contact wendy b.

  Joy of Yoga
  wendyb@joyofyoga.nu
  949.302.4926
  san juan capistrano
  california

Why should you practice yoga? What’s in it for you? Simply put – yoga is medicine for your body. Research well documents yoga’s benefits. Yoga makes you more flexible, builds stamina, builds muscular strength, helps you sleep more soundly and wake up feeling rested. Yoga helps manage stress by using breath work to calm your body/mind/spirit, and allows you to concentrate better and for longer periods of time.

From my personal experience, all I can tell you is that yoga literally and profoundly changed my life. Yoga made my body strong and muscular. More importantly, a connection to Spirit accessed via yoga kept me sane, and was invaluable in helping me weather life’s many storms. A consistent yoga practice strengthens your body, mind, and spirit from the very inside out. The physical changes are subtle at first as you begin to notice your core getting stronger. It’s hard to explain, but for me it was like the muscles that hug the bones got stronger first, and gradually I got stronger and leaner from the very inside out. Yoga slowly transforms you, but before you know it you are reacquainted with muscles you hardly remember having and you experience life in your body in a much more vital way.

A physical practice gives you permission to play again. We all did handstands, headstands, and shoulderstands when we were little. Why do we stop playing within our bodies as we grow older? Yoga allows you to reconnect with your inner child balanced with the wisdom that age and experience brings to your life and your yoga mat. Yoga will keep you younger. People are surprised when they find out my age, and they ask me how I look so young. Without hesitation I tell them my secret is yoga.

Yoga changes the way you feel about yourself and how you see the world. Your mental sky becomes less clouded, and you see how interconnected we all are as we kick around on this planet and interact with others and with the natural world as you bring your practice off the mat and into the world.

If you think you are not currently practicing yoga, I will humbly suggest that you are a yogi already but just were unaware. Do you volunteer in your community, or at your kids school, and/or help out neighbors or friends without expecting anything in return? If so you practice karma yoga. Do you go to church, love Jesus, or Buddha, or Allah, or Krishna, or any other God/Goddess? If so, you practice the devotional bhakti yoga. Do you read spiritual books that expand your mind and spirit? Do you actively seek out experiences and literature that bring you closer to your inner truth? Are you constantly searching, questing, and seeking knowledge? If so, you practice jnana yoga.

Incorporating a consistent raja yoga practice (the physical asanas) will bring you countless benefits and enhance the yoga you already participate in out in the world. I encourage you to bring your karma, bhakti, and jnana yoga to the mat either at home in your home practice, to a studio to share your energy with a roomful of like minded souls, to a corporate yoga class to destress at work, to a community yoga class, etc.

There is a yoga class for everyone! There are gentle restorative yoga classes for those who yearn for a gentle loving practice. There are level one, two, and three classes where you choose what your edge is today and where you want to take your practice today. There are classes in meditation and the glorious deep practice of yin yoga. I encourage you to start where you are, but just start! Let the miracle and JOY of yoga enter your body, heart, life, soul, and reap the glorious rewards. Give yourself the gift of yoga.

Please let me know how I can help you further your yoga practice.