DATES: December 13 – 20, 2014
PRICES: Check here for our Rates and Reservations
PACKAGES: Try any one of our yoga retreats. We have Yoga & Adventure, Yoga & Rejuvenation, or Yoga & Surfing. We also have a Pure Yoga option as well. Check out our Anamaya Retreat Packages (ARP).
WORKSHOPS: We have two workshops that will be offered during this week. The first one is The Building Blocks of Flow, and the second is Arm Balances and Inversions. Please see more information below.
Lisa is excited to be immersed in the natural beauty and energy of Costa Rica, and her intention for her week at Anamaya is to instill a sense of groundedness, flow, and internal awareness so that each student can take that sense into other aspects of their lives.
Guest Yoga Teacher Lisa Kitteringham
Lisa is inspired by Mihily Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, “in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.” Flow requires a combination of clear goals and progress, immediate feedback, and a balance between the level of challenge and the practitioner’s current skills.
In her yoga classes, she builds a sense of flow through sequences that build on the student’s current level of experience, through providing variations for all levels with clear instructions and demonstrations and through tailoring the structure, level and complexity of sequencing based on the class and individual. Detailed alignment cues allow each student to feel the subtleties of the pose within their own body: instead of expecting every student to look the same in each pose, her cues allow the students to find their own version of each pose. Frequent vocal and hands-on adjustments provide instant feedback and guidance to deepen each individual practice.
Lisa loves to teach creative, challenging sequences so students increase their kinesthetic awareness, a concept that Shiva Rea describes as ‘bodily intelligence,’ or an awareness of the self through the physical body. Bodily intelligence and awareness allow the student to explore their own body in a safe and sustainable way and to understand their own limits and potential. Lisa’s sequencing focuses on transitions in order to teach core compression and awareness throughout movement so that balance and core engagement become instinctual instead of conscious. Her movement progressions are designed so that students can find the focus to breathe fully and deeply even in potentially demanding situations, a skill that can then be applied to real-life circumstances. The challenge is always balanced with frequent chances to rest, ground the body and come back to the breath.
Lisa teaches Vinyasa Flow classes that are based on continual movement coordinated with breath as well as Hatha classes that focus on longer holds and more detailed anatomical alignment. Her stretch classes centre on specific sequences of stretches that allow each student to move progressively deeper into the body and increase their flexibility and range of movement, and her restorative classes allow students to explore stillness in both the body and the mind by using the breath as the gateway to a meditative state.
Workshops
Workshop 1: The Building Blocks of Flow (1 hour, $15)
This workshop will focus on the core element of a vinyasa class: the sun salutation. We will work on refining the essentials – shoulder placement, core engagement, pelvic tilt, and energetic alignment – and learn how to build the right strength for a vinyasa class. The most attention will be paid to plank, chaturunga, upward dog and downward dog. Learn how to modify your flow for injury and protect your wrists and lower back!
Workshop 2: Arm Balances and Inversions (1.5 hours, $20)
Not just for advanced practitioners, this workshop will explore how to build core and upper body strength for arm balancing and inversions, then we will learn each progressive stage for poses like headstand, crow (plus variations like side crow and one-legged crow), forearm stand and peacock, among others. This workshop will be suitable for those with a solid inversion practice as well as those just starting to explore these complex poses.
***Both workshops: $30
A Video Message From Lisa
