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This March, for the fourth year, I am leading a retreat at the delightful Mar de Jade resort on Mexico’s beautiful Pacific west coast at Playa Chacala, an hour from Puerta Vallarta. The dates are the 9th to the 23rd. I will be teaching for 2 ½ hours on twelve of the mornings, including asana, pranayama, and meditation. In the afternoons I will teach again for an hour, covering all sorts of fascinating yoga topics. Those who have come with me before know that this really is a wonderfully spiritual place to do yoga, relax, rethink, and recharge. As one of my clients so aptly puts it: “It almost becomes a way of life, living at Mar de Jade for a short period in wonderful surroundings while delving deeper into your own mind and body…The classes are the perfect response to a busy life, rebalancing the body on a physical, energetic and mental level. Each time I leave the retreat I take a bit more of me home with me; it refreshes me on every level and prepares me for the rest of the year.”

If you have a couple of weeks free, why not join us? For more details, prices, and booking form, go to http://www.katrinarepka.com/workshops-retreats

Set the intention for lasting change this coming year.

The New Year is traditionally a time for us to make resolutions for positive change. More often than not, however, those resolutions are set aside before long and we resume our old ways. Why is it so hard to change? Because we are governed by our unconscious mind. Only by overcoming the unconscious patterns that exert a dominant influence on our behavior can lasting change occur. In this special New Year’s workshop, you will learn how to incorporate your best intentions through the yogic practice of San Kalpa. The workshop will begin with an overview of the chakra system and then, through the practice of asana, will explore the first and second chakras (where our deepest unconscious impressions are stored). The physical practice will be followed by seated pranayama and a powerful San Kalpa meditation to nourish and activate our best intentions in order to bring them to consciousness and make them real in our lives.

Join me on this adventure into the hidden territory of the self and make this New Year your best one yet.

Link to the Life Centre here.

Marma Therapy is an essential element in Ayurveda, the traditional system of Indian medicine, and an important component of ISHTA Yoga. A working knowledge of marma points and their functions greatly adds to a personal yoga practice and is an invaluable aid for yoga teachers.

Marma is a Sanskrit term that means “vulnerable,” and marma points lie at the (vulnerable) junctions between the physical and energetic body, along 22 primary nadis (channels of energy); marma points could be described as valves that regulate the flow of this energy in your body. But when these valves become clogged with dukkha (stress), your prana (life force) cannot move freely through your system. Such a situation can lead to imbalances in the body that may result in injury and illness.

I am pleased to announce that ISHTA Senior Teacher and expert marma therapist, Michael Bartelle, and I are launching a Marma Therapy Training here in London, commencing January 2013.

Knowing how to find and also release marma points will embellish your practice, your teaching, and your knowledge of yoga in general. In this course of 10 sessions, you will learn:

• A deeper knowledge of the subtle (spiritual) body
• How to find the 22 marma lines that relate to the five major elements (earth, water, air, fire, and
space) and the three gunas (Rajas, Tamas, and Sattva)
• The 108 principal marmas and their functions, including the organs and doshas that relate to them
• How to recognize tension in specific marma points that can cause trouble in your and your students’
yoga practice
• How to release points in order to facilitate a greater sense of balance, awareness, and space in asana
• Methods for using marma to deepen your students’ meditation experience
• Ways of working with marma points in order to ground, pacify, or revitalize your students’ energy

After the introductory session, in which we will cover the basics, subsequent sessions will deal with groups of poses (standing poses, backbends, inversions, etc.) to show you how to find and release points that are hindering the full experience of asana. Throughout the course you will have the opportunity not only to look for and work on these blockages in your classmates’ bodies, but also to have your own poses assessed and worked on.

The final two sessions will be devoted to showing how the marma points can help you move your energy more freely in meditation, and how to use marma to relieve doshic imbalances.

The course will run over 10 Wednesday evenings, from 6 - 9 p.m., at the Commander in Notting Hill.

