Barn Yoga

Kaiut Yoga Online and in Person Classes in Boulder

Meet Our Student – Jane Cohen

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When Jane first started taking Kaiut Yoga classes at the barn, she felt very self-conscious, comparing herself to others in the class and feeling like she was the stiffest person in the room.  In order to continue practicing yoga, she recalls having to find peace within with where she was.

I really wanted to continue and didn’t want my ego to be in the way of doing that.  As a psychotherapist working with parents who have lost a child, she is often giving this same message to grieving parents:  “It’s OK to be with where you are.”

Jane has been studying the harmonium, a classical Indian musical instrument which is played sitting cross legged on the floor.  When she first started playing, she experienced a lot of back pain, but after coming regularly to class she has noticed that she can sit comfortably on the floor and play without any pain.

Jane is also now proud to report that she is no longer the stiffest person in the room — and we are thrilled that she is in the room!

 

Meet Our Student – Tamar Stone

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Tamar loves the practice of  Kaiut Yoga and has found that her body craves practicing when she is not able to attend class.  Her body has been very important to her, both because of her own physical issues, and because of the central role the body plays in her work as an internationally recognized psychotherapist and consultant. She is currently writing a book with the subtitle My Body as a Path to Presence.

 Landing in my body is giving me a sense of presence more than anything else.  I know the answer isn’t out there.  It’s to be as present as I can be in this body in this moment.

 

 

Meet Our Student – Bob Styer

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Bob started coming to classes at the barn  at the encouragement of his neighbor.  He had been feeling the impacts of the aging process on his body for some time and was recovering from a recent back surgery due to chronic back pain. Although Bob was not familiar with the Kaiut Yoga method, he was looking for a way to engage both his mind and his body in his healing process.  Bob quickly became a regular student at the barn, attending classes nearly every day — with impressive results to show for his efforts!   Bob appreciates the emphasis in Kaiut Yoga on using the synergy of mind and body working together to approach places of restriction in the body with kindness. His favorite teaching cue is:  “Keep it!” which inspires him to nurture the edges of his restrictions which he has come to understand are the places where the real healing actually takes place.

How Did This Happen to Me? – My Journey to Becoming a Kaiut Yoga Teacher

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Although most of you know me only as your Kaiut Yoga teacher,  no one could be more surprised than I am to find myself in this role.  My journey to becoming your teacher has been rather a mysterious process, one that  I would like to share with you by telling you about some of the twists and turns along the way.  I also want you to know about the vitally important part that you have played in that journey.

So here’s my story:

After nearly a decade of “lost years” in my twenties during which I was pursuing my medical training, I was well into my thirties by the time I found my way to my first yoga class.  Because of my natural flexibility, I discovered that yoga, unlike most physical disciplines, was something I was “good at”.  I enjoyed the challenge of doing more advanced poses and I enjoyed the vitality I felt after a rigorous class.  My yoga practice also served as a lifeline to my sanity, providing at least some measure of comfort to my nervous system, frazzled as it was from the hard work of parenting and doctoring, not to mention the hard work of simply being alive.

This way of practicing seemed to serve me well enough for a quite a number of years, but somewhere along the line I began to feel that something was out of sync between me and my yoga practice.  Although I was not aware of any lessening of my ability to do the poses, I began to notice that I stood out in class for being older than the rest of the students, many of my same age peers having dropped out due to injuries or inability to keep up in such rigorous classes.  I supposed I was one of the lucky ones who had not  been seriously injured doing yoga, but I did begin to wonder whether it was simply a matter of time before I too would have to stop practicing, which would have been a great disappointment to me. What I wanted was a yoga practice I could continue to do for the rest of my life.  I wanted a yoga practice I would not have to  abandon as I aged,  but rather one which could actually deepen over time.   So even though I had not been injured and even though I could keep up in class, as I passed my sixtieth year, I began to feel that my yoga practice was not the right fit for me anymore.  It had become a practice consisting of putting my body into difficult poses simply because I could  rather than a  practice which was providing my body with the poses that it actually needed.

Despite this growing discontent with my long-time practice, I stayed with it for lack of a better alternative.  That is, until one day, while wandering the aisles at McGuckin’s Hardware Store here in Boulder, I ran into an old friend from yoga, who, like so many others my age, had stopped coming to classes and had dropped off my radar.  He told me about an extraordinary yoga teacher from Brazil who had developed a radically different approach to yoga.   He told me that this teacher had been coming to Colorado for a few years to teach classes and that he would be coming again but not very soon.  When he mentioned this teacher’s name, Francisco Kaiut, I somehow mysteriously knew that this would be an important teacher for me.  I jotted down my email address for him and asked to be notified when this unknown teacher was in town. [Read more…] about How Did This Happen to Me? – My Journey to Becoming a Kaiut Yoga Teacher

Notes From the Jungle

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Greetings from Sitio Gloria,  a spectacularly beautiful retreat center in the jungle several hours drive outside of San Paolo, Brazil where some twenty-five of us have been holed up with Francisco Kaiut for the first ever Kaiut Yoga Carnaval Retreat taught in English.

Today is day seven of our eight day retreat and, although I have been trying diligently to keep my engagement with the internet to a minimum this week,  as our precious and other-worldly time here draws to a close, I am stepping back  into cyber-world to send this message in the hope that I can share with you at least in some small measure what this experience has been like.

Our daily  routine has been simple:  Early morning breathwork/meditation practice, breakfast, three hour morning yoga practice, lunch, afternoon rest, three hour afternoon yoga practice, tea, light dinner, occasional after dinner Q&A with Francisco and  then off to bed.

Yowza, you might be thinking, that sounds pretty intense and, indeed, it has been intense, but it sounds more daunting than it actually has been.  We are in a magical place and the lush natural beauty of the setting enhanced by the exquisite  artistic sensibilities of architecture and furnishings, the beautiful and healthful food prepared by a warm and friendly staff, the gentleness of the climate, whether on warm sunny days or in the midst of frequent downpours, have generated the perfect alchemical mix to create a safe, nurturing and altogether delightful  container for our yoga practice.   Within that container it has been possible for Francisco to guide us masterfully, drawing us all  slowly but surely to incredible depths in our practice, depths which would not be possible to touch in hour long classes occurring in the midst of our everyday lives back home.

My intellectual understanding lags so far behind my intuitive understanding that any description I can muster seems to capture only the barest outer layer of the full experience.  Bearing that limitation of language in mind, [Read more…] about Notes From the Jungle