A new year from the Ground Up.

Tonight is my first yoga class of the New Year.  2014 is a year full of promise and auspiciousness.  The turn of the new year gives us the chance to start with a proverbially clean slate, to move forward into growth or change.  We make resolutions.  We set intentions.

Whether we resolve to love more or weigh less, to run a marathon or start something new; deep inner work supports the process.  To create the kind of stable lasting change or growth we intend for ourselves, it is necessary to create fertile ground for new habits and patterns to emerge.

In honor of this new cycle and new year, the next 8 Thursdays will be about supporting this inner work. Starting tonight, we begin with turning inwards to find our inner wisdom, our highest Self, so that we can harness our own inner light to the manifestation of our intentions.  Next week we start at the ground: clearing blockages from the muladhara or root chakra.... and work our way up in seven steps, seven chakras, week by week.

Each week, class will focus on poses, mantra, pranayama, and meditation to support that chakra.  The subtle energy body comprised of chakras, nadis or meridians, and the aura is like a satellite we use to send and receive information from the world around us.  The human body creates a bio-electro-magnetic field, and when this energy field is cluttered with blockages or old habits, it is hard to create lasting change.

We will use these yogic practices to clear out any samskaras, old patterns, or energy blocks lodged in each chakra, moving with the flow of energy from the ground up.  Clear and charge your subtle energy body as you allow your resolutions to move from intention to manifestation!

Join me for this transformative series every Thursday from now through February at HeartStream Yoga from 5:45-7:15 pm. You can come to yoga right after work!  All levels.  Beginners welcome!

New Year, New Moon, More Love.

In honor of the New Year, beginning with a New Moon in Capricorn, I'd like to share some words from one of my heart's teachers:

"One of yoga's fundamental teachings is that our basic nature is love. Love is experienced as a felt sense of belonging, deep contentment, abiding ease, and joy. It is an overarching feeling of acceptance, inclusion, warm welcome, and understanding. In love, we experience profound tenderness and affection toward all that is and has been. Love is expressed as innate respect and care for our body, mind, and heart, and for our thoughts, actions, and relationships. Love allows us to feel what is precious and fleeting, without fear of the ephemeral nature of all things. It allows us to move fiercely toward truth, and it requires us to uphold integrity, passion, and fervency in the face of harm, or threat of shame. Love is the force through which any sense of inadequacy is burned away, allowing the blazing clarity of our deepest worth to shine forth." -SarahJoy Marsh

Here's to more love in the new year.  Here's to all the practices that support love and all the people that practice love.

Happy New Year!

Winter Hibernation?

The seasons have changed, and with them the inner world has shifted. It is deep winter here in the north: snow on the ground, aurora sometimes overhead, and we are entering the time for hibernation. The time to feed the slow burning heart fire that warms soul and body both through the long cold. 

For me, the last workshops of the year have culminated. Frontline Wellness was a true honor and a joy to teach.  The group of providers who joined me on this first journey inspire me in so many ways. They are brave, vulnerable, strong, smart and gifted. Their experience has enriched me, my teaching, and this program they helped me to pilot. 

I spent the early part of this week in Anchorage sharing yoga wellness practices with a room full of vibrant, courageous women who work as legal advocates. ANDVSA (The Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault) hosted a conference addressing topics on legal advocacy and wellness. I had the opportunity to bring the Frontline Wellness workshop tools and share them with these inspiring women.  

With this cycle of workshops finishing, and the winter fully present, I have the chance to breathe deeply into my own practice, and let that feed my weekly teaching. In FW, we talk about the idea of practice, as something we return to, as something to cultivate. Teaching is, in many ways, my true practice and I am learning to bring ever more authenticity to those moments when I speak from my mat to that of a student. Winter is a time of drawing in, turning inwards and of diving deep, and as a teacher it is a time for me to both bring back what I find there, and create the space for my students to dive down deep into their own selves. 

What is winter's hibernation for you? 

Frontline Wellness: an offering

 

This is a state that is attainable for everyone.  In every day and in every moment, it is possible to practice peace.  It is even possible to reside in peace while listening to someone else's trauma, while caring for the sick, for the dying.  It is possible in the ER.  It is possible.  Even if you experience it for only a moment.  Day by day, those moments add up, and a habit grows.

That is why I am offering "Frontline Wellness: a Yoga Workshop for Care Providers," to offer skills to help create those moments of peace that add up to a lifetime of wellness.  

Fairbanks, and the interior of Alaska, sees more than its fair share of depression, alcoholism, and trauma.  This workshop is my offering to those people in our community who work every day to heal the scars of mind, body and heart that the people of Alaska carry.

May we all send a moment of gratitude and appreciation to the healers, the care providers, the health care workers in our world.

