Yoga at Alpha Waves is first and foremost a practical affair. It has to be relevant and it has to make sense in today’s world, keeping in mind the needs and requirements of the students.
Antonia Boyle, who is the Course Director and Yoga Tutor at Alpha Waves, has studied yoga for nearly 40 years. In her own practice she has explored many aspects of yoga. She has trained scores of yoga teachers for The British Wheel of Yoga over a period of more than 20 years. The British Wheel of Yoga is the foremost Yoga Training organisation in this country and the Certificate is internationally recognised.
Her approach to Yoga is highly practical. Many people turn to yoga because they want to improve physically, be healthier and more relaxed. They don’t necessarily want lessons in spirituality or want to do, what they conceive as ‘alien, foreign practices’. They just want to feel better!
It becomes obvious to most people, even after the first lesson, that Yoga has the power to relax a person on all levels: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. With a well-trained Yoga teacher, a Yoga student will experience a feeling of harmony and wellbeing, which has become alien to many people in these potentially stressful times.
There are many aspects of Yoga, and it is not easy to explain Yoga simply and quickly. As soon as you start to answer the question: What is Yoga?, one finds that it is necessary to leave information out and just talk about one or two aspects to avoid people’s eyes glazing over! However, here is just a brief note to place Yoga in some sort of timeline:
Yoga goes back into the mists of times in India, and it is at least 4000 years old, maybe even older. Originally yoga was not ‘designed’ for relaxation or management of stress, but it was a way of making sense of our existence. It was, and often still is, a mystical and spiritual journey of discovery to explore what exists beyond our normal understanding of life.
It is in fact about finding out what is that part of our being that is our essence, but for which we have no words? What is the part of us that does not change, that always stays the same? Even the ancient teachers said that it goes beyond words! The moment we name it …we leave something out. (I am well aware that to anyone who just wants a yoga class for relaxation this must sound like ‘the emperor’s new clothes’, or plain mumbo jumbo. However it’s the best way that I can explain it, considering that there are no words for it!)
So the ancient ‘wise men’, the ‘Siddhis’ would retreat into the mountain and woods and would practise meditation to come to some kind of conclusion. Some of them would and they would be considered ‘enlightened beings’.
Over the centuries many great thinkers and practitioners of yoga have developed practices of yoga, which were suitable to their own times, and this is still continuing now. This in no way diminishes any earlier teachings. Indeed it can only enhance the practices.
We found, for example, that in recent years a variety of dynamic yoga classes have become very popular, because there is the need for people to stretch themselves more and to push themselves a little harder, simply because our lives have, on the whole, become much more sedentary than in past years.
Who would have thought 50 years back, that it might be a good idea to seek out some meditation group, so that they would be able to relax, be healthier and sleep better?