Verve & Vibration Yoga

Happy Valentines Day 💗💞💗

Sunday at 4pm PST! Please join me and Kate in Paradise for our second installment of LUNAR LUST - our seasonal New Moon women’s circle.

In this self-care focused workshop, I’ll be weaving guided self-massage, juicy stretches, and deeply restorative yoga shapes from the comfort of my own bed. We welcome you to bring every pillow, cushion, and blanket in your home to create your very own soft and beautiful space to relax into and open your body, mind, and spirit to an extended Yoga Nidra meditation from Kate. Inspired by the energies that dwell in the SOLAR PLEXUS and HEART spaces of the Divine body, we will dive deep into these sources of courage and love to connect more fully to our own sensual powers within.

Invite and registration link in the comments. Your registration includes an email full of fun extras - a recording of February’s Lunar Lust, a sultry Spotify playlist from Alyson, Kate’s favorite DIY skincare recipes to nourish and luxuriate the body, and reading and resources from the sex-positive influences that we are proud to call our erotic heroines.

Happy New Moon! Follow me and Kate’s monthly lunar magic on Instagram .lounge.pdx 🌑✨

From it’s engaging footing and solid foundation, to the way it shines my heart open, to the fierce line of up-and-down energy as the fingers extend between earth and sky, Side Angle is my all time favorite yoga shape. I’ve been emotionally attached to it for years as a student (I happened to be in the extended variation of it in when I decided, once and for all, that I would never drink again back in 2017 - a massive moment that I’ll always align with the power of illuminating inner strength through healthy movement - that’s where the ‘slay’ lies...🤟✨), and having the opportunity to teach the shape to new yogis across the country countless times between my graduation a year ago today and now is a pretty special feeling.

Here’s to one year of rooting my feet down my feet down in a shakier first year in the world of yoga than I could have imagined in a million years. Here’s to all the strong, beautiful, healthy roots of all the special and supportive people that mine intertwine with every time we flip open our laptops and step to our living room mats to practice together with a spirit of community. Here’s to all the directions I’ve learned to turn my heart toward that no amount of trainings or self development material could have coaxed me toward.

And here’s to the next year - of looking up, creating space for expansion in ways big and small, and reaching toward the stars that drive my ambition as enthusiastically as I do the ground, and the roots within, that supports me every day.

Celebrate one year of yoga teaching with me in the chill restoration vibes of my Screen Rehab class at 6PST tonight on the Verve & Vibration Yoga Facebook Live. We won’t be popping into dynamic shapes like Side Angle, but if you bring a simple chair, a small blanket or beach towel, a rolled up washcloth and two evenly matched pillows or cushions - I’ll show you a thing or two that my year of evolving with my own home-bound yoga practice has taught me about rooting and expanding in complete stillness.
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In tomorrow evening’s .lounge.pdx ‘The PARADIGM & the PORTAL’ New Moon yoga circle, I have created a slow flow through and it’s side-bending variations (including the grounded and graceful shown in the second photo). I love Gate because it offers the Earth connection, stability, and humility of the whole family of kneeling poses, while bringing a blast of energy and expansion through the center line of the body and all its limbs that you experience in powerhouse standing shapes like Warrior II.

The focus of this sequence isn’t as much about perfecting these shapes as it is the way you carry your body, mind, and spirit through the transitions between them. Together, we will study the way that we can offer our collective movements and pauses a bit more strength and intention while simultaneously offering ourselves extra ease, patience, and forgiveness as we find our best, unique expressions of the shapes. As we seal the movement portion of class with Kate in Paradise’s inspired meditation, we hope that extra care and consideration of how you move within and treasure your own body translates into how you move around and create peace and compassion in the world around you.

This class will have time built in for short discussion of where we stand in this moment, and for journaling or independent reflection - we hope you join us in our brave space to move, breathe, and find your next steps as the paradigm shifts and we progress through this portal.
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Please join us in our Zoom Lounge this Friday at 6 PST for grounding movement, deep reflection, and the emergence of your own unique call to action. Details and link to follow.

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A few words from my lunar sister Kate in Paradise about the state of deep, productive contemplation she is striving to create with her Yoga Nidra (yogic sleep) guided meditation for our New Moon collaboration, ‘The PARADIGM & the PORTAL’:

“As we step into the new paradigm, we are being asked to adopt a new way of being. The old normal is currently being torn down and a new reality is being created.

