Come and introduce yourself

Hello. My name is Martin and I am a journalist. Freelance to be precise. You may have seen my piece on Office Yoga on this wonderful and much needed new site yoga-abode.com where everyone with a real passion for yoga can get together and discover new things about the subject they love.

I fell into yoga quite be accident. Now there's an odd turn of phrase if ever there was one. An ex girlfriend of mine did yoga and I didn't quite understand what yoga was. So I decided to find out more. A good few years later and I've discovered so much. I wrote about the benefits of yoga for school children for Yoga magazine and I've also written about how yoga can cure addictions and how yoga can help with time management.

A certain young man (mentioning no names-Martin) has covered a wall in his house in Doctor Who posters. He's got an action figure of the tenth doctor and a talking TARDIS money box. Last week, he bought a magazine for 8-12 year old Dr Who fans just because it had a Doctor Who pencil case (pencil, ruler, pen etc) as a free gift. I need to escape for a bit so I thought I'd have a look at this site.

I'm Kate. I'm blonde but I don't really have any "blonde moments". I've got a PhD and I'm a scientist. If you want mad, crazy, off the wall stuff I can put you in touch with a friend of mine. That's really his department. In fact, right now, he's working out how he can put up posters of all 10 doctors so that the line goes from 1 to 10. Does he have a big enough wall? Does he have enough Blu-Tac? Will he end up getting on my nerves before 3pm this afternoon? Find out after the break...

I love the sea and can often be found on a boat. I'm from North Wales but for the past few months I've spent a lot of time in some place called the Midlands. There's no sea or sand around for miles and the most exciting thing to happen recently was when forty odd sheep got loose from a farm. Life's never boring round here. I've got a proper job but lately I've found myself making cups of tea and acting as an unofficial PA/confidence booster to a young freelance journalist. Yes, he writes for women's magazines. Yes, he did use that shower gel that came free with New Woman last year. Yes, he did remark about how soft and gentle the shower gel was on his skin. Hmm...

I don't know that much about yoga but I want to learn and try new things. Thinking of going to a yoga class but am a bit worried that I might fall over or look silly because I don't know what I'm meant to be doing. Can you just pop along or do you have to know about yoga before you go to a class?

 Bubblegum fantasticos (it sort of means best wishes)

Kate M x 

Hi Kate,

Thanks for introducing yourself. You really should go to a class! Pick a class that is aimed at beginners or mixed levels, and you will be fine.

administrator - yoga-abode.com

Hi all, thought it was about time that I introduced myself. My name is Darren Cooper, and I am the founder of this site. So, what brought me to yoga and ultimately to spend many a sleepless night in getting this site up and running? Well, Lucia my partner really (this site’s editor)! She was going along to a yoga workshop in the south of London one Saturday, and in a rash moment I said I would come too.

At that time, I had it in my head, as probably many men do, that yoga was something that girls did. After all, yoga involved little more than just sitting on the floor and stretching, right? What self-respecting man would do this?

Well, I went along, and was hooked. I came away physically and mentally tired. Initially, I must admit, yoga for me was purely a physical thing; even a substitute for the gym perhaps!

However, as time has passed my yoga is no longer purely physical, and although I still enjoy the physical aspects of my practice, I also enjoy the sense of tranquillity that the meditation at the end of class gives me, and the positive aspects that it brings out in me. As my interest has grown, it has involved more aspects of my life: weekends, holidays are frequently consumed by it.

So, what about this site then? Well, about six months ago, I decided that I would try to put together a yoga web site. Although then I did not realise quite what I was letting myself in for, it is what you are looking at today. There are lots of sites out there: some good and some not so. Most are aiming to provide a particular service, or concentrate solely on forums, or blogs or teacher listings etc. We are trying to act as a central hub for all things yoga. The site, like my yoga, is evolving all of the time, and I hope that as your own practice evolves, yoga-abode will help you along the way.


Darren (aka admin) yoga-abode.com

Namaste from the wilds of Northern New Jersey. I found this site from a link on the UK Yoga magazine's site. Any other Ashtangis here?

Om Shanti

Shahalad Jhoomer

Hello everybody... Ben here, yoga teacher of 5 years in the Sivananda tradition. Trained and then taught for a while in India, and then did my advanced teacher training in the Bahamas. I've also worked as staff in the Sivananda ashrams and centres in London, France and the Bahamas (for about 6 months in all). While i was doing that, and considering taking vows of Bramacharya (celibacy), i met Petra, who was also staff in London, and we fell in love. She is from a small town in Slovenia - a country i'd barely heard of before... but now i live in a small town in Slovenia, and it's very nice. Having spent the majority of the last 14 years living in London, it's the best feeling being constantly surrounded by nature. There's practically no traffic on the roads, and the pace of life is nice and slooooow.

So that's a brief introduction to me - i'll be posting a teacher profile sometime soon i expect, but in the meantime, hello to u all!

Hi there, my name is Alex and I am the chair of Island Yoga. We are a non profit making organisation on the Isle of Wight started by local teachers wanting to bring the Island yoga community closer together, romote the health benefits of yoga, to offer low cost monthly workshops to the community and when we start making some money, to offer free yoga healing sessions to those with special needs and disablilities on the Island.

I am not a teacher, but became involved through the workshops. I enjoy al types of yoga, although I have only really tried hatha yoga, flow yoga and Iyengar. I do most of my practise at home and go to the workshops once a month to try out the different styles and teachers available, but I am very conscious that I do not want to become too familiar with any one style, but rather find my own style by listening to my body and letting the yoga flow internally.

Island Yoga have their festival at the end of May (26-30th) and if anyone is interested in coming down for the weekend (camping is free and the entrance is a snap at £60 for 4 days worth of workshops), please visit our site at www.islandyoga.org.uk. We would love to have as many visitors as we can fit into the sessions and the Island is a fantastic place to come and visit and chill out!!!

OK, plug now over....thanks to Darren & Lucia for contacting me and I look forward to reading all the articles in your magazine!

Om Shanti to you all..

Hello there from Wales! Just thought I'd introduce myself as it would be nice to hear from some fellow Welsh yogis. Any out there?!

I've really got into yoga in the last year or so and try to find time to practice at home - housework? What housework?! Would love to do more but not possible at times. My sister teaches Iyengar yoga (in Crete so too far away to go to her classes!) and I go to a Hatha Yoga class once a week so I tend to do a bit of both.

My daytime job is working in the Marketing Dept at the Royal Mint (where they make all the coins) but concentrating on my work is getting more and more difficult. I would love to just stay at home and do lots of yoga, prepare healthy meals, juice every day and go for long walks...when it's not raining! But for now, my dreams have to be put on hold and I need to focus on what I have to do i.e. work to pay the bills.

So, that's me. Tell us all about you!

Namaste

Judith 

Hi, I'm Scott from Scotland (easy to remember), and just left full-time employment a month ago to teach yoga full-time.

 I teach in the Krishnamacharya tradition, both group and individual lessons, and really loved my visit to Chennai last year where I studied at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram (http://kym.org). I also write a little bit (mostly for websites), co-edited a yoga book once ("Yoga of the Yogi" by Kausthub Desikachar) and am a definite Internet junkie. You can find out the rest from my website in my sig line, or as we go along I'm sure

Cheers,

 Scott

Explore Yoga: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living

www.exploreyoga.co.uk 

hello everyone, my name is Beth and i am english... from England

just wanted to get to know everyone as much as possible and maybe meet some new friends..?? who knows!!

at the moment i have the time to be looking around the net for other yoga pages, and come across this one...

hope to get chatting soon,

Beth