.” As heard in class by the marvelous 🌞🌙💜

AUGUST AND EVERYTHING AFTER

Shout out to all you fans who recognize this line evoking an end-of-summer vibe. As the best music, literature, or other expressive art forms do, the phrase "August and Everything After" reminds us how certain moments in time can represent bridges from season to season, place to place, person to person. Moving toward the end of summer, we balance the savor of August warmth with promise of autumn crisp; the light mode of vacation season with the thoughtful mode of September renewal; the bounty of garden harvest with the hunkering down of fall energy.
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Link in bio to join us for August classes & workshops, and MORE COMING this fall!

📷 by christina rumpf on unsplash

FREE Q&A SESH! Come learn about the 13th running of our acclaimed In-Depth Yoga Teacher Training program beginning in-person with hybrid options this October!

Ask questions, get answers, find inspiration. Watch the the recording if you can't make it live.

Link in bio to register.

Sun & Moon Yoga's In Depth Teacher Training: A Few Words!

YOGA TEACHER TRAINING BEGINS IN OCTOBER! Listen to some snippets from a recent sneak peek as teachers, graduates, and directors of our acclaimed 200-hour In-Depth Foundations program share their thoughts on curiosity, relationship, taking our time, finding our voices, and taking social responsibility – all of them key features at Sun & Moon! Join our upcoming free info session Sunday 7/31 at 3p, learn more about our program, and apply now - link here: https://bit.ly/teachertrainingfoundations

Sun & Moon Yoga's In Depth Teacher Training: A Few Words! Listen to some snippets from our last sneak peek as teachers, graduates, and directors of the program share their thoughts on curiosity, relationship, taking...

THE FINE LINE OF FLEXIBILITY

Ease of movement is a beautiful gift of our complex and brilliant nervous system, which thrives on redundant motor neurons that help us take what's thrown at us (a strong wind, an emotional blow or a potentially deadly disease) and literally stay upright and functioning without conscious awareness. We don't necessarily access this amazing capacity on a regular basis, but we do get glimpses of it in times of extreme need as it busily organizes, sweeps out, and forges new pathways behind the scenes.

But on the road to flexibility, we must be on the lookout for significant potholes. Hitting those at high speed risks losing integrity that holds us together, and many of us move so fast that we don't realize we've gone beyond safe boundaries until something breaks, whether a tendon or a heart.

In asana practice as in life, we benefit from moving in a healthy range of motion that functionally supports and nourishes who we are rather than shape shifts us into what we think the world wants us to be. And as we celebrate our malleability, we can also seize opportunities for radical change – both within and around us – to move in mindful ways that define safe boundaries, strengthen our instabilities, and stabilize our proverbial core.

Navigating our way through our own bodies and alongside each other requires great and careful attention, with some choice guideposts to point the way. It is in service of the greater tenets of yoga (non-harming, truth, contentment, self-study, and discipline) to strive for balance as we tend to our habitual patterns, and to heal and be whole so that it may be echoed both deep within and all around.
~ / .ebb

WELCOME, CATHA!

Catha Pavloff wore the perfect shirt for her first class at Sun & Moon! New to our teaching staff but not new to the work, she can’t imagine life without yoga. Her yoga practice has helped her journey through life's most difficult challenges. It also plays a key role in helping her to age healthfully. She is passionate about sharing these same benefits with her students, and takes much joy in seeing her students grow - in all aspects of their being - through their practice. Students describe her teaching style as fun and dynamic, knowledgeable and yet light-hearted, challenging and yet respectful of students' limitations, and a facilitator of community and connection between students. Catha has practiced yoga since 2003 and has been teaching since 2011. She is a Yoga Alliance E-500 Hour Registered Yoga Teacher and Certified Continuing Education Provider.

Catch her subbing for Enid all summer long on Tuesday afternoons at 5p in-studio and on Zoom, and look for more classes with Catha this fall!

LInk in bio to register.