We have an opportunity to internally build the new normal. This is our responsibility to be the conscious co-creators of this new global community.”

Please join us in our Zoom Lounge this Friday at 6 PST for grounding movement, deep reflection, and the emergence of your own unique call to action. Details and link to follow.
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✨🙌🌕🙌✨

Join the Lunar Lounge on Instagram Live (.and.vibration.yoga) tomorrow for reflection, intention setting, and a healing Yoga Nidra (yogic sleep) meditation at 6 PM PST!

Tomorrow is the Harvest Moon, and one of October’s TWO full moons (the next one is Halloween’s Blue Moon - just a few more ways we’re getting real weird with it in 2020...), and Kate in Paradise and I will be calling you to look back on what positive and useful changes and learnings you have ‘harvested’ in your mind and spirit this year as we continue forward in this era of countless difficult departures from the ways of the world we once knew.

Kate’s meditative words will follow Alyson’s short series of focused and grounding shapes, you will find yourself guided to transform your best and most tenacious qualities into the energy needed to enact greater change within yourself and the world that surrounds you.

This is a warm-up to our New Moon workshop, ‘The PARADIGM & the PORTAL’ on Friday October 16th on Zoom. If you’d like a pay-what-you-can recording of our previous cord cutting workshop ‘SEASON OF SWORDS’ DM us - it will be available for the next two weeks and will pair perfectly as an accompaniment to tomorrow’s Nidra practice.

Recommendation to set up your viewing space with pillows, blankets, tea, ritual items, and any other little comforts you’d like to sink a little deeper into this special work. Happy Harvest, and Viva La Luna!

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Throughout tonight’s ‘Season of Swords’ New Moon yoga and cord cutting workshop (link in comments, class at 6 PST and room opens at 5:45 if you’d like to chat with us beforehand ❤️), we will be clasping or hands in . This mudra (pronounced MOO-dra, translating loosely to ‘gesture’ or ‘seal’) will open and close the workshop, and be our collective ‘sword’ that we raise and expand from in my short but inner strength building flow.

This gesture recognizes ferocious goddess Kali, who was unafraid to destroy the old to make room for the new, and is also derived from the Sanskrit word Kala, meaning ‘time’ - an emblem of continual change and impermanence. and I felt this was the perfect hand seal to ramp up the power within the shapes we will be making with our bodies, and for the Cord Cutting ritual where we will seek that inner ferocity to break free of the bo***ge of our own toxic ideas and/or relationships.

I’m really looking forward to this, just for myself. There are ways that 2020 - the injustice, the collective illness, the people I gave too much power to that reject me, the stress of the move, all of this fire and smoke and fear - are really starting to show their toll on my psyche as I reflect from my new life in Portland, and even if it’s just Kate and I mindfully swinging our emblematic and energetic swords around by ourselves in our new Zoom Lounge, I couldn’t be more ready to experience this transition, and feel a whole lot braver for the people who really need me right now.

We hope you join us in raising our swords, reflecting and journaling, meditating, and creating community in our lunar circle tonight at 6:00 PST.
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In this Thursday’s ‘Season of Swords’ installment of the .lounge.pdx (6pm PST), will be dedicating her words to the spiritual purpose of ‘Cord Cutting’. Here, she describes the importance of this ritual that has changed her life countless times over:

"As we go through our life we create energetic cords with the people we come in contact with.

These energetic connections if not tended to will stay intact for years or even lifetimes.

This can often feel draining depleting or even show up as resentment.

As we intentionally sever these cords we return our energy back into our body and create an opportunity for the relationship to be rejuvenated.

Cord cutting is a powerful way of clearing the cobwebs of the past and tending to our energetic field so that we can be the conscious creator of our future.”

This guided meditation will bring the body and mind to a deep relaxation state after Alyson’s short, slow, heat building ‘Sword Breath’ sequence that is welcoming for all levels of yoga experience.

Please join us in our brave space to draw your focus in deeply within, and let go of of your unhealthy attachments - be it to people, ideas, or toxic patterns. Zoom Lounge link available Thursday. Viva la Luna!
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