Albuquerque Yoga Studio Blog: Yoga Art Space

Spiritual Fitness

As we wind down after the Thanksgiving Holiday, and prepare to ramp up for the potential (commercially induced) frenzy of the next few weeks, we must remember to take time for our practice and for the health and fitness or our spirit. It is definitely a good time to consider my spiritual fitness as I am finally walking away from an 18 year marriage. Through this process, I must navigate the muddied waters of the many emotions that go with that. I fluctuate wildly from emotion to emotion like a wrecking ball demolishing a condemned building swinging from corner to corner, loneliness and despair in the southwest corner, anger and defiance in the northeast corner, depression and self-pity in

Stay Committed To You

Have you ever found yourself in that space of judgement..... judging yourself for your time spent or lack there of, on the mat? Catching your ego taking punches... feeling like you should be practicing more, taking that pose all the way, meditating more, etc? You may feel the doubt start to creep in, those 'not good enough' thoughts. This is where I challenge you... I challenge you to take a deep breath and look for the yoga taking place in your every day life. The pauses for breath you're starting to take more, those moments of appreciating the beauty around you, the beauty in the mundane. You may start to notice the moving meditation that has become your life, the beautiful dance, the a

Why Do Mudras: The ABCs of Yoga Hand Gestures

In Sanskrit, mudra means “seal” and in yoga, we use mudras or hand gestures to seal together our hands and fingers in different combinations to achieve particular results in our lives. This week in my yoga classes at Yoga Art Space, we briefly discussed generosity of finances, spirit, and time, through a mudra that looks like a cup. The hands are joined together, fingers up, thumbs and pinkies together. After class, a student asked me to describe the purpose behind some other common mudras or hand gestures. I was stumped. When I first became a yoga teacher, I regularly incorporated mudras into my classes. Since then, I have become a mudra slacker. So here is a brush-up course on a few common

Welcome One and All!!!

With our official opening date having come this past week, we are so excited to welcome you into our new studio, Yoga Art Space! We wanted to present the first of our weekly blog posts to you with the theme of introducing a few of the special features about our studio. First and foremost, we wish to speak about our community arts project, the Peacock Painting. This painting is hung in such a way so as to be one of the first things you see when you enter. Whenever you take a class with us, we invite you to dip your finger in the metallic paints below the painting and place a fingerprint thereon. For each student who attends a class with us, we will donate 1 cup of rice to help feed the hungry