Elena will guide you through a playful, uplifting arm balance workshop while incorporating a deep focus on rooting the hands into the ground while preparing to take flight!

Adding arm balances to your practice can help empower the body, mind and soul. It will encourage you to tap into your inner child and confront some of those fears that you may have built up over the years.

This workshop will take you through the fundamentals of basic arm balances such as bakasana (crow) and parsva bakasana (side crow), whilst also offering advanced variations for those who have already mastered the basics. You will gain insight into the mechanics of some of the more trickier arm balances, learning how to use bandhas, drishti and breath to help you lift your feet further off of the ground in your practice.

Towards the end of the workshop you will have the chance to integrate your new arm balance skills into a short, fun and grounding sequence incorporating your new lightness in the body that you need to eventually take flight. You will close this playful session with some luxurious restorative postures and a very relaxing savasana.

Be prepared to work through some tough body conditioning drills and also have a lot of fun learning to fly!!!

Come and play.

All levels welcome.

About Elena
Elena is trained in Ashtanga Vinyasa, Mandala Vinyasa, Yin and Chakra theory and teaches in our Winchmore Hill studio, Camden, Finsbury Park, Harringay and Caledonian Road studios.

A 2 hour workshop that will give you the knowledge of how to expand your lung size for greater volumes of oxygen, which repairs and detoxes the body. Introducing techniques using the main respiratory muscle the diaphragm, expanding the rib cage and building strength and flexibility in the intercostal muscles. We will be practicing the foundations of kumbhaka pranayama and working up towards a maximum breath hold through visualisation, calming the mind, overcoming fear and taking control of our nervous system.

• Introducing bandhas “a yogi’s interior lock’
  
• Learning what the 3 main bandhas (Uddiyana, Mula & Jalandhara) do. Where they are anatomically found in the body, and how we can strengthen them.
• Learning to breathe consciously and confidently in your yoga practice and daily life.

The benefits of this workshop are

• Energy flow in the body
• Techniques on calming the mind & controlling the nervous system
• Use diaphragmatic and intercostal muscles – to gain more expansion of breath in the lungs
• Increased blood circulation and oxygen to the brain
• Using bandhas for strength and energy during your yoga practice