SSHY’s “The Classic!”  30 day Yoga challenge, one of the best ways to see and feel changes in your mind, body and practice!  You want to lose weight, tone up, heal chronic pain and injury, and feel a sense of joy and vitality everyday? 

Sign up at SSHY with our reception for:
•    30 days of Bikram hot yoga.
•    One class every day, excluding 2 days of grace.
•    Begins October 1st and ends October 30th, 2012.
•    Cost is $60 (Students $55), plus a $50 deposit that is refunded upon completion.

Prioritize yourself for 30 days, and feel the best you can be!  Time to get back on the mat!  Special Hallowe’en party class with potluck to follow.  Costumes optional!  

BONUS/OPTIONAL:  For an extra $40, receive a daily routine kit (includes supportive and detailed info, herbal tea, and more) to kick start every Challenge day.  Learn to use a few new tools and develop healthy habits that will leave you feeling like shiny happy people.  The world will comment and notice how amazing you look!

Fixed Firm Pose

Supta-Vajrasana

Ouch!  Oh my knees, oh my ankles!  Dang this fixed firm pose hurts so much! 

Is that how you feel?  Ok then, let’s improve our understanding of fixed firm together.

Benefits!  Cures sciatica, gout, and rheumatism of the legs.  It slims thighs, firms calf muscles and strenghthens abdomen.  Improves flexibility of lower spine, knees and ankle joints.

Most of you have rolled or sprained your ankles at some point, so you have some scar tissue to break up, and tendons and ligaments to loosen up.  The good news is they will all improve as long as you do this pose everyday!  Bikram says you can do this while watching t.v. The more often you do it, the happier you will feel, the results will come to you!

Bikram says the key to this posture is to learn to relax more as you practice it.  If you fight it, you get frustrated and work against yourself.  So give your body, your joints some time to warm up to it.  Be sure to enter and exit the posture slowly and carefully, ensuring better results.

Most people want to rush this posture, leaning back on their elbows before their buttocks

has even touched the floor.  Wait!  Be patient. 

The 4 most important tips to this pose:

1. First, open your heels, try to sit gently between your heels, if your knees hurt, a little bit open your knees, knowing though that you will not always have to open your knees, and that you always try to bring them back together!
2. Keep the weight of your body on your hands or fists as long as you need to!  If you feel the need to get out of the pose, that’s an indication you went too far. 
3. Amanda’s pet peeve, is when you all try to go too far too fast.  Listen carefully to the following instructionsJ
4. With the weight in your hands, slowly start to sit up straight, and keep your spine straight until your buttocks touches the floor.  Only once your buttocks has touched the floor, do you start to lean back on to your right elbow an then your left elbow, eventually whole upper body relaxed on the floor.

Ok folks, you can take it from there, that first part is the toughest to help you with.  Thank you Bikram for this pose, those of you with pain in the knees and joints?  You will heal the pain over time and practice!  Hallelujah, there is a way!

Check out this link to view more:

 http://www.bikramyogaportsmouth.com/byp/26-postures/fixed-firm-pose-%7C-supta-vajrasana.html

Hey Everybody;

The signs of Autumn are starting to appear.  The leaves change into their lovely colorful shades of yellow and red, the heat is out of the nighttime air, and the school zones are busy bustling places once again.  

Time for a sale?  SURE THING!

September Sale!!

 15% Off Memberships

• 1 month unlimited
• 3 month unlimited
• 5, 10, and 20 pass bundles
• Your first 3 months auto-renew

 Sale ends September 26^th, 2012.

Promotion not valid with any other offers.

Time to change the schedule?  SURE THING!

Effective September 22nd, 2012....

Monday/Wednesday

 6:00am / 9:30am / 4:00pm / 6:00pm / 8:00pm

Tuesday/Thursday

6:00am TAPE** / 9:30am / 5:00pm / 7:00pm

     **Audio playback of Bikram’s class on Tuesday only.  Experienced yogis only for this class. 

Friday

6:00am / 9:30am / 4:00pm / 6:00pm

Saturday

8:30am / 10:30am / *2:00pm* /  4:00pm

*NEW AT SSHY: Women Only Class

Sunday

8:30am / 10:30am / 4:00pm

Final notes?

As some of you may have heard, there will be some changes coming to SSHY, starting with some new flooring.  Finalized and ordered this last weekend, we will be moving to a resilient flooring called Flotex, used in many new or renovated Bikram studios around the continent.  It offers the best of both worlds: A nonporous, anti-microbial and anti-bacterial membrane that cannot absorb sweat or odour, while still offering a thin carpet-like surface to prevent slippage and maintain the most theraputic flooring to practice yoga on.  While the arrival is still weeks away, the process is initiated. Yes, you will definitely hear more as we learn more...stay tuned!

But of course!  

Do you hear Bikram speak of Self-Realization?  If you have the chance to take his class or do class to his CD, you will hear him speak of it.  

So how do we access this spiritual feeling in our 90 min class?  

Bikram would say we all have the key, we just have to learn how to use it...So when you enter the hot room, check your ego at the door.  Leave all expectations behind you.  Choose a spot in the hot room, set up your mat so you can see yourself in the mirror.  Then let's begin and continue our journeys' to Self-Realization!

Anyone in the world can talk spiritual lingo, and we can all try to listen and understand, however it takes doing the yoga to recognize what we need,

it takes breath to move that new found intelligence all through our bodies and to our cells,

and then it takes practice so that we can create a new realtionship with ourselves on this new level of awareness or self-realization:)

Oh, and it takes some suffering to help us recognize which thought forms we want to hold on to, and which ones we just can't stand anymore...i.e. the room is just too hot today!  Is that teacher trying to kills us?  I am so thirsty, why can't I take a drink?  HA...how many of us have had this converstaion in our heads during some or all of class?  How many more times do you think you might have it before you simply decide to let it go?  Hmmmmm...

Every class helps us to recycle not only our thoughts, but our cells too.  That is one main purpose of our Spleen.  To recycle old, used blood cells.  

When you participate in separate leg forehead to knee pose, you squeeze and massage your spleen internally, thus physiologically recycling your cells, and emotionally recycling old thoughts! 

What a powerful posture, so why did you want to sit it out the other day?  Your neck hurt?  Your head hurt?  It is our self created excuses that hinder us from Self-realization...However it is our hinderances that help us to recognize that we have them.  Wow.  So we learn when we do it, and when we don't do it!  

In a nutshell, Yoga helps us to self-reflect.  Hence the mirrors all over the hot room.  Bikram has tried to create an environment where we can't escape ourselves.  WOW.  

We are all on our own journey, and I hope you are enjoying it!  The days that our practice frustrate us, are the downs that make us crave the ups.  So if you are not enjoying your practice lately, know that you can only sink so low, then you will reach with a sure hand to come back up.  

See you in the hot room,

Love you all

xoxo

Amanda

Hey yogis & yoginis, here are the class times for the Labour Day Long Weekend:

Friday, Aug. 31 - Normal Hours (6am, 9:30am & 6pm)

Saturday, Sept. 1 - 9:30am  

Sunday, Sept. 2 - 9:30am 

Monday, Sept. 3 - 9:30am & 4pm