I have decided to dedicate February’s yoga classes to opening up our power of communication. Representing the fifth chakra, communication is the ability to be vocal and express our ideas, feelings, needs and experiences to the people in our lives.

My goal is to move the blocked energy in our throat area, which may be keeping us from speaking up when it is necessary for us to communicate. Sometimes we feel inside that this may a difficult thing to do. However, it is so important that we have the confidence to ask for what we need, to say “No” when we can’t do something, and to share with those close to us what we are thinking and feeling inside. People don’t always know what what we are thinking or what we need. Good communication is the key to experiencing harmony, peace and understanding in our relationships.

Over the past five years, this has been one of the chakras that I myself have put a lot of focus and effort into. I grew up in an environment, and with a father, where I was not able to voice the things I needed to say. This made me fearful of speaking up in life: to teachers, in front of groups and in my relationships. After moving through certain yoga exercises and doing specific meditations focusing on the fifth chakra, I have made amazing progress and created permanent changes in my ability to express my needs and feelings to the important people in my life.

The fifth chakra also represents the tone and way we go about expressing ourselves to others. If we have had a family member that communicated through yelling, or with harshness, we might have picked up this behavior and started expressing ourselves in the same manner. Just being aware of how we communicate is so important and will help us to make any changes that may allow us to create stronger bonds and loving connections with those we are closest to.

Our goal this month is to build our confidence. To be direct, yet harmonious in our communication with other people, and find our own inner strength so that we will know when it is important for us to speak up, and when it may be wiser for us to remain in our own stillness.

January: Creating This Year’s Intentions

Our life experience is our own magnificent creation. I like to think of life as a story. A story that is written by our own imagination. We have the blank pages, the pencils and paints to create whatever it is we feel in our hearts.

On Jan 1, 2012 we begin a new chapter in the story of our lives. My yoga class for the month of January will focus on creating your intention for the new year to come, focusing on two main areas that will assist us in our creation. We will move through heart opening yoga sets that unleash our passion and love for the things that matter the most to us in this life. We will also move through yoga sets that focus on our commitment and discipline in life. This represets our third chakra, our navel area. When we have a strong third chakra we have faith in ourselves and confidence we can succeed.

Opening the heart will help us to know what we want. Regardless of whether we know in our mind what we need, when we open the heart we become honest with ourselves. Sometimes we settle in life because society, family, and other people tell us we need to live in a certain way. If we listen to our hearts we have the greatest possible chance of creating happiness and of having fulfilling experiences.

The navel area will give us inner strength. This area is responsible for giving us the power to move through challenges and obstacles which can arise in everyone’s life no matter who they may be. When this area is strong we have the ability to stay in balance and maintain our stability.

Our meditations will be aimed at learning how to silence the mind. I will teach you how to use your mind to set an intention and then release it to the universe. During meditation our soul and the soul of the universe become one. In this oneness we can plant the seed for our creation to begin its first stage of life. This is the beginning of all life experience.

Our goal this month is to merge with our heart’s purpose and set our highest intentions and highest goals for the new year.

A new year is about to begin as we say goodbye to 2011. A new chapter in life will open its doors as we enter 2012. Our final yoga class for this year will be focused on shedding away the things in our life that we do not need so we can start the year with a clear, fresh focus on where we want to go and what we want to experience.

Many of us hold on to negative emotions, poor habits, fears, and unhealthy relationships that do not serve our well-being. As we hold onto these energies, they often show up in our body as physical pain, sickness or unbalanced emotions. These are actually signals from your body that a shift is about to begin in your life, and some changes need to occur before it happens. Our body often needs a little downtime to cleanse and release the old toxins so that we can be renewed and prepared on a physical, mental and spiritual level.

The yoga set we will move through will specifically focus on eliminating the dis-ease in our body. We will use asanas, breathing and a meditative mind to assist us in cleaning out the body. The meditation will work on our subconscious mind, helping us to let go of habits and patterns that we have difficulty changing on our own. Meditation is thousands of years old and has extremely powerful healing qualities. This yogic set will help us to relax, breathe, and cleanse our mind and body. Together we will prepare ourselves in the best possible way for all the new experiences to come our way.

Hello! My name is Casey. I am from Los Angeles, California, in the United States. For over five years of my life I was thinking to myself: I really want to live in Japan and get to know the Japanese people. I did not know how I could do it. In November of 2010, after years of patience, one of my long time dreams came true: I was invited to Japan to be a yoga teacher. I had been teaching yoga for over six years in California and lived in the Maldives Republic in 2009 where I taught yoga to people from all over the world. I have studied yoga for over seven years and traveled to Thailand, China and many places throughout America to expand my experience, knowledge and teachings of the yogic science.

In 2005 I retired from my job as a professional stuntwoman after experiencing several yoga classes that impacted me so deeply that they changed my life forever. Although I had a good career and many friends in the stunt community, I did not have a deep feeling of inner harmony and contentment that I really believed was possible to live with. When I began doing yoga I started to feel alive. Through simple postures and basic meditation my mind started to feel clear. I felt healthy and in balance with my physical body, and my heart began to open in the most amazing way. I felt so happy. I am a gymnast and martial artist and have been working with the physical body all my life. I have always been interested in how to use the body and mind together in order to live to our highest potential as human beings. Yoga united my mind, body and soul. It gave me direction and a higher purpose for my life. I decided to make a commitment to teach and show people how to use their mind and body to create a life of purpose, peace and love. It is my honor to be here in Japan to share what I have learned through my own personal life experience.

Opening the Heart’s Center

On the most finite level our human body is comprised of five elements: fire, water, ether, air and earth. We can put these elements together as one group and call it energy. To live at our healthiest and happiest it is important for the energy in our body to flow.

As humans, our energy flow can become blocked as we put our body and mind through emotional stress and challenging experiences. This is natural. The beauty of yoga is that we have a way to shift our stagnant energy and return to our basic foundation of balance and harmony.

In this workshop we will focus on the opening of the heart’s center. We will move through specific yogic postures that will help us to release the old emotions, tension and hurt feelings that we have held deep inside our heart’s center.

Our goal is to create a change… A new opening in our ability to feel, and know a higher experience of our most pure and simplistic state of being called Love.