WHERE TO GET YOUR YOGA ON:SOME PEOPLE ARE great for meeting at lunch. I don't love it, to be honest: a bad dining experience is very stressful, a good one is too relaxing. Do they definitely know I don't want onions? Will the waitress remember the water for the table next to us? I do love going for a sambo and sitting in the park (my swans, where are my swans?).
So why not standing in the park doing a sun salutation? Okay, people will stare, but they lose interest very quickly; the lunchtime crowd are a voyeuristic but terribly fickle bunch. Besides, you can stare back, gaze at a young oak, or just close your eyes as you listen to Matt Quigley of Outdooryoga.ie encourage gentle movement, telling you to go “just as far as your body wants to go today”. You get vitamin D, a stretch among the daisies, and the grass between your toes while you wave to the boss as he strides by on his constitutional (I can see him making a mental note, “that girl does not have enough work to do”).
If you would rather wait until the day’s work is done to unwind, you could visit one of Frank Brooks’s yoga classes, based on Anusara yoga. Last week I took part in his evening class in the sunroom of Richmond House in Monkstown, Co Dublin. Brooks and his wife Amy came across Anusara, which is a form of Hatha yoga, when they lived in Florida. The theme for the class was “entrainmnent”, the concept that things vibrating at a similar frequency start to resonate with each other. Brooks gives an example of couples who start to look like each other, through being open to each other. My husband and I are often confused, to our mutual disdain, for brother and sister, but we were like that when we met, so perhaps it’s not a very good illustration of entrainment. The point was simply demonstrated as we began the class by chanting “Om” three times; on the third “Om”, our voices were more or less in sync. Brooks explains later, “the first principle in Anusara yoga is that we soften our individual boundaries and ‘open to grace’; I was using entrainment to express how we can sync up our own energy with the energy of the group and the bigger energy around us.”
Anusara means “follow your heart” or “flow with grace”, and the postures are intended to open and “soften” the heart; they include movements designed to allow the chest to expand. While Brooks did talk about being in tune with those around you, as with yoga generally, the emphasis is on the individual, not comparing yourself to other people in the class. When he sees me trying, and failing, to get near my toes, he puts a couple of yoga blocks at my feet, so I don’t strain my back, and then continues to whip quietly round the class with words of encouragement, making the slightest adjustments. While Brooks says that “the idea would be that you cannot do a pose badly”, I get the feeling he has shown me the way to a better downward-facing dog.
At the end of the class, we lie down to do our Savasana, wrapped in blankets, Brooks handing out eye bags like we are on a first-class flight. Mine had lavender, a cool weightiness to keep the evening sun out of our peepers. One of his students made them: rice and lavender in a cotton bag. They’re so cute I’d almost take up sewing if I didn’t find it so stressful.
At the other end of the Dart line, Rachel Woolfson is teaching Hatha yoga in her garden studio in Howth. Woolfson has been practising for 23 years. “My sister Ruth recommended it to me. I had two children under four years old and she knew I suffered a lot from headaches around feeding and bed times, with the increased stress those times of the day brought. My first class was in the Community School in Baldoyle. I loved it from the very first time.”
She began teaching in 1992, completing a diploma in yoga therapy with the Yoga Biomedical Trust in 1998. Yoga therapy is a specialised adaptation of yoga for people with illness or injury, and Woolfson has one-to-one sessions for those who wouldn’t be able for or feel comfortable in a class of 10. “A person may suffer from a lack of confidence if the body has been through a lot of trauma,” she explains.
Last January, Woolfson even began teaching a men’s-only yoga class that’s a hit with the six gents who have signed up: “They can relax and not feel any self-consciousness. They have been very receptive to the class.” Maybe I should send the boss.
For yoga in the park, class times and locations are available on www.outdooryoga.ie. More information on Anasura yoga can be found on Frank Brooks’s website, www.innerbodybright.ie. His classes are €12 to drop in, €10 per class for four or more classes, 087-4158989, e-mail: fbrooks@gmail.com. Brooks also has a class called Rise and Shine on Sunday mornings at Sunrise Yoga Studios in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin. He will hold a 2.5-hour workshop during the last weekend of August, cost €25 (date to be confirmed).
Rachel Woolfson holds morning and evening classes in her garden studio in Howth. Each course is €140 for eight classes and individual yoga therapy sessions are also available. She can be contacted at 086-3759185, e-mail: rachelwoolfson@gmail.com.
Yoga mats are widely available in sports shops for about €20. Check out the Deluxe Eko Tex Yoga mats for €30 and eye pillows for €7-8, also available at www.yogavillage.ie. Yoga belts (for stretching) are available from www.yogadublin.com for €10-12. Chip foam yoga blocks cost €12 at www.yogadublin.com, foam blocks also available at www.womenontherun.ie for €9. Clothing wise, all you really need is comfort. That said, check out the Be Present range at www.yogavillage.ie. Brazil Body in the Powerscourt Centre in Dublin has bright and funky clothing that’s suitable not only for yoga but also for doing the school run.