The Studio

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of DeKalb Building

158 N. Fourth Street

DeKalb,IL 60115

815-501-4207 (please text first)

edwardmiguel@contemplativeyogadekalb.com

Parking

Drive through the alley on the east side to the rear parking lot and enter through the rear door closest to 4th St.

Current Schedule

Tuesdays

4-5:30 PM

6-7:30 PM

(Note: On Vacation Weeks of May 26 and June 2)

But please RSVP in advance if you are coming so I can prepare a space for you

I will still send out email confirmations to those on my list.

If you are new and interested please text me at the phone or write to the email listed

I confirm each week on Monday via email that class is happening or if there are changes so please get on my email list.

Fees: $20/class , $60/5 classes, $110/10 classes

If you want to continue after your first class I will apply your $20 towards a discount plan.

There is nothing that you need to bring.

I supply all the mats, blankets and blocks.

The only requirement is that you are able to get up and down off the floor.

Within each of us there is a silence, a silence as vast as the universe.  And when we experience that silence we remember who we are. 

–Gunilla Norris  

More

Contemplative Practice Yoga® and How It Can Make You Healthy.

My name is Ed Miguel and I teach Contemplative Practice Yoga®. This article gives an introduction into CPY, why it can make you healthy or healthier, and some personal stories of my own on why I started this form of Yoga and how it has helped me become healthy and maintain my health.

What Is Contemplative Practice Yoga?

 Contemplative Practice Yoga® is an integrative practice. Each class or private session combines all directions and all levels of movement in gentle motion while lying down, seated, and standing. This improves your balance and creates ease in your body as you alleviate accumulated physical tension.

In addition to integrating all directions and levels of movement, Contemplative Practice Yoga® releases tension in the core of your body—this is one element which distinguishes it from many other popular forms of yoga. Said release is the exact opposite of “core strengthening,” a practice which actually creates more tension. It is tension in these muscles that pulls the spine out of alignment and is the root cause of much of our physical discomfort.

Once you get this release, you naturally learn to move and use your body in ways that decrease overall physical tension as well as consequent mental fatigue .

As your physical tensions diminish, you naturally enter into a state of greater mental ease and tranquility—hence the name Contemplative Practice Yoga®. In each class or therapy session, you will experience and discover ways to take that ease with you into all physical and mental activity.

Contemplative Practice Yoga® Flow

Every movement, whether a thought or a physical activity, emanates from a point of utter stillness.

By cultivating our awareness both of this stillness and of its expression as movement, we participate more fully and with greater ease in all that we do and thereby become increasingly settled into the expanding joyfulness of our Being.

Our ability to maintain awareness of this stillpoint in our daily activities and thoughts is a process that unfolds as the tensions in our bodies fall away and our minds become calmer. We learn more and more to be in stillness and in movement simultaneously.

With practice, this state of ease and tranquility becomes firmly established, sustaining us through any difficulties or troubles, and expanding our simple enjoyment in life.

Contemplative Practice Yoga® Flow classes are designed for the cultivation of our awareness of this stillpoint within a continuing flow of easy movement. These classes are for those who have some familiarity with the basic poses of Contemplative Practice Yoga®.

The poses are sequenced physically, spatially, and temporally in such as way as to give you the opportunity to attend to the stillness as you move in a steady stream of poses and pauses throughout the class.

“. . . the still point of the turning world . . . except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

T.S. Eliot , The Four Quartets.

Contemplative Yoga™ is as Healthy for you as Exercise.

After your first experience of Contemplative Practice Yoga® you will notice how well you feel: your mind calm, your body at ease. You will feel less pain or discomfort and a greater peace of mind than you did before the class.

How can something that creates such physical well-being and ease of mind be as healthy for you as exercise when you are not doing anything remotely similar?

When we exercise, we tax our bodies by pushing, pulling, pounding, forcing, and straining to raise our heart rates and build our muscles.

We also want flexibility, so we push, stretch, and over-stretch our ligaments—which destabilizes our bones in our joints.

We are told that we need to do 20 minutes of aerobic or cardio workout, as well as lift weights to give us ‘weight bearing exercise.’

It is hard for our intense and goal-oriented minds to grasp that something as gentle and easy to do as Contemplative Practice Yoga® provides all that is necessary for us to be healthy. Breathing practices give the benefits of cardio or aerobic workouts. Poses in which the angles lean weight into the bones are themselves ‘weight bearing’ and serve to strengthen bones. Muscles become toned because they have more blood and oxygen in muscle tissues: arteries in the muscles loosen, allowing greater blood-flow and therefore nourishment. Muscle strength can therefore be increased without all the pushing and straining typical of normal workouts.

Contemplative Practice Yoga® teaches you to move through your life without forcing or straining, either physically or mentally. In every class or therapy session, you will learn how to release tensions in your core and, from there, throughout your body—while lying down, seated, standing, and in gentle movement.

Contemplative Practice Yoga ® allows you to do the things you love, such as jogging, walking, hiking, bicycle riding, tennis, golf, or working out, more comfortably. You will have a way to release the deep tensions that these activities create, which ultimately means putting less strain on your body so that you may continue to do those more physically strenuous activities for more years than might otherwise be practicable.

How is this so? Aerobic or cardio workouts are designed to improve the efficiency with which your body exchanges carbon dioxide and oxygen in your lungs. The more oxygen your body has in its cells, the healthier you are. This oxygen is carried to your cells by your blood. The more oxygen you retain in your lungs, the more efficient the exchange is. Contemplative Practice Yoga ® accomplishes this same optimal oxygenation without causing the wear and tear typical of intense exercise.

