Welcome New Students!
This page will answer a lot of questions if you are brand new to yoga with me.
Best Practices
- Best to practice on an empty stomach, colon and bladder. No solid foods 2-3 hours prior and no liquids one hour prior. You can still practice if you eat or drink before yoga, but over time, you will realize you will get better results if you're empty.
- Modify as required if there are any injuries, traumas, pregnancy term, pains, or limitations.
- Dress in comfortable, not too baggy, work out, or yoga attire that allows full range of motion in hips and shoulders.
- Remove excessive (or all) jewelry and tie long hair up/back.
- Socks are ok, but for best results, practice barefoot.
- Grab your yoga props and be ready to begin at start time.
- Do not push beyond discomfort. Beyond discomfort is pain. Beyond pain is injury. In my classes, we honor the saying, "no pain, no pain" not "no pain, no gain". More pain in yoga = less gain. You will find this to be true over time.
- Stay for the deep relaxation at the end of class. This will increase your benefits exponentially.
- Remember, the days you least feel like showing up to my classes are the days you need it most. In all my years of doing yoga, I have never regretting taking a class, even if it was a "bad" class.
Benefits of Yoga with ricky
- Increased flexibility, strength, endurance and balance
- Reduced stress, tension, anxiety, depression, anger, frustration, hatred, jealousy, laziness, fatigue, pain
- Better sleep, concentration, meditation
- Converting reactivity to responsiveness, thus making better choices on and off the yoga mat
- Increased awareness and presence
- Increased acceptance, compassion and gratitude towards yourself and others
- Peace of mind to accept the things you can not change, strength and courage to change the things you can change, and the wisdom to know the difference
- Strengthen relationships with those important to you, while releasing toxic relationships
- You don't need to change your habits in order to practice yoga with me, but I can't promise you that you won't want to change your habits if you continue to practice yoga with me. It will happen when you are ready and not because you deprive yourself. It will happen because you decided that those habits will not serve you any longer. You will see.