The good news just keeps coming for Indianapolis area yogis and yoginis. Not only do we have Rolf Gates coming to Cityoga in October, inspiring local teacher Gina Radice will be teaching her uplifting 2 hour classes on August 28th and on 10/9 (the October one will be with DJ Stefan) at Invoke.

Big news for Indianapolis area yogis and yoginis from Cityoga. First, they are planning to move into their new space in September. If you went to the Winter Farmers' Market, you know right where it is; its the market's former home in the Lincoln Park Shops at 2442 Central Avenue.

Secondly, Rolf Gates will be at Cityoga October 2nd-4th for an intensive and teacher training. You don't have to be a teacher to take part in the intensive. If it's anything like the one Mrs. WYA! went to last year in Louisville, it's some inspiring spiritual teaching followed by a challenging class.

Happy Father's Day and Summer Solstice. Hopefully, you're celebrating with (or remembering) a great Dad today and yogis might want to celebrate the Solstice by doing 108 Sun Salutations (yow!). Mrs. WYA! can't help but wistfully think about this day last year when she was doing yoga in the middle of Times Square.

Pathways to Wellness- great yoga in Noblesville

Mrs. WYA! will travel far and wide for a yoga teacher she loves. She recently found out that one of her favorite teachers, Sarah, teaches a 2PM Sunday class at Pathways to Wellness at 146th Street and Hazel Dell Parkway. This class is worth the drive if you aren't in the Noblesville/Carmel area and worth spending part of a picture-perfect Sunday afternoon inside. Sarah's class can be as easy or as challenging as you care to make it and she teaches it with a sense of humor and joyfulness that is contagious. This is a beautiful, easily accessible studio and your first yoga class is free! Hope to see you there.

Meditation Workshop at Inner Peace Yoga

Mrs. WYA! needed a kick start to get her into a regular meditation practice. After years of practicing yoga and reading endless accounts about the benefits of meditation, it was time to commit to it. It can be daunting to meditate without some guidance so she was so grateful that the Inner Peace Yoga Studio regularly holds a beginning meditation workshop. It's for 3 hours on Saturday and 3 hours on Sunday. The Saturday workshop was held by Carol Crenshaw who owns the studio with her husband Charles. There were about 11 of us in the big carpeted studio room. There were chairs and plenty of props to assist with good posture if you chose to sit on the floor such as blankets, pillows, and Cosmic Cushions. On the first day, Carol covered things such as breathing techniques, benefits, posture, and how meditation can be integrated with any (or no) religious faiths. On Sunday, Charles was a very engaging instructor and covered more breathing and mantras (which is nothing mystical, just something to give your mind to focus on as you breathe to keep it from jumping around). He also talked about the difference between just relaxing and meditation. By the time Mrs. WYA! left, she had a sequence of how to prepare for meditation and an idea of how to go about it. She had even bought a neti pot there so she is really feeling like she is becoming more of a hippie every day. Carol had said that even if the meditation is just 5 minutes long in the beginning, that will be fine. So, there's really no excuse now for not doing it.

Check the Inner Peace Yoga Center's website for details on the next meditation workshop along with a schedule of their yoga classes. We thought $105 was a fair price for the workshop but we found out that it's even a better bargain because once you've paid for it once, you can keep attending it when they repeat it in case questions come up or you need a refresher.

5038 E. 56th St (in a strip mall near the Kessler Blvd. intersection)

Indianapolis, IN

317.257.9642

Our Pomeranian loves to get on the yoga mat with Mrs. WYA! and, when she can't join Mrs. WYA! at a public yoga class, we could get her picture on the mat and it would be like she was there! Thanks to Yogamatic you can upload your photo to be transferred to their yoga mats- a little pricey but very cool.

Yoga Today

Prefer to be in the privacy of your own home while you are in Down Dog or just need a lot of variety and scheduling flexibility to do yoga? Mrs. WYA! discovered the website Yoga Today a couple of years ago and can't recommend it enough. There are streaming classes from 3 different instructors. There's a new one everyday and they leave up the classes for a few days. Can you believe it is all free? The classes are really good too and at varying levels of difficulty. You'll learn something from each teacher but Mrs. WYA! is partial to Neesha.

Bargain yoga clothes at Old Navy

You don't have to be a yogi to appreciate the comfort of a good pair of yoga pants. Mrs. WYA is picky about her yoga pants and requires them to have a fold-over waist. Those can be hard to find so she was excited to see an ad for Old Navy that showed fold-over yoga pants for only $15! We went to the Old Navy in the Borders shopping center by the Fashion Mall and did find a couple of racks of yoga pants. Mrs. WYA! was so happy with the fit and the style that she grabbed a couple pair of the solid black ones (along with a cool Buddha long sleeved tee for $14.50) which is a big shopping trip for her since she hates to part with her hard earned cash. We were happy with the bargain but even happier when the salesperson asked if we'd like to use the coupon, which we didn't even see on the counter, that was good for 10% off of all yoga clothes. Wow- namaste Old Navy!

BreatheIN yoga studio- Indianapolis

It is really nice to see that there is enough interest in yoga for another studio to open up downtown. It is in the infinitely cute Fall Creek Place Neighborhood (just a few doors down from Goose the Market). It is in a small space; you walk in to the front desk to your left and the bins for your shoes to the right, and then one small studio. Mrs. WYA! took the Align with the Divine class that was offered during their grand opening this past Saturday. Their schedule appears to have a wide variety of classes, including one just for the fellas.

