Flexible classes to balance your body and mind
About Saffron Yoga
Back in 2004, I spent a month in a Sivananda Ashram doing a teacher training course, to immerse myself in the practice and philosophy.
I returned home with no real plans of teaching, but within a week I was invited to start a class in a remote village hall in Suffolk, and as they say, the rest is history.
After 18 years of teaching, I still love what I do and who I meet on a daily basis.
I have trained in and subsequently taught various styles of yoga over the years but have found myself now settled with my own style, which is a mixture of different approaches and is aimed at a wide age group and ability, incorporating breath work, asana (postures and movement) and meditational relaxation.
To book, please email siobhan@saffronyoga.co.uk or
call 07780 873138
Physical benefits
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Stretching your body in new ways will help bring a freedom of movement to muscles and joints over time.
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Many yoga poses require you to support the weight of your own body in new ways, moving slowly in and out of poses, which increases your muscular strength.
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As a by-product of getting stronger, you can expect to see increased muscle tone. Yoga helps shape long, lean muscles.
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Increased flexibility and strength can help prevent many pains, tightnesses and compressions. The most common being back pain, often caused by sitting at a computer or driving a car for too long.
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Most of us breathe very shallowly into the lungs. Yoga breathing exercises, called Pranayama teaches us how to better use our lungs and helps calm the central nervous system.
Mental benefits
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Yoga practice is physical and requires concentration on what your body is doing resulting in the effect of bringing a calmness to the mind.
Yoga also introduces you to meditation techniques, such as watching how you breathe and disengagement from your thoughts, which help calm the mind.
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Physical activity is good for relieving stress, and this is particularly true of yoga.
Because of the concentration required, your daily troubles, both large and small, seem to disappear during the time you are doing yoga. This provides a much-needed break from your stressors, as well as helping put things into perspective.
The emphasis yoga places on being in the moment can also help relieve stress, as you learn not to dwell on past events or anticipate the future. You will leave a yoga class feeling less stressed than when you started.
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Doing yoga will give you an increased awareness of your own body. You are often called upon to make small, subtle movements to improve your alignment.
Over time, this will increase your level of comfort in your own body. This can lead to improved posture and greater self-confidence.
Traditional Hatha Yoga
Hatha is a very general term that can encompass many of the physical types of yoga. If a class is described as Hatha style, it is probably going to be serenely paced, and provide a good introduction to the basic poses for beginners and focus and detail for established students.
Ashtanga-influenced Yoga
Ashtanga is a fast-paced, intense style of yoga. A set series of poses is performed, always in the same order. Ashtanga practice is very physically demanding because of the constant movement from one pose to the next and is also the inspiration for what is often called Power Yoga. The Wednesday evening class uses modified Ashtanga poses - it isn’t a true Primary Series class.
Words from a Saffron Yogi