More ways to learn and progress, within the classes you already love.
We’ve got something new coming to the schedule, and it’s going to give us much more room to explore, learn and progress within our regular classes.
One of the things we love about yoga is that it doesn't need to be reduced to an outcome.
We don't necessarily practise because we're trying to run faster, lift something heavier or achieve a particular health metric. The real value is simply in practising: moving, breathing, paying attention and developing a relationship with something over a long period of time.
A yoga class should still be somewhere you can turn up without needing another goal to chase, or getting yourself all tangled up in ‘optimisation’ culture.
…But that doesn’t mean those things are necessarily bad!
The more we understand ourselves and our practice, the more intelligently we can work with it.
Understanding why one variation might suit our body better than another. Knowing how to build the foundations for something more complex rather than guessing at the end result. Recognising when we need strength, mobility, stability, rest or simply more time. Understanding a little more anatomy, breath, philosophy and technique so that eventually we're not just following instructions, we are actually becoming better at navigating our own practice.
With a studio schedule that includes everything from dynamic flow and strength work to somatics, restorative practices and meditation, that understanding becomes increasingly valuable.
The goal isn't to turn every class into a lecture. Rather, we are hoping we’ve found a new sweet spot!
We want our regular classes to retain their rhythm and energy and continue to fill the same place that they do in your week; whether that’s burning up stagnant energy, or making space in a hectic calendar. Rather than trying to make every session an explicit learning opportunity, we’re creating dedicated moments within the timetable where we will deliberately turn the dial up a little on the learning component.
The opportunities will appear in rotation across the regular schedule throughout the year, giving you opportunities to go back to basics, to investigate something more closely, to develop a particular skill, or understand a specific practice.
Sometimes they’ll occur at points in the year where we organically see lots of fresh faces (like September!), sometimes they’ll be timed for seasonal relevance, and occasionally even on request!
We are calling these our ‘Foundation Series’ and our ‘Deepening Series’.
Foundation Series will focus on clarifying the cornerstones of practice, whereas Deepening Series will focus on how we might take our practice further!
They’ll pop up in our normal class rotation with either (FS) or (DS) added in the class title and you’ll be able to read the extended detail on our calendar page here, or keep an eye out on our newsletters and socials for announcements.
Whilst the series will all offer opportunities for education and progression, they’ll be structured so that each session still stands on its own. So if you want to just turn up and enjoy your class as usual you can, and if you want to commit for the full series then you can do that too!
Foundations doesn't necessarily mean beginners
Some Foundation Series will absolutely take us back to the basics.
We might explore the core poses that crop up again and again in a flow class, spend some time understanding how and why we use props, look at breathing and transitions, or simply slow everything down enough to build confidence with the basic vocabulary of a yoga practice.
But foundations doesn't necessarily mean beginner.
There are foundations underneath more advanced practices too.
We might look at the mechanics that underpin an arm balance, the strength and mobility required for a particular family of poses, or take something that you’ve practised hundreds of times and revisit it with a little more precision.
In other words, Foundation Series aren't about making things easy. They're about understanding the building blocks properly before deciding what we want to build with them.
And Deepening doesn't necessarily mean harder
The same applies in the other direction.
Deepening Series aren't simply there for us to practise increasingly complicated poses. (Although sometimes we will do exactly that!) But we can also deepen our practice by understanding more about anatomy and movement, exploring how breath and pressure support a posture, spending longer with meditation or pranayama, investigating an aspect of philosophy, or learning how different practices can be used more intelligently.
Sometimes progression means doing something we couldn't do before.
Sometimes it means understanding the nuance of something we've been doing for years, or even finding out why a practice we hadn’t considered before might actually be the best way towards our goals.
Where are we starting?
Creating dedicated space for learning elsewhere in the timetable also gives us an opportunity to evolve our Thursday Beginners class.
From September, ‘Beginners’ will become ‘Flow Slow’.
Flow Slow is a nourishing and clarifying all-round yoga practice, where the slower pace gives us time to work out how the practice actually fits into your body.
Rather than simply moving more slowly through a conventional flow, we’ll draw on somatically inspired repetition, exploratory movement and familiar yoga poses to help clarify and harmonise the relationships between different parts of the body: how our joints move, how one movement affects another, and how we can gradually find greater ease, coordination and freedom. There’ll still be the same variety. Floor-based movement, standing poses, core work, mobility, breath and moments of stillness will all find their way into the practice. We’re simply taking them at a more nourishing pace, with enough time to feel what’s happening rather than rushing towards the next shape.
That makes Flow Slow a brilliant place to start if you’re completely new to yoga, and an equally useful place to return if you’ve been away from practice for a while.
But it isn't only a beginners class. It’s also for anyone who wants their yoga to be more about health, longevity and continuing to move well for a very long time.
We’ll be leading our first Foundation Series from the 17th of September, and a second Foundation Series from the 5th of November.
Find out what we’ll be focusing on in them
FS Flow Slow 17th September → Sun Salutations
FS Flow Slow 5th November → Finding Balance
Part of your regular practice
Foundation Series and Deepening Series are part of our regular class schedule. That means they're included in all of our memberships, or you can join individual sessions using a Standard Class Drop-In Credit, just as you would with the class normally occupying that spot.
There'll still be events, workshops and Special Classes when a subject needs more time, equipment and small group quality attention. They're filling the space between a normal class and a workshop: enough room to look closer, learn something, perhaps set some goals and make progress, while still feeling like the class you wanted to come to that day.
Over time, we hope it means the studio becomes somewhere you can do both.
You can turn up and practise without needing to achieve anything at all.
And you can become increasingly knowledgeable about your body, your practice and the huge range of tools available to you when you do want to work towards something.