January 16
February 13
March 27
April 10
May 15
June 12
September 25
October 16
November 13
December 4

The cost of the training is £1500.

Learn about the ancient, occult power of marma. Use it to transform your life, and the lives of others.

Join us on this groundbreaking course!

(P.S. There are only 3 places left. Please contact me swiftly if you are interested.)

These are the weekly outlines for the new series of Notting Hill-based classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The asana practice preceding the meditation will tie in with and complement the theme of the week.

For more information, including dates and booking forms, please email ISHTAYOGAEUROPE@GMAIL.COM

ISHTA DIKSHA

This is the bedrock of the entire ISHTA practice and a wonderful sattvic daily practice that you can use whenever you need it.  We will look at how to correctly practise Nadi Shodhana Pranayama, the Ham/Sah kriya, and Ajna Bhedana.

TIBETAN PURIFICATION

The Tibetan Purification technique is a technique that purifies the three shariras, or “bodies” – stula sharira (physical), sukshma sharira (energetic), and karana sharira (causal) – that make up your being. We will use visualization and the kechari kriya, with more advanced pranayama, to access and cleanse the entire system.

SAT/YAM

SAT/YAM meditation helps you to release all of the scars in your consciousness (samskaras) that are caused by haunting memories of painful experiences, emotional traumas, etc. We will first balance right/left brain using Padadirdsasana and then free jiva atman (the individualized self) to merge back with param atman (the higher self) through the use of the mantras Sat and Yam.

FINDING YOUR SAN KALPA

Traditionally, the New Year is about letting go of the old to make way for the new. It is a time to set intentions and make resolutions, and yet so often the resolutions don’t come to fruition as they are made in the conscious mind, without taking into account what is really driving us deep in the unconscious. This technique guides you to find your true intention, and what it is that would enable to you make real, lasting change, so that you can successfully plant it in the New Year and bring it to life.

PLANTING THE SAN KALPA

This technique uses Manduki kriya, visualization, and mantra to plant the intention (San Kalpa) for the New Year through all of the chakras, so that it can become a powerful source of personal transformation.

WHO ARE YOU? MEDITATION

This meditation helps you to look at all of the different personalities that you present to the world, so that you can come back to your centre and discover who you really are. It loosens your attachment to the various masks that you have come to believe are the real you, so that you can discover the wholeness at your core.

BHUTA SHUDDHI

Bhuta Shuddhi literally translates as “purification of the elements.” It is a laya yoga technique that uses the power of nature and the elements - Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space - to purify the body, mind and spirit, and release the negativity and harmful patterns in the left cavity of the torso, the side that stores impressions, memories, and emotions.

OM NAMAH SHIVAYA

An introduction to the Tantric use of mantra as a way of moving energy, this meditation will explore the different ways you can use mantra to bring energy up through the chakras and also down into life (the process of samyama).

GAYATRI MANTRA

Also known as the Savitri Mantra (God Mantra), the gayatri mantra is commonly considered to be the essence of all mantras; it is a meditation on spiritual light and its purpose is to enlighten the mind and intellect. There are three forms of the mantra: the full mantra, the long form, and the short form. We will discuss the long form from a Tantric perspective, and how it can help us to move Shakti back to Shiva in a graceful and balanced manner.

Golnaz Maleki has been practising yoga for fifteen years. She started doing it as a form of physical exercise, but over time it was yoga’s unique mental and spiritual aspects that became her primary interest. Golnaz recently graduated from the 300-hour ISHTA advanced training in London. Her great passion for yoga is matched with a natural modesty and serenity that gives her a unique teaching style.

How has yoga changed you?

How do I begin to answer this question—do you have an hour? Firstly, yoga has given me more strength, both physical and mental.  I have become a more confident person as the result of my practice. Yoga has helped me to love myself (with all my shortcomings) and it has enhanced the good qualities within; I am more compassionate and caring, and more understanding of others and their actions. My yoga practice has revealed my unconscious habits to me so that I am more aware of them now, especially those unending, unnecessary thought patterns. It has helped me to create a more balanced life and to realize and appreciate that life is what is happening right now. Most importantly, yoga has helped me become a more spiritual person; I have found a connection and dialogue with a higher being.

