Hello everyone! Emma here, I hope that this blog post finds you well? Here at Emma’s Yoga Hut we are preparing for late autumn and early winter with fluffy pink blankets, extra fairy lights and making sure the hut is as warm and cosy as possible.
However, lets be honest, moving into winter isn’t always the easiest. The darkness can weigh heavy, it is easy to shift from the necessary slowing down into plain old lethargy, low mood and more. There are added pressures, the pressure of the early ramp up to the festive season. The pressures of it being the time when people get ill with all the bugs, obviously of particular concern given the past 18 months or so. The pressures of working with seasonal affective disorder, and the pressure of living in a society where we are getting even busier just as the majority of nature around is taking its rest. There can be a lot going on in the darkness of late autumn and early winter!
So in late autumn approaching winter at Emma’s Yoga Hut we will be working with welcoming in winter as we see her coming, accepting and embracing the value of the darkness and the slow down. We will be working on creating heat through the Yamas of Tapas (unfortunately not the tasty Spanish food option!) by working with creating our bodies own fire to help keep us warm and burn away impurities (yes, I am talking about the extra chocolate and wine that I certainly put away when it gets cold and dark!) We will focus on opening postures to reverse the hunching forwards and inwards stance that our body adopts in wild weather in order to protect us from the elements. We will mark the solstice with a gentle slow session followed by sun salutations, to embrace and welcome back the light through the slow lengthening of the days. All this will be followed by extended constructive rest and peaceful guided meditation under those freshly laundered pink fluffy blankets!
Additionally Emma’s Yoga Hut is running a couple of workshops during late autumn rolling into winter. One of these will be on the topic of Perimenopause and Menopause and how yoga can help to manage some of the most common symptoms. We will take time to explore how yoga can support those in Perimenopause and Menopause in a time of very considerable physiological and emotional change (see my last blog post on this!) The November course has already been fully booked, but if you are interested then drop me a line and let me know, I will put you on the waitlist for when I run it again next year.
There will also be an Alternative Festive Night out, where, for the price of a couple of drinks in the pub, we will use slow gentle restorative yoga and a long guided meditation called Yoga Nidra (yogic sleep!) to nourish and restore ourselves, our energy and our emotional wellbeing in the season of excess. This has a whole blog post all of its own that follows soon!
I am looking forward to seeing you at Emma’s Yoga Hut for a cosy reprieve from the cold and chaos of this period in the year. Taking just an hour out of your life and on the yoga mat in order to nourish yourself and turn inwards carries such huge benefits rolling forward, both emotionally and physically.
If you are interested in starting or continuing your yoga journey in these winter months, there is only 1 place left for this terms courses, it is on Friday mornings and is for all abilities, and it is starting next week!
With love,
Emma xx
(Emma runs Emma’s Yoga Hut in Earley. A tiny garden studio for small group and 1:1 yoga tuition. She is a yoga student and yoga teacher and has practiced yoga for 25 years. She trained with the Traditional Yoga Association right here in Reading between 2016 and 2018 to achieve her 500 hour yoga teaching accreditation. She has additional teaching qualifications in Yin Yoga and Yoga Nidra which she subsequently undertook online during the great lockdown of 2020. Emma tries her best to practice yoga every day, even when it is dark and cold!)
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