A recorded class by Zephyr Wildman
Sign up to access this special online class recording as part of Yoga for HOPE activities to celebrate International Yoga Day and HOPE's 25th Anniversary.
Access to this class is available for a £10 minimum donation with all proceeds to HOPE.
To book your place, please click here and complete the form.
At the time of booking, you will receive a Vimeo link for the class. To access Vimeo, you’ll need to sign up a free account. The class is available until 31 August 2024.
To reduce attachments and increase the ability to let go of the Karmic ties that bind us to old unhelpful stories that keep us stuck. By giving and helping one another, even through a generous thought and feeling, we develop and expand our capacity for kindness. This simple action creates a pathway to being held by the wholeness of being.
Compassion begins with the capacity to hold our own life wrapped in the arm of our loving heart. Our ability to self care is supported through the attention of our hurt and pain, the kinder words we speak to ourselves on a daily basis and how we physically get our needs met. When we care for ourselves in a tender way, compassion will naturally awaken within us, it is intrinsic to our nature. We open to unconditional willingness and reconnect to something within where we feel safe, loved, with belonging and connected to a loving presence. At the same time, when we can face our own shadow side with tenderness, our empathy for other’s struggles becomes more potent and we can truly sense the humanity that connects us. By bravely facing the shadow side of humanity, we become the transformers of suffering that lives in ourselves and others.
As you read this, notice something about your life you are finding hard today, where there is hurt and pain or a disease. Now bring to your practice someone in your life who is struggling, who is very affected by life’s circumstances and is of need of love, generosity and care. We will connect to ourselves first and then bring to mind and heart someone else. In Yoga Sutra 1:39 it states to focus on anything that is useful and pleasing. This is to focus on being productive with our pain, a positive influence and benefiting on the known reward of being of service. This is where we focus on welcoming by inhaling someone’s pain and suffering, making time to being available to hold space for someone else, directing your energy as you exhale and offering them tenderness, kindness and compassion.
Tonglen is known for pulling us out of the cycle of separateness of ‘us’ and ‘other’, the ego-centric focus and depression, utilising the power of offering peace, joy and love to awaken to that which connects us.
Zephyr has supported ‘Yoga For HOPE’ for a number of years. She has been teaching Yoga since 2002 in London, trained via Yoga Campus and has been a Mentor on their yoga training programme since 2005. She teaches at The Life Centre, Yoga Centres around London, private tuition, and at The Recovery Centre (treatment centre for addiction, depression and other dependency problems). Her teachings focus on combining the elements of creative movement, flow and dynamic sequencing, focusing on alignment, prana vayus and kinesiology.
Find out more about Yoga For HOPE activities, including access to more of Zephyr’s classes here.