How do you hope it will change you in the future?

I hope that yoga will continue to help me evolve into a more grounded, present, peaceful, and accepting person who lives her life in the now.

Has yoga given you any important insights about yourself?

Certainly it has. Before I started practising seriously, I was led so much more from a place of fear and unable to let go of things (including harmful emotions and relationships). By getting on my mat every day, my practice has given me space inside to create a buffer between my being and those negative places. I no longer have to hold on so tightly, and when an old fear does try to creep in I get myself onto my yoga mat!

If you had started yoga at seventeen, would it have changed your life?

My goodness, yes! My life decisions would not have been based so much on fear.  I would have been more confident about my abilities and about myself as a human being.

If you could be a yoga pose, which one would you be?

Vrksasana, the tree pose.  Trees have strong foundations, yet they are supple and allow storms to blow through them.  They remain standing after a strong storm!

What is your favourite thing to do after a session of yoga?

My heart opens up and expands after a satisfying session. I find myself picking up the phone and calling or texting the people that are dear to my heart and telling them how much I love and care for them.  That sounds so cheesy, but it’s true!

Do you have a favourite yoga quote or saying?

It’s not a yoga quote, but it’s a quote I have had by my bed for the last ten years.  Every morning, when I awake, I say it. It’s called the Serenity Prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Our second season of the ISHTA Workshop Class Series in Notting Hill starts in September (and there are still a few places left). These classes allow students to explore the spectrum of deeper Hatha, Tantra, and Ayurveda techniques that form the core teachings of the ISHTA system. The classes are limited to a maximum of 15 students and will be 1.40 hours long; I will be leading the classes with the assistance of an ISHTA 500-hour trained teacher, who will help with alignment and adjustments. The classes will include asana, pranayama, and meditation (culminating with shaktipat, the transmission of energy release from Master Yogi to student). For a complete session-by-session outline of the Workshop Class Series, demonstrating the depth and range of the programme, please email ISHTAYOGAEUROPE@GMAIL.COM. I hope you will join me on this life-transforming journey.

Alert, attentive, coiled and yet limber, Garudasana is an enigmatic, involuted pose that suggests a state of confident readiness; and, as someone famous once said, the readiness is all. There is something of the grandiose in Garudasana, too, in the way that it winds about itself like ivy round a ruined temple column; and, indeed, in Hindu mythology, Garuda is known as the king of birds, upon whose back the God Vishnu rides into battle. Perhaps the compression of the pose (arm entwined around arm, leg around leg) represents a gigantic bird about to unfurl its wings and take flight. To perform Garudasana is to experience and relish that delicious moment before the decisive act, knowing that one is prepared mentally and physically for it; and to practise the pose regularly is to enhance one’s ability to manage these decisive moments with confidence.

But release is also liberating, and when we come out of Garudasana, there is an implicit enlargement of the self, as if we possess our own wings and can unfurl them as far as the eye can see, even, if we so desire, to the very corners of the earth.

Yoga is so much about holding the moment for as long as we comfortably can, about ignoring our human tendency to want to finish one thing so that we can start on another. But when we hold a pose longer than we thought we could—when we are confident enough in ourselves to see that happiness, whatever that is, resides in constancy as much as variety—we submit to something greater than our own wishes and desires.

Like the great bird Garuda, who will remain forever in a state of vigilance, waiting for the arrival of the deity (contentedly, not impatiently, the waiting being an end in itself) we can use this pose to start to come to terms with our mortal transience, and also, with joy, to comprehend at the same time our absolute infinitude.

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If you would like to reacquaint yourself with the steps to a perfect Garudasana, visit

http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/785