Deepen your practice over the course of four days through a comprehensive yoga program that is invigorating, informative and deeply restorative. Your retreat package also includes a 60-minute massage, three organic catered meals, a personalized memento which you will create, and a special gift from Yoga Garden that you will take home with you.

Yoga heals the heart, energizes the body, and creates a sense of well-being. But most importantly it allows us to live as our most authentic selves. Immerse yourself in yoga and watch as you feel more alive, enthusiastic, and inspired about your life. Get creative, get flexible, get restored, and step back into life  joyfully with full potential!

Massage and Yoga is offered on-sight at the Yoga Garden of San Francisco, 286 Divisadero St.

Fresh organic meals will be catered in Alamo Square Park, or if whether does not permit it, food will be served in the Yoga Garden kitchenette.

Questions? Contact sonya@yogagardensf.com

Click Here to Register On-line Now!

Total Cost: $295 – if registered by May 12th ($320 after)

Please arrive for the first session at least 15 minutes early to sign in and get set up so that we may begin promptly. Yoga mats are available to rent at no charge but you may bring your own mat if you have one. This retreat program is non-refundable, cannot be used to pay for other programs, and cannot be pro-rated.

Accomadations

Yoga Garden of SF is not equipped to offer housing, however, we do provide accomodation resources as a curtesy to our clients.

Click here to learn about Hotel and Lodging options in our neighborhood.

Schedule

FRIDAY 5/25
7:30 – 9pm, Mellow Flow with Sonya - Meet the group and kick off the weekend with an easy evening of yoga.

SATURDAY 5/26
1:30 – 3:30pm, Iyengar with Julia - strong level 1-2 practice primarily focusing on standing poses. Refine you understanding of alignment while building strength.
3:30 – 5pm, catered lunch
5:30 – 7:30 – Hips & Twists with Sonya - Primarily a floor practice, focusing on hip openers and spinal twists.

SUNDAY 5/27
12:30 – 2:30pm, Inversions & Pranayama with Julia - an invigorating practice working with breath and upside down poses.
2:30 – 4pm, catered lunch
4:45 – 6pm, Yoga Nidra with Sonya - a deeply restorative  and relaxing hour of guided meditation.

MONDAY 5/28
10am – 12pm, Backbends with Julia - a challenging strong class, maybe considered the apex of the program! having worked up to it all weekend, students will be guided into some intermediate to advanced back bends.
12 – 2pm – catered lunch
2:15 – 3:30pm, Yoga of Creativity with Sonya - close things out with a fun playful yoga class ending with a little art project! Create a keep sake to remember your experience.

Organic Meal Menu

Lunch Day 1

Almond Flour Tartlets with Seasonal Vegetables and Goat Cheese

Wheat Berry Salad with Greens and Lemon Tahini Dressing

Nut Butter Bites

Lunch Day 2

Homemade Crackers with Veggies and Green Goddess Dipping Sauce

Butter Bean Salad with Baby Artichokes and Aioli

Spring Fruit Salad with Toasted Nuts and Coconut Cream

Lunch Day 3

Smoked Trout or Smokey Edamame Spread
with Seeded Crostini and Endive

Spring Chopped Salad with Walnuts and Roasted Golden Beets

Tart Yogurt Cups with Honey and Dried Fruit

About the Instructors:

Julia Sterling

Julia is a certified Iyengar yoga teacher. She found Iyengar yoga as a respite from a dance career in the early 1990′s. Captivated and inspired by the precision and genius of Mr. Iyengar’s teaching, she studied, travelled, taught and lived Iyengar yoga for many years. Now, two lovely daughters and family life inform her teachings, too. She is especially drawn to working with mothers, specializing in helping to reduce stress and tensions of everyday life.

Sonya Genel

Sonya believes in the power of Yoga not only to heal, transform, and refine the body, but also to heighten human consciousness. The powerful transformative effects she experienced through her own practice compelled Sonya to share it with others. She completed her first teacher training at Kripalu in 2007. Today her teaching and practice are strongly informed by Anusara Yoga and Svatantra which she studies with her primary Teacher KK Ledford. Sonya has also spent a year immersed in study with world renowned scholar and meditation teacher Paul Muller-Ortega. Also, being an artist, she noticed the profound effects yoga had on her creativity and she has dedicated herself to enthusiastically guiding others toward enhancing their own unique life path through yoga. To learn more about Sonya at www.sonyayoga.com and www.sonyagenel.com

Click Here to Register On-line Now!

