Get Your Yoga on in 2011

Happy New Year!  Well 2011 is here and we wish everyone health, love and much happiness throughout the next year. Little Lotus classes kicked off this week with a bang! Prenatal classes are filled with lovely growing belly bumps, preschoolers are energized to learn yoga through play and movement and older children are busy with sun salutations, journaling, learning pranayama techniques and meditation!

We still have a few spaces left in our 5:30 Prenatal class on Thursday’s and our classes held in the Glebe & Old Ottawa South. Registrations are still being accepted through each community centre and rates are pro-rated.

Happy New Year from my family to yours!

Namaste

Amanda

~REFLECTIONS~

“live with intention. walk to the edge. listen hard. practice wellness. play with abandon. laugh. choose with no regret. continue to learn. appreciate your friends. do what you love. live as if this is all there is.” -mary anne radmacher

“wheresovever you go, go with all your heart!” -confucius

“too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”  -leo buscaglia

“imagine one day struck out of your life, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain or iron or gold, or thorns and flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” -charles dickens

“may you always have enough happiness to keep you sweet; enough trials to keep you strong; enough success to keep you eager; enough faith to give you courage; and enough determination to make each day a good day.” -Proverb

The Cracked Pot

This story is an excerpt from The Treasure In Your Heart: Yoga & Stories for Peaceful Children (Mystic Yoga Studio, 2008).  This article came from Yoga Journal. I highly recommend you visit their site for great information on expanding your yoga practice and lifestyle.

Sydney Solis informed Yoga Journal she tells this Hindu tale to teach kids to honor and imperfection.

Every day, a farmer carried two pots to the river to fetch water.  Each pot hung on the end of a pole across his shoulders. The pot on his right side was new and perfect. The pot on his left side was older and had a crack in its side.

The new pot brought back all the water the farmer put into it. But the cracked pot leaked out water in a little trail. This went on day after day for two years. The little cracked pot felt terrible. “I am so ashamed of my imperfection!” One day, it spoke to the farmer: “I must apologize. I only deliver half my load because I leak out water all the way back to your house. You should just get ride of me!”

The farmer said, “Do not despair. Look behind you. Do you not see those beautiful flowers along the path? Those are on the left side where I carry you. I knew about your special feature so I planted flower seeds, and you have watered those sees as I walked home. Thanks to you, I have fresh flowers on my table. Thank you, little cracked pot. You are very special.”