Yoga in the North Cascades Summer Vitality

YOGA IN THE NORTH CASCADES!

Summer Vitality: Breath, Yoga Asana and Meditation for the Summer Season!

June 6-8th 2014

Journey into your most vibrant self while practicing yoga and celebrating the beauty of nature! BRING THE FAMILY!!! The North Cascades Institute (AKA the ‘American Alps’) is a mere 2 hour drive from Bellingham, WA and will be our home for this weekend of nourishing yoga, hiking, food and spectacular scenery!

CHILD CARE DURING 2 YOGA CLASSES IS AVAILABLE AND INCLUDED!!!!

Your weekend will include: Two nights lodging, organic nourishing meals (dinner Friday through lunch Sunday), four yoga asana classes (Friday PM, Saturday AM and PM, Sunday AM), two morning meditations, a guided hike with NCI naturalist, and a workshop on Ayurvedic (the sister science to yoga) practices for whole-being balance in the summer season. You will return centered, nurtured: this weekend promises playful bliss!!!

Rate: $357 quad, $367 triple, $407 double, $568 single. Some off site camping is available at many nearby campgrounds with yoga only option or yoga-food option available. Please contact for more information.

YOUR FACILITATOR:

Elizabeth Ruff, RYT, LMP, has taught yoga for 11 years, is a Soma Neuromuscular Integration® bodyworker, mama, mountain athlete, artist, gardener, reader and lover of life. Her wisdom of our natural world threads into her yoga classes seamlessly. She excels at the pursuit of play and brings the joy of adventure to each of her yoga classes. Elizabeth weaves ancient tantric teachings into seasonal Ayurvedic yoga practices, creating an experience that will burn through stagnations, leave you balanced and ignite your passion for life. Meet Elizabeth at www.manabodyworks.com.

         Space is limited! Call 360-224-2330 or Email Elizabethruff@gmail.com

Pain in the Back

Ahhhh... a pain in my back. It is very disruptive to my life, as one who generates their livelihood from using their body, and as one who attains great spiritual fulfilment in doing so. My lower right back. This is a new experience, and my practice: to witness. Witness myself asking a fellow Soma Neuromuscular Integrator for help, witness myself asking my partner for compassion, witness the habitual- or mindless- movements that have brought myself to this place. Now, after admitting once again my humanity and vulnerability, I can feel my body start to unwind and am witnessing the transformation effects of Structural Integration work and Yoga.
    As a Certified Soma Practitioner and Yoga Instructor, I have many clients who come to me with different pains. Sometimes I have shared similar pains, and sometimes it seems as a foreign country. Every time I have a breakdown in my body, I see it as an opportunity to experience that what others do and I have not yet. It is a chance for me to generate genuine empathy, for when one has experienced then one can truly know.
   And there is also the doorway to open consciousness: In addition to my body sharing this pain with my, my purse was recently stolen- another disruptive experience. As I watched myself put together the pieces that get shifted from that experience, I watch myself realign the pieces of my body in gravity. And the easiest way to do this is with love and the aspiration of grace.
     Here's to another day of growth!!!