May 19th, 6-8pm

Cost: $25
Click here to Register 

Learn more about City of Hope’s Yoga for Hope Program at cityofhope.org

Yogi Tea (without caffeine from black tea) or Indian Chai (with black tea)

Yogi tea comprises a specific combination of spices, milk and black tea.  Health- promoting, delicious, soothing and a great coffee substitute.  Yogi tea is easy to make at home.  I like to make a big potful, without adding the milk, and store it in a sealed container in the refrigerator.  Then, upon making a cup of tea, I fill the cup and add warm milk and sweetener to taste.

The spices have the following healthful properties:

Black pepper: blood purifier;

Cardamom: digestive aid; Cloves: nervous system and generates heat in the body;

Cinnamon: bones;

Ginger root: for colds, flu, physical weakness, digestion, increased potency.  The milk helps in easy assimilation of the spices and coats the stomach lining to avoid irritation.  A pinch of black tea gives just a touch of “pick up”.

2 quarts water

15 whole cloves

20 green cardamom pods

20 black peppercorns

3 sticks cinnamon

8 slices ginger root

1/2 tsp black tea  (optional)

3 cups milk

Honey or other sweetener to taste

Bring water to boil in 3-4 quart pot.  Add cloves and boil for 1 minute.  Add cardamom pods (to better release flavor, crush or split pods), peppercorns, cinnamon sticks and ginger root.  Cover and boil gently for 20-30 minutes.  Add black tea (optional). At this point, you can let the tea cool, strain it, and refrigerate.  Or, add the milk, return to boil and immediately remove from heat.  Add sweetener to taste.

by David Nelson

The World deluded by these Three Gunas does not know Me:
Who is beyond these Gunas and imperishable.

-Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra (Bhagavad Gita 7.13)

One of the key concepts that lives behind your yoga practice (conciously or not) is the balance of what is known in Hindu philosophy and Ayurveda as the gunas. The gunas are three natural tendencies (triguna) in all that exists: rajas, tamas, and sattva. Gunas are the tendancy toward a quality, not the quality itself.

• Sattva (originally “being, existence, entity”) has been translated to mean balance, order, or purity. Indologist Georg Feuerstein translates sattva as “lucidity“.
• Rajas (originally “atmosphere, air, firmament”) is also translated to mean change, movement or dynamism. Sometimes it is referred to as fire, because of its transformative nature.
• Tamas (originally “darkness”, “obscurity”) has been translated to mean “too inactive” or “inertia”, negative, lethargic, dull, or slow. Usually it is associated with darkness, delusion, or ignorance. A tamas quality also can refer to anything destructive or entropic. In his Translation and Commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi explains “The nature of tamo guna is to check or retard, though it should not be thought that if the movement is upward tamo guna is absent.”

These tendencies can be related to the influence of Platonic archetypes in all being. Also, students of Ayurveda will see the ready relationship with the tridosha, which describe the tendencies of our constitutional make-up.  We can easily relate the three gunas to the Trimurti, or three natures of God in Hinduism.

Inherent in the gunas is the tendency towards itself: that which is rajasic seeks rajas, that which is tamasic becomes more so. When one nature dominates another (imbalance), the imbalance grows. Thus the intent from an Ayurvedic approach would be to return one’s constitution to it’s innate nature. In your yoga practice, this means knowing that you have a constitution that expresses these tendencies, which may or may not be in balance, and that the yoga poses and breathing, the sequence of poses, the pace of your practice, and the effort applied to your yoga practice each serve to bring greater or lesser balance to your current constitution.

Let’s say you are a type-A achiever (rajasic), a bit over-booked, and finding yourself stressed throughout the day. You may find that the yoga practice that feels best to you is one that is highly energetic and disciplined, and soon you are practicing every day pushing a little bit each time to get a little better (rajasic). In other words, you have manifested your nature into your yoga practice, making it more of the same. Cultivating a practice of stillness and contemplation, of steadiness, and concentration (more tamasic) may feel uncomfortable and challenging, but may provide the balance that you need to alleviate stress and provide more clarity and ease in your life (stattva). Of course, an opposite example can easily be imagined, where more vitality needs to come from the practice to enliven our constitution.

While this is a simplified discussion, it suggests that, while it is important to have a balanced practice, we also should have a balanced life, and the practice may be an important influence on achieving that balance. What do you think? Have you had an experience with this?

Explore new ideas and have good conversations in this visual and scholarly exploration of how women have re-vitalized yoga through the ages.May 20, 2012 from 3:00-5:00 p.m.Early bird registration $15 through May 19, $20 day of lecture.

Register Here