Restore Yoga

01/04/2023

April. The last month that I’m teaching in Tynemouth, before I step into the unknown. ⠀
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May brings a new chapter that involves creating a tiny home on wheels and setting sail for a little while. ⠀
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If you’d like to stay in touch beyond this I’m curating an online offering over summer. It’ll be flow + restore, from afar. ⠀
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Subscribe to my mailing list via the link in my bio if you’re interested in the classes, or intrigued about which field I’ll be joining from. Further details will be landing soon ✉️

28/03/2023

Resting in the motion of nature’s ripples 🐚

23/03/2023

Pockets of light during a turbulent time; reminding me that there are flows within ebbs, expansions within contractions, joyful moments within sadness. Wise heart Mary Oliver tells us that joy is not made to be a crumb, so I sweep these moments up knowing that they are aplenty 🫧

17/03/2023

A couple of spaces have opened up for tomorrow’s rocket yoga workshop. It’s a container for those curious about movement to strengthen and stretch the body, with a playful edge. ⠀
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Our focus tomorrow? How the fire at our core powers us through. ⠀
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Links up top to join us tomorrow at 10am .yoga ⠀
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14/03/2023

Our popular Rocket Yoga Workshop is running again next Saturday (18th). The lovely Claire of Restore Yoga will be leading this inspiring workshop.

This is a great session to help you explore yoga with a new challenge, leaving you stronger and more confident in your own practice.

Join us here; https://goteamup.com/p/3253825-shore-yoga/e/56100800-sunrise-yoga-by-the-sea-outdoor-class/

13/03/2023

Me and my beautiful amigo .graham in the basket we weave together. A container for shifting and shedding that which no longer serves. ⠀
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Those who join our workshops are held by Leena’s energetic enquiry. Me, I make the cake. But not before I’ve guided you through soft body opening and steady mind anchoring. ⠀
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This Wednesday lunchtime we’ll be LIVE on Instagram for half an hour to mull over the topic of self confidence along, folding in a guided meditation. Our next workshop is this Sunday; two spaces left to be tucked into this nurturing basket. ⠀
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06/03/2023

Meditation has slowly shifted how I navigate the rocks thrown by life. I am still shaken by the pebbles and floored by the boulders. The glossy surface of the self breaks, the ripples spill out. I find myself clinging less and less to what the rocks mean, instead listening with a gentle ear to what arises. Letting the ripples move through my body in its entirety, not just the narrative in my mind. Less reactively, more compassionately. I am carving out a vessel within which I can move through life with all its currents and waves. Acknowledging the holes I am working to patch up through layers of curiosity and kindness. As the rocks come, they rock me less. Through less past, less future, and more presence, the water resettles.

28/02/2023

It began with water. A dance between opposites that confuses and teaches. That there is strength in softness. In flowing and yielding. Absorbing and letting go. Paradoxes mulled over for millennia, as the Tao Te Ching says:⠀
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Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice.⠀
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I practice holding the sharp edges of my experience with a soft heart, again and again. Somewhere along the long dusty road, when cynicism has long since fallen away, rigidity begins to dissolve and what once felt solid loses form. Returning back into the source of it all, where it all began. Like water. ⠀
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26/02/2023

I’m bringing back the element of touch to teaching, after a 3 year hiatus. Before the pandemic, I’d oil up and slick my way through 5 head massages in savasana. Move from one sweaty body to another encouraging change of form or deeper stretch. ⠀
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Whilst in our sterile boxes I reflected on this as an unintuitive approach to encouraging students to soften, with airs of here’s the correct way to do yoga. Banding around this philosophy with two petri dishes for hands. I dropped touch and taught more from the corners of my own mat. ⠀
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And then, what about connection? What about feedback? Intuition? What about my role in creating a safe(r) container to process and express? ⠀
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Touch, not to conform you to my expectations of what an aligned or relaxed form looks like.⠀
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Touch to bring your awareness to areas of your body. Maybe, prompting a change that moulds you into the shape. Maybe, allowance for the form to let go. Maybe, the simple tenderness of connection. ⠀
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Always, with permission.⠀
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I’m curious, what are your experiences with adjustments and touch in classes?⠀
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02/02/2023

The more I explore our human experience through practices woven, spun and handed down through many generations, the more I desire for experiences that speak the language of the constellation of cells that constitutes our being, not just the language of my rational mind. ⠀
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My experience of our daily movement practice begins led by the rhythm of music, a dance of the nobody's watching sorts. Lots of this, a taste of the beat with my eyes closed. In a previous lifetime, I am mortified.⠀
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It is two weeks of glimpses. Recognising and moving from the cells, the organs, the pathways within, liquid within. We are guided to form placeholders out of our questions for future study. I have many. ⠀
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Fragments from my recent exploration of written as a blog, continued via the link up top 👆⠀
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01/02/2023

Hello it's been a little while -

I’m skipping in here after a couple of months without update, unintentionally so. December brought me a cold that knocked me sideways and glued me to the sofa, followed by a trip to A&E after the early christmas gift of a dog ball to my left eye. By the end of the month I packed all three of my fi...

30/01/2023

Notes to self on courage