Gratitude Practice: Thankful Thursdays

Today I am grateful for a gift of time.  For the dropped-in-my-lap chance to take my own teachings to heart.

I am grateful for a husband who will let my over-tired, under-rested, rather anxious self lecture him ad infinitum about tropes and character types in historical romance novels ... and still look me in the eye and tell me I'm amazing and he loves me.

I am grateful for the best sort of friends...  both far and near.

I'm so grateful.  so overwhelmingly, full-of-awe, grateful for the manifesting of a vision I've been holding for a long time. 

I'm grateful for dreams.



*Thankful Thursdays are my weekly gratitude practice.  They follow the gratitude meditation which ends my Thursday night Kripalu Yoga class.  A gratitude practice, positive thinking, an abundance mindset.  All of these are practices which increase vitality, invite positive transformation, and allow happiness and fulfillment to exist in the here and now rather than in the someday-when.
(Always cross-posted to BunchberryFarm)

Gratitude. Or, Thankful on a Thursday.

I am grateful. so grateful.  I just am.

I'm grateful for the man, patiently waiting for me.

I'm grateful for love.  For the many paths and ways the universe opens for me to share, support, hold, cherish, nourish, cultivate and experience love.

I'm grateful for rainy cool days.  I'm grateful for a summer of sun.

I'm grateful for the art of others.

I'm grateful for my own, sadly neglected, art.

I'm grateful for teaching.  So so grateful for teaching.  Grateful to be able to give the world what is sitting in my heart and longing to be shared.

Introducing "Frontline Wellness: a Yoga Workshop for Care Providers"

I am excited to announce the dates for the pilot series of my new workshop "Frontline Wellness: A Yoga Workshop for Care Providers"!!!

This seven week workshop will be held at HeartStream Yoga and Wellness, off of Airport Road.  It will be held on Sunday afternoons from 2-4 pm beginning September 29th to November 24th.  Due to scheduling conflicts in the studio space, there will be two "break" weeks.  I invite you to utilize these "break" weeks as a time to integrate the practices into your daily life and as a time for reflection on how these practices are serving you.  Perhaps you will choose to come to one of my regularly scheduled yoga classes on Wednesday or Thursday evening to help support you in this process.

Please see the "Frontline Wellness" tab above for more information.

~ ~ ~

Dear Provider,

You care about the people you serve.  You are passionate about helping others to live a better life.  You are committed to your work, your career, and to caring for the people of this world we share.  Imagine holding yourself with the same compassionate, unconditional regard that you offer the people you work with.

I am honored to invite you join me in the pilot series of "Frontline Wellness: A Yoga Workshop for Care Providers."  This seven week, evidence-based transformative workshop is designed specifically for front line care providers who face burn-out, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma. These are three silent killers that go mostly un-recognized in our personal lives and under-reported in our workplaces.

• Do you find yourself so drained at the end of the day that engaging with your family, cooking dinner, or spending time on a hobby seems like an impossible demand? 
• Do you feel like no matter how much you give, or how hard you work, you are still not doing enough?
• Do you find it difficult to focus, listen, and care about the daily concerns of your family and friends?  Do they seem almost trivial compared to the issues you face at work?
• Do you question whether what you're doing is worthwhile?  If it’s even making a difference?
• Are you always tired?  Do you have trouble relaxing even when you have time to?
• Have you watched colleagues suffer burnout and quit their job?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, this workshop is for you.  Yoga teaches the skills to build resiliency and to cultivate capacity.

I worked for years as a victim's advocate, and yoga allowed me to rejuvenate my mind, my body, and my emotions when I faced burnout.  Yoga kept me resilient and able to be fully present with each person I served.  My friends and family definitely noticed a difference between when I was practicing regularly and when I skipped my practice.  I designed this workshop in order to share some of the life skills that yoga taught me. 

Each workshop session is two hours long.  The first hour will be a complete Kripalu yoga class, including asana (postures), breathwork and meditation.  The yoga component is suitable for beginners; each week will build on the week before to provide you with a foundational practice you can return to in your daily life or as introduction for other yoga classes.  The second hour of the session will be focused on a single topic designed to provide you with a discrete practice or approach to cultivating resilient wellness.  Topics include meditation, conscious communication, gratitude practice and yoga nidra.  Each session will provide time for integration and skillful relaxation.

The series will be held on Sunday afternoons from 2-4 pm at HeartStream Yoga.  The first class will be on September 29^th, and the last class on November 24^th.

For more information please visit my website (jjohnsonkennedy.blogspot.com) and click on the "Frontline Wellness" tab.  Feel free to email me (jjohnsonkennedy@gmail.com) with any questions.  I hope to see you this fall.

May your inner light shine brightly,

Jai Baghwan,

Jasmine Johnson-Kennedy

RYT-200 Kripalu Yoga Teacher