By Nicky Poole, Yoga Community Leader

You may have been feeling the buzz in the past few weeks as we prepared to officially launch our 889 Living Yoga Program. Well the time is here!

The Living Yoga Program is a flexible and comprehensive opportunity for you to study the deep roots of yoga and their modern applications. The Living Yoga Program will be a life changing experience, as you start to integrate ever subtler practices of this ancient science to improve your vitality, and deep understanding of life – how to embrace it, embody it and thrive. For some people it may be the catalyst to move towards a livelihood more aligned with your deep values. For others it will be an opportunity to realize that inner calling – to go DEEP inside, to do that hard inner work and reveal truths about yourself that you never knew.

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By Nicky Poole, yoga community leader
889 is featured on Finding Your Bliss, a Rogers TV Show highlighting the benefits of restorative yoga and meditation for overcoming insomnia and aiding a good nights sleep.

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By Nicky Poole, Yoga Community Leader

As my regular students know, this year I am introducing us to different sacred chants at the conclusion of our asana class. Last month in January we learned a very simple chant, and I thought today I would follow up with some more details for you who want to keep chanting this as part of your practice. Chanting, (as I have learned from my teachers),is not really something that you learn from a book or the internet, but a sacred vibration that is passed on from teacher to student orally. Because we spent a month together chanting this in class, I feel it holds integrity for me to follow up this experience with some more resources and information for you to continue your home practice. All of the mantras I will be teaching in class are part of my practice of yoga, and this one I have been chanting for over 10 years!

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By Nicky Poole, 889 Yoga Community Leader and Yoga Teacher
I just came across this great little article from Psychology Today on New Years Resolutions, imagined from the perspective of the Buddha. It’s really well written and thought provoking. And of course, ever practical advice (Buddha was, after all, a practical guy). I am taking the liberty to reproduce the article in it’s entirety below, but all credit must be given to Toni Bernhard, the author.

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By Nicky Poole, Yoga Community Leader
(From the article): “For Pancho, the whole World, every moment, is his field of practice. When he was recently asked what nourishes him, his response was clear: meditation and small acts of kindness. Meditation deepens his awareness while small acts of kindness deepens his inter-connectedness. Or as Pancho would sum it up, “Meditation is the DNA of the kindness revolution.” Ever since he first went to a meditation retreat, he has continued to meditate everyday. “Pancho 2.0″ is what he calls himself since then. It was as if he discovered a new technology to battle our burning world.”

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By Nicky Poole, 889 Yoga Community Leader

…..At the first parent meeting at the start of term, I made my way into the basement of the St Thomas Church, met a few parents and looked around to see who I wanted to sit next to. I was attracted to a bright smiling woman who had a luminous moonstone around her neck. I squeezed myself into the toddler sized chair around the kids craft table next to her and introduced myself. She told me her name was Jenna. Her son was the same age as my son Tai. She was a yoga teacher. I loved her immediately, and saw every complex facet of myself reflected in her. That evening she was elected chairperson of the Board, and I was elected Registrar. We had a good laugh after the meeting, thinking how great it was that two mad Yoga Mamas were now in charge of running the entire playschool.

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By Nicky Poole, Yoga teacher, and 889 Yoga Community Leader
Yogis believe that each nostril is connected to a Nadi, which in Sanskrit literally translates to the word river, or flow. These channels are not nerves as we may imagine them in a gross sense, but far more subtle conduits of pranic energy that intersect at the chakras which lie along the length of the spine. Each nostril corresponds to a dominant activity that takes place in the opposite hemisphere of the brain. The right brain-left brain theory grew out of the work of Roger W. Sperry, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981. What fascinates me, is that this very concept was first explained in ancient texts such as the Upanishads, ancient texts composed thousands of years ago, which set the foundations of the basis of our understanding of yoga today. Here we have yet another scientific finding, bought to our attention by Western scientists in the 21st century that the yogis knew about though direct experience and practice of breathing and meditation techniques, centuries before. This is the beauty of the art and science of yoga.

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Nature uses many consistent principles that allow life forms to thrive. The embryo in-utero undergoes mirroring of the macro process of biological evolution. For example, the human foetus continues to exhibit features that we have knowingly evolved away from such as gills and flippers. Many millions of years ago when single celled organisms were swimming around in the priomordial oceans, these organisms began to develop responsiveness to their environments. Their shape began to change to make it easier for them to move and to find nutrients. Later, these organisms developed a central nervous system and we began to see the beginning of brains. These structures required a structure of armour to protect the spinal cord, but also needed to be able to articulate from side to side to enable movement. The spine is one of natures most beautiful creations, and perfectly balances two of yoga philosphy’s most important concepts: sthira (stablility) and sukha (good space).

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