yoga

Get to Know Your yogafusion – Emma Hewett-Smiles

Meet the instructor: Emma Hewett-Smiles

yogafusion

When did your yoga journey start? And why did you start?

My yoga journey started at a London gym in 2003. I was doing aerobics plus contemporary and hip hop classes at Dance Works studio and thought I’d give a yoga class a go. The teacher was from New Zealand and I found the class more inline with my former dance/ballet training that I’d grown up with. I realised how much I would need to work to keep it up dancing at the level I was previously at. Yoga was a more practical alternative at the time and more suited to the stage of life as I was entering my twenties.

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Get to Know Your yogafusion – Andrew Czuchwicki

Meet the instructor: Andrew Czuchwicki (Cancer with moon in Scorpio)

When did your yoga journey start? And why did you start?

I began yoga about 15 years ago. Sue and I were training for 50-100km training rides and I would always find myself hobbling around sore and stiff afterwards. When I queried Sue why she was not sore she told me she was doing yoga and she demonstrated half pigeon and once I tried it and felt such deep relief, I was hooked!

What led you to decide to become a yoga instructor?

I like to draw a distinction between instructing and teaching. For me instructing is just about cuing poses in a sequence. Teaching yoga is about using the poses to challenge and stimulate peoples minds and leave them questioning. Continue reading →

What Does Yoga Actually Mean?

Yoga is an all encompassing term which is derived from the Sanskrit word, yuj, which translates in its most simplistic form to yoke. However, the translation isn’t that straight forward and it can mean to bind, union, attach and communion or a culmination of all these words.

With such multifaceted semantics, yoga can also be interpreted as connection, contact, method, application, addition, combination and performance.

On first glance, yoga may appear as a series of stretches and postures but it’s a traditional method of practise, principles and philosophy that aims to bind or yoke the individual together with a higher being or existence.

Another way of looking at the definition of yuj is ‘to direct and concentrate one’s attention on, to use and apply’,Light on Yoga, page 19.

Yoga is both a state and a means to attaining it. Despite the differing styles and ways of practise, there is a common underpinning thread of belief that we, as people, are greater than just a body and mind. Continue reading →