Shavasana and Pranayama

Every Contemplative Practice Yoga® Class begins and ends with a guided awareness in a deeply relaxing pose named Shavasana. The guided awareness at the beginning helps you to settle in and unwind. At the end, it opens a space to integrate the physical changes and releases that the class has created. Once your physical tensions are released, you may find you enter a very calm, easy, and contemplative state.

At the beginning of every class, we also do a practice for your breath.

Simple as it sounds, breathing is an important and beneficial practice. It helps to oxygenate your body and to calm your mind. People who do 20 minutes a day of gentle breathing receive the equivalent benefit to doing a 20 minute cardio workout.

How is this so? Aerobic or cardio workouts are designed to improve the efficiency with which your body exchanges carbon dioxide and oxygen in your lungs. The more oxygen your body has in its cells, the healthier you are. This oxygen is carried to your cells by your blood. The more oxygen you retain in your lungs, the more efficient the exchange is. Your heart has to work less to properly oxygenate your body. Cardio or aerobic workouts lower your resting heart rate.

In a cardio workout, you raise the intensity of your physical activity and thereby your heart rate, which causes you to breathe more deeply and retain more oxygen in your lungs—consequently oxygenating your body more efficiently.

Even gentle and elongated breathing accomplishes the same thing by slowing your breath down, and increasing the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchanged in the inhalatory and exhalatory reserves of your lungs.

As you focus on your gentle breath, you will find that it slows down, and that the pauses between your inhale and exhale become longer. They do so because you have more oxygen in your body, and so actually don’t need to breathe as often. When your body needs to breathe, it will.

You will also discover that your heart rate slows down.

Over time, breathing practice not only slows your breath and heart rate while you are doing it, but also has the same beneficial effect as cardio workouts: your heart rate remains slower even when you are not doing the breathing practice.

In addition, attention to your breath calms your mind, which is in itself wonderfully restorative.

About Us

My Story

This form of restorative Yoga helped me recover from a hip and back problem I had around 2003.  I could not walk around the corner of my house without wanting to turn back. I never did yoga before but I read that it might be able to help. There was an article in the paper titled “Yoga For Your Back” and I called the number.  I shuffled up the walk to my first class. Even though I felt like we were just laying around, surprisingly it was not easy for me. I wanted to quit. “You cannot change 50 years of tension in one session”, I was told by the teacher. I was also told when the body starts to heal it can be more painful at first, to give it more time.  To make a long story short within a month I could tell I was getting better. Within 3 months I was hiking the mountains of California with family. When I felt my pain coming back I would stop and do some poses in the grass while they took a break. Within 6 months I was running up and down a soccer field as a referee.  It was a miracle to me. The pain did not just go away - I was stronger than ever.

Before Yoga I was seeing a chiropractic doctor at least 4 times a year since I was 28 because of my congenital scoliosis.  Since starting this yoga at the age of 50, I no longer needed to see a chiropractor.  I even got questioned once upon a chance meeting with my former doctor, “What happened to you?  Are you seeing another chiropractor?”  “No.” I said.  “Just doing Yoga.”  I could see some bewilderment because when I quit seeing him I was going every day in pain.  I doubted that he believed me.  I could not believe it myself at first either! 

It is not that I never have pain.  Like most of us my life is a little crazy with stress and emotions and I over-exert myself occasionally.  When I do have pain, I go to the poses, visualizations and breathing. Within a day or so, sometimes sooner, I would catch myself suddenly aware that the pain is gone.

Why I teach

I was so impressed with this style of Yoga that I wanted to teach it so more can benefit as I had, especially men, who are wound as tight as a drum like I was.   Around 2006 I started training in the Foundations of Svaroopa Yoga and I repeated that again in 2010.  Then in 2016 I started training with Kim Orr.   She founded Contemplative Practice Yoga® and offered training in Colorado.   Since I have family and friends out there, I could visit them more often and who doesn’t want to go to Colorado?  My final certification was in May 2018, and I accent my training every year, through Yoga Alliance.  It has been a long journey to get here but it was worth it.

A life in control

I continue to benefit from CPY.  Normally when people get older they get weaker and have more pain.  I feel stronger now than I ever have, and I have no pain of any duration.  I am no longer afraid of lifting heavy objects or doing strenuous activity.  What little repercussions I have had from those exertions are resolved with some yoga poses the next day with some home practice. 

I am often asked why I do yoga and my answer is essentially “To have no pain and to have something to fall back on when I am in pain, to help it go away.”  Yoga is my first defense for any illness.  I love not running to a doctor right away.  It gives me a sense of control that I never had before.

The Requirements and Side Effects

There are some side-effects though that you should be aware of.  You become calmer, more loving and sleep better.  So you’ll need to think twice about starting this, if those are an issue!  I am jesting of course. 

Seriously though, you will need to be able to get up and down from the floor.  Some poses may not be right for you but there are always substitutes.  As long as you tell me when you are uncomfortable, I will prop you differently or offer another pose. In this way the negative side-effects of being achy during the poses, or afterwards, are minimal. 

A real challenge, as funny as this may sound, is to become comfortable with softening - allowing your body to relax and your muscles to open. Your body may resist at first to being flat on the floor.  Your mind may race during the body visualizations.  You may be skeptical that this is accomplishing anything at all!  This is all quite normal considering our no-pain, no-gain culture that we are in.

If you give it some time, you’ll recognize changes and you’ll be convinced that your body likes this. 

I can go on but the real test is how you feel.  You need to experience it and decide for yourself.  It is not for everyone and I respect that.

Now is a good time to start if you are so inclined.  I promise that you will be comfortable and cared for.  Nobody is the same and no body is alike and I am trained to recognize the differences and help you adjust the pose or even give you a different pose with the same benefit.  Are you ready?

Whatever you decide I wish you Peace and Happiness.

Ed

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