Yoga Day USA

Saturday, January 24th, is Yoga Day USA and it looks like there is a new yoga studio in town that is celebrating it with free classes. BreatheIN yoga studio is having their grand opening on Saturday with free classes all day. It sounds like a great event and it comes right at the time when those New Year resolutions to be more active/calm/centered are waning.

How can you escape from the cold? How about a heated yoga class? Invoke is debuting its heated and humidified yoga classes. Check out the announcement on the website and you can take your first heated class for free by just mentioning that website announcement, even if you've taken a class there before.

Great Yoga Class to ring out '08

Mrs. WYA! is beside herself with excitement that one of her all-time favorite yoga teachers will have her traditional New Year's class on December 30th from 7:00- 8:30PM at Invoke. Gina doesn't teach a weekly class anymore so this is a real treat. Mrs. WYA! can't implore you enough to attend this class. Gina will enliven every muscle in your body and raise your spirit at the same time. Since it is a special event, there's no awkwardness of walking into an established class with the feeling that all of the regulars know each other. What a perfect way to balance out the zaniness of the holidays and ring out the year.

By the way, the shirt pictured is one that Santa brought for Mrs. WYA!. It is a great yoga shirt; long and snug enough so that she doesn't flash anyone in downdog but not constricting. It's available from Yoga Direct.

We are disheartened to see that Malaysia has banned yoga.

Big thanks to Cityoga for hosting Bryan Kest last night- it was an amazing time. We hope that they will bring him back next year. Mrs. WYA! does yoga with him every week via his Power DVD so it was so cool to actually take a class with him live. He was really funny (and showed that you can bring salty language into a yoga class) and he was wise while being really down to earth and not preachy. He talked about the relationship we have with our bodies and how no research has ever shown that it is healthier to have a bicep bigger than your head or to touch your head to your legs in a forward fold. It was all about going to your own very personal degree of difficulty on the mat to carry over your ability to remain calm in difficult situations off of the mat (which is what it is all about anyway- not whether you can contort yourself). If he is coming to your area- go!

According to an email update yesterday, there are (shockingly) still 6 spaces left for the Bryan Kest Master Yoga Class at Cityoga next week. Mrs. WYA! does yoga with Bryan Kest every week via his Power Yoga DVD and is really looking forward to this. It should be a great class and it should be a sell-out so c'mon Indiana yogis and yoginis- register now so we can continue to get great yoga teachers stopping in Indy as they tour the country.

Color and meditate

Sarah Tomlinson wrote a great article in the August '08 issue of Yoga Journal about meditating with yantras. For anyone who's been intimidated by the thought of meditation, this might be a great pratice for you. Gaze at the yantras and see which design speaks to you most. Then, you can go to this page on Yoga Journal's website and print the design. This page tells you how to color it and meditate upon it. Give it a try. We haven't worked with yantras much either but how much fun does it sound like to get the crayons out again?

You might already be a fan of Bryan Kest and well know what great power yoga DVDs he has created or you might just be looking for a fabulous strengthening yoga class. Either way, you should know that he will be teaching a master class at Cityoga here in Indianapolis on October 23rd and registration is now open for it (and available through Cityoga's website). It will undoubtedly sell out so register soon.

There is actually a lot of outdoor yoga offered, frequently for free, at New York City parks. Indy should take a cue from them. Come to think of it, why can't one, or several, of the Indy yoga studios organize a yoga-thon on Monument Circle during the summer? It will get media coverage and I know it was the New York Times article about the Times Square yoga that got us to spend our tourist dollars in New York. Pass this idea on to any yoga studio owners that you know. How cool would it be to lie in shavasana around the monument?

Summer Solstice Celebration in Times Square

The main reason for our New York trip this past weekend was the Summer Solstice Celebration in Times Square on Saturday. Mrs. WYA! saw pictures of people doing yoga in the middle of Times Square last year and knew that she had to be a part of that. If you love New York City and/or yoga, this event is incredible. We were on a little triangular strip between Broadway and 7th Avenue with busy traffic and double decker buses with tourists taking pictures of us. During class, we got cues like "lift your sitting bones up towards the Jumbotron" and "turn your toes towards MTV". We would take our gaze to the sky with skyscrapers framing the way. It was indescribably cool and we would recommend it for anyone. There are different classes throughout the day of June 21st every year and they are at all different levels of difficulty. To top it all off, it is free. Just a little event to keep in mind if you've been meaning to schedule a New York City vacation.

If you do go to New York for any reason, make time for a tour with foodsofny.com. We went on the 3 hour Greenwich Village/SoHo food tasting and cultural walking tour with our wonderful guide Raheem and we enjoyed it immensely. You get some history, recommendations on truly quality restaurants, and very generous samples from a wide variety of places. We tasted everything from the lightest gnocchi that we've ever had to halva which is an amazing tahini paste treat that we are going to have to find a recipe for as soon as possible. There are many other tours listed on their website too. Do this at the beginning of your trip so that you can go back and have full meals at the suggested restaurants. Please don't go to New York City and eat at Olive Garden.

Ah, there's nothing Mrs. WYA! loves more than an intense 2 hour yoga class that works every muscle and wrings everything out. Now, in addition to the AMAZING 2 hour class that Gina has every Saturday at Invoke, on July 1st, Chuck is starting a 2 hour class on Tuesdays from 5:30PM- 7:30PM. Not for beginners, but if you've been practicing for awhile and want to advance your practice, this should be good.

And, yoga can make you rich?