Elise Geolat Yoga

Here is the schedule for this week! 🧘✨

Weekly Teaching Schedule:
    •    Wednesday, Aug 26 @ 5:45 PM — PodFlow 2 | YogaPod South Boulder
    •    Friday, Aug 28 @ 10:15 AM — PodFlow 1 | YogaPod South Boulder
    •    Saturday, Aug 29 @ 10:00 AM — CANCELLED (SoBo Rec Center closed for maintenance)
    •    Saturday, Aug 29 @ 1:30 PM — PodFlow 1 | YogaPod South Boulder

Note for Saturday morning: The 10:00 AM class at South Boulder Rec Center is cancelled this week due to maintenance, but come join me at YogaPod at 1:30 PM instead! Drop ins welcome ✨🫶

I’ll see you on your mat! 🤍

Ah, the bookends of class! ✨☀️ A special thank you to Shannon at SAORSA for sharing these beautiful products for us to try in studio - my students are loving the Cooling Cream and Calming Cream. ♥️ Just shared a video on how I'm using the Cooling Cream for pre-class gentle massage and grounding with my students and I will be sharing my savasana assist using Calming Cream later this week! Hands-on assists (with consent) are coming back to in person classes after we largely stopped them during the social distancing era. I can't think of a sweeter way to welcome back intentional touch to my classes 🫶 ✨ SoarsaSkin.com ☀️

Three chances to practice & breathe together this week ✨🫶 As always I'm bringing the aulief® for our warm up and lavender lotion to close. 💆‍♀️ Would love to see you ☀️

Drop ins welcome. A possibility of 4 days of rain arriving midweek to ease our drought. Everybody dance your best rain dance 🙏🌧️

This is the Red Lady. In her quiet grace she stands over Crested Butte, Colorado, occasionally covered in mist and sometimes covered in golden aspens. Seeing her reminds me of the beauty of the changing seasons and there's also some sweet comfort of being small next to something so majestic.

Crested Butte is one of my favorite places in the world and where I fell in love with mountain biking. Now - I haven't gone mountain biking since my daughter's birth and my pregnancy (and she's a toddler now!), but the feeling of it is still fresh. When you're mountain biking, there is a blend of thinking and feeling. Think too much, and you'll fall over. But if you don't think enough about where you're going, you'll fall over, too.

We are thinking beings and we are feeling beings; there are some things you can't think your way out of, can't intellectualize your way to understanding; and there are things that need to present themselves at the altar of your intellect.

The Jivamukti focus of the month for this August is this idea by way of the mantra, Om Namo Narayana. On paper it means (depending on the translation) "I honor all living beings" or "I bow to the divine presence inside all living beings". That's understanding at an intellectual level. But it's something else to chant a mantra yourself and feel the vibrations and experience that mantra in your own body.

I like this offering from Walt Whitman: "You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul." (from I Sing the Body Electric)

This month we'll be exploring intellectual and embodied experiences, through mantra and through postures linked with intention and breath.

When do you feel the most balanced between your thinking mind and your feeling mind?

What would it be like to drop 1% more into your feeling mind?

Here are four things you can expect to find in my yoga classes. Not every teacher is for every student, and that's OK! If these things resonate with you, I'd love to see you.

1. Stories and Philosophy - My biggest "a ha" moments in my yoga practice have all come from the teacher sharing relatable stories and tidbits of philosophy to integrate throughout class. I try to set up my classes so that students come away with some new nugget that stays with them long after class is over. The world is rich in history and poetry.

2. Hands-on assists - For me, I love giving and receiving hands-on assists so these are an integral part of my teaching practice. I always use consent chips with the default as "No - Verbal guidance is enough for me today". I use two products in class which students can always decline - .usa gel during the warm-up and lavender lotion or lotion for savasana.

3. Ending on time - When I first started out teaching yoga, embarassingly I didn't understand how important it was to end on time and respect students' time. Now I say you can *always* trust me to get you out on time. The sequence, dharma talk and savasana are built into the class time so that you don't have to rush out the door. If we have the luxury of a break between classes I will say that and you are welcome to stay and marinate, but I will always cue ending on time.

4. A 5+ minute savasana - I believe savasana is the most important posture in class. It's where we integrate all of the benefits of class and allow inner wisdom and lessons to bubble up. From personal experiece, I believe a 5-8 minute savasana is optimal in a ~60 minute class. You do not have to worry about savasana starting when class is over; I always build savasana into class time.

So those are some of the things you can expect in classes together! Hope to see you soon on your mat. And please tell me: What do you enjoy most during a yoga class? What stood out to you most about your favorite teachers or classes?

There is a saying that your birth is so rare, so improbably precious, that there is less of a chance of you being born than a sea turtle accidentally swimming through a gold hoop in the ocean and wearing it as a necklace.

I love that image and I've been thinking about that while reflecting on the Jivamukti Focus of the Month, “Walking with the Divine.”

We can treat accessing the Divine or connecting with our highest self as goal to achieve, to win, or to strive for - maybe after many hours of meditation and practice.

But the circumstances of your birth are already an improbable miracle. To be in this body, to be conscious, to feel and think... When you pause and think about how rare it is just to be here, to be you, the mundane things we do every day can start to take on a certain preciousness, too.

Finding the divine within yourself is in part about waking up to the magic hidden in everyday moments as this Zen proverb invites: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

Your precious life is already a miracle... what if right now is the whole point?