courses and classes
Staying connected to community and continuing to build upon our collective and alive need to find peace, harmony and health is at the core of my teachings and another important branch of SoulGarden.
I decided a little while ago that for me to offer something authentic I needed to step out of drop in class teaching and focus on developing more integrated courses and workshops. This is of course different for everyone but for me I knew I needed to create a space where we had the time to explore and experience ideas and movement practises in more depth, a chance to harmonise our energy and grow together.
I now offer 2 in person courses that are 1 hour per week for 6 weeks. The courses run on a rolling basis.
Watch out for online offerings!!
Location; The Honor Oak Wellness Rooms, London.
Wednesday evenings | 6-7pm | Starting again 6th March
yoga for mind and body
This course offers the opportunity to learn how Daoist Flow can improve your emotional and physical wellbeing. Daoist Flow is a practice that weaves together Yoga and Qigong to explore natural movement patterns and traditional Vinyasa sequences.
Qigong is one of the five branches of traditional Chinese medicine that promote mental health, stress reduction, and positive mood (the others are acupuncture, diet, herbs, and massage). All five activities aim to restore a person’s inner balance. Qi means “life energy,” while gong means “skill cultivated through steady practice.” So in this practice we use simple movements to move the Qi on a physical and emotional level in order to find balance.
As well as improving your strength, mobility and flexibility; research shows that the practices of Yoga and Qigong can positively impact:
Blood pressure
Resting heart rate
Stress reduction
Respiration
Inflammation
The immune system
Sleep
Digestion…and more!
As a practice for the body and mind, Daoist Flow does not solely focus on physical health. It incorporates mindfulness, meditation, breath awareness, and movement, all of which have links to stress reduction and emotional wellbeing.
In Chinese medicine elements are linked to emotions and emotions are linked to organs. When one aspect is out of balance, everything is affected. Qigong aims to bring our life energy back into balance, helping us to lead calmer lives with a mindful clarity of thought.
This course is open to all levels and experiences. The focus for this practice is on your intention and quality of movement rather than precise execution of the poses.
Wednesday evenings | 7.15pm - 8.15pm | Starting again 1st May
yoga to thrive (not survive)
As humans we all have one thing in common. No matter our race, class, gender or religious belief, we all have the same basic needs. After our basic needs are met (food, water, warmth) what do we all strive for? Happiness, contentment and connection. But in a world that is becoming increasingly more challenging to thrive in, a world that is overly focused on productivity and work and a society that has become more disconnected than ever before, how many of us truly feel like we are fulfilled and thriving?
There may be pockets of our days, weeks and years that we feel fully fulfilled and present in our experience of life but how many of us feel fatigued, sad, withdrawn, anxious and stressed for much more of our time than we should. We have accepted these feelings as normal, we get through the days awaiting for the next burst of excitement so we can feel “happiness” and then we go back to just simply surviving. What if there was a way to switch the default from survive to thrive, what if we could feel magic in the mundane and spend much more of our time feeling fulfilled.
Over this 6 week course we will explore some tools, techniques and movement practices to help us navigate our daily lives out of survival mode and into a place of true contentment. We will draw from Vinyasa and Yin yoga along with somatic movement practices to foster a sense of Joy and Ease in all we do.