Blog Post By Catherine Gignac: Growing up, people used to tell me that I was too serious — I mean, really serious. For some reason, people (boys) just loved to tease me and say that I couldn’t take, or make for that matter, a joke. I never liked when this happened and even though I always knew I was silly at my core, I was a serious student. I had goals! I had dreams! I had to achieve, achieve, achieve!

In hindsight, now that I’ve grown more, achieved what I envisioned for myself in my twenties (and let’s face it, gone to college), I can see that I was totally too serious in many ways in my teens. Now, those of you who’ve been to my classes know my silly often outweighs my serious. I had to grow into that, but I’m so glad I did.

A lot of this story mimics our yoga practices. We come to our mats with the intention of becoming flexible, strong, skinny, detoxed and toned and we take ourselves so seriously trying to conquer new poses. Achieve, achieve, achieve! While there is definitely a place for us to consider all of the above with a healthful intention, sometimes the seriousness and the goal-setting gets in the way of us really getting anywhere with ourselves.

That’s one of the reasons why I love teaching our glow in the dark yoga class, Glow With The Flow. It’s literally designed to be silly and way less serious than a typical practice. Not only are neon-clad yogis a bit more relaxed when we enter a room full of black lights but we also come out of our shells and a push the envelope a bit more in the dark. It’s impossible to be serious in an utkatasana while singing along to Drop It Like It’s Hot with sixty other people doing the exact same thing.

My intention when teaching each glow class is to get everyone to fire up their silliness a bit more — whether it be in life or in their practice. There’s not much that brings the child-like (or college-student-at-a-dance-club) mentality out in us once we hit “grown up” age, but when the opportunity presents itself, take it. Jump on it. Glow with it. Life and yoga are about a lot more than achieve, achieve, achieve. Sometimes it’s the silly that brings us into our own.

I hope you can join me for Glow With The Flow, part of the Amazing Yoga Gathering Weekend on Saturday, June 28th at 7:30pm! I promise it’ll be a silly good time. – Catherine Gignac

You’ve heard it a million times … ‘cause it’s true. We all need to meditate!

I often here people say, “I just can’t meditate. I tried it once, and it didn’t work for me.” 

Well, no kidding! That is like saying I tried to run a marathon without any training and it didn’t work for me. It’s a completely normal feeling.

The truth is, it takes time to calm a busy mind and some days will be turbulent. Absolutely everyone can benefit from relaxing when you feel stressed or overwhelmed. Of all the things we give our time to on a daily basis, feeling calmer and healthier with a 5-15 minute commitment is well worth it.  

Something to know is that there are many types of meditation. Meditation is not a right or wrong experience it is just doing it that counts. As is the human experience, we tend to try to complicate things and make excuses about why we can’t do something.

But the truth is, meditation is simple and just takes practice to sit quietly for a few minutes each day. To get started, begin with just 5 minutes every day.  As you get more accustomed then slowly work up to 15 minutes.

HOW TO MEDITATE:
1. Sit comfortably with a straight spine (use pillows, cushions or props that help you feel comfortable).
2. Close your eyes.
3. Pay attention to your breath.
4. Scan your body for any parts that do not feel relaxed and visualize your breath moving to those parts.
5. When your mind drifts to planning or fantasizing (and it will), return to the present moment by focusing on your breath.
6. Don’t worry about how well you are doing.

If you feel like you need some more guidance, check out our online classes. We just uploaded a brief, simple guided meditation that you can use over and over from home. Happy Meditating!

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