Dear Students,
Here is the Ashtanga Yoga Jiva Newsletter for August 2011.
Dates For Your Diary
August
Friday 12th : No Class (Thai holiday / studio closed)
Sunday 14th : No Class (Full Moon Day)
Saturday 20th : Introduction to Mysore-style Ashtanga Yoga Workshop
Thursday 25th : Yin-style Yoga Class
Monday 29th : No Class (New Moon Day)
September
Monday 5th : Yin-style Yoga Class
Saturday 10th : Back Bends Workshop
Monday 12th : No Class (Full Moon Day)
Also, please don’t forget... every Wednesday... class to finish strictly by 9:30.
New Classes and Workshops with Nigel at Pilatestudio
An Introduction to Mysore-style Ashtanga Yoga Workshop
Workshop : Saturday August the 20th, from 10 - 11.30 am.
Talk, some simple demonstrations and a little optional practice to introduce Mysore-style Ashtanga Yoga. All levels are welcome – including complete beginners to Yoga.
The basic concepts, method, benefits, philosophy and history will all be discussed.
A great way to introduce your friends and family to the practice!
The fee is by donation - pay what you like.
Yin-style Yoga led class
Thursday August the 25th, from 18:30 - 19.45 pm.
A class in the Yin Yoga style. A mellow sundowner with cool music, for the tired, stressed-out, stiff, injured and for the overhyped Ashtanga regulars who need restoration! In this quiet practice, your energy levels are restored as you move into stillness and relax into the postures. Great for shoulders, hips, lower back, and hamstrings. The practice targets the connective tissues, such as the ligaments, bones, and even the joints of the body that normally are not exercised very much in a more active style of asana practice. Suitable for almost all levels of students, though the class can be quite challenging due to the long duration of the poses. Class is a complement to the dynamic and muscular (yang) styles of yoga that emphasize internal heat.
The fee is Baht 450.
Back Bends Workshop
Workshop : Saturday September the 10th, from 10 - 11.30 am.
An informal Ashtanga Yoga based workshop focusing on postures that are designed to open the back, the shoulders and the heart. It is particularly aimed at those who have some difficulty with back bends, and for those who are interested in helping others with back bends.
The class will feature short discussions throughout. Practice will begin with some simple opening stretches. Traditional Ashtanga Yoga Sun Salutations and some standing series postures will continue to get the body warmed up and flexible. The main body of the workshop will utilize backbend orientated postures. Anyone familiar with Nigel's Mysore class will recognize the use of preparatory methods to make the back bend asanas easier and safer. The workshop will also offer ways that friends can help each other with back bend based asanas. Penultimately, for those that are ready, there will be instruction, demonstration and practice of Urdhva Dhanurasana drop-backs. Finally, we will bring ourselves down to earth with finishing postures and relaxation.
We would recommend at least 3 months of regular practice for this workshop.
The fee is Baht 700.
Please book all classes and workshops in advance.
Bangkok Bounty
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I)Vegetarian Restaurants and Cafes
There are many vegetarian places to eat in Bangkok, and I think I have eaten at most of them. However, vegetarian does not necessarily equate to healthy, or yummy. So here there is no attempt at comprehensiveness. Rather, this is just a totally subjective list of the places in town that I like to eat.
The legend! An inexpensive outdoor vegetarian food court, in the very pleasant Baan Ari / Banana Family Park community Dharmma centre close to Ari BTS. Apart from our apartment, this is my favorite place to eat in Bangkok. Mornings and lunchtimes only.
Deva Cafe 888/57 Mahthun Plaza, Phloen Chit, Bangkok.
Special mention must also go to the Deva Cafe, next door to Pilatestudio. Decent, inexpensive, varied buffet and a la carte Thai food and fresh juices. Run by a charming Thai couple. Most mornings you will find a post-practice breakfast club hanging out there. Who later may relocate to the At 6th Coffee shop a few doors down.
High quality Thai food and slightly high - for Bangkok - prices. A stylish place, the haunt of the fashionable and the famous. Almost 4,000 Likes for their Facebook page tells you something! And it is conveniently located just at the end of our street!
Chamlong’s Asoke Vegetarian Restaurant
A large vegetarian food court close to Chatuchat (JJ) Market, across the street from Exit 1 of the MRT. Big buffet selection of good, inexpensive food. Adjoining is a really good, really cheap, Thai-style health food grocery store.
Vegie Chinese food in the Phrom Pong area, Sukhumvit Soi 24/1. Not a charming location, but I like the food a lot.
Soi Rama 9 Hospital. Almost impossible to find. Quite a fancy, air conditioned place. Mostly decent Thai, and Italian style food. Vegetables are said to be organic, grown on their own farm. Large selection of nice cakes and desserts.
57 Soi Sukhumvit Soi 39. Not too everyones taste, but worth a mention. Also one of Bangkok's only genuine health spa / retreat’s.
57 Dinso Road, Banglamphu. Lots of mock meat dishes. Definitely yummy, probably not healthy.
The eccentrically charming May has been feeding the spaced-out Farang backpackers around Samsen and Koh San Road and for two decades now. Three Bangkok branches and one in Chiang Mai. She also teaches Thai vegetarian cooking. The food could be said to be not particularly authentically Thai, but it’s certainly acceptable to me. Plus for outstanding services to the vegetarian cause in Thailand, she most definitely deserves our respect.
That’s it! There is literally nowhere else in central Bangkok that hand-on-heart I am able to recommend.
Make a special effort to come to class on Monday because Naw is promising to bring us all something yummy!
See you in class!
Namaste
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
Thomas Edison
Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Albert Einstein
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Question : Some students are very proud of their practice and are very attached to their bodies. They think of themselves as yogis, and yet they are not even vegetarians. I try to talk to them about it, but they do not like to listen. Should I continue?
R. Sharath Jois : You must, it is very important. A real yogi is judged by his behavior. He wants to do something good always, and doesn’t want to cause hurt. Asana is very powerful. With it, one can become a demon, or one can become divine. We need to understand the true purpose of doing asana. But if you just do asanas, there is no difference between you and those who go to the gym. Beautiful postures does not mean beautiful yogi. A yogi must practice yogic principles in his life. Or you are not a yogi, but a bhogi (one who indulges in material enjoyment without restriction; one who seeks material enjoyment as life’s main aspiration).
