Gwen Lawrence was a guest on The TODAY Show on NBC Thursday, July 31st.



Click here for Gwen's article on the Five Tibetan Rites (PDF)
Watch for the video, coming soon!


WELCOME TO YOGA WITH GWEN

Yoga is an ancient art form that is designed to bring into “union” a persons body, mind and spirit. Through various challenging asana, yoga provides many physical benefits, including flexibility, balance, strength, endurance and improved respiration. Mental benefits include confidence, concentration, discipline, patience, clarity, and overall peace of mind.

At the core of yoga is the role of one’s breath. The nature of your breathing patterns is essential to the quality of your state of mind, your concentration, and ultimately the quality of your performance. The consistency of your breath is a major player in the stability of your health, by removing stress and toxins, increasing your level of energy and improving your respiration.

Yoga enables you to develop and maintain your connection between your physical and mental well being. It is through this connection that internal trust and confidence can be developed in all areas of life.

My goal is to teach an art form that combines the physical benefits of flexibility, balance, strength, and the mental benefits of clarity, discipline and relaxed concentration.

There are several principles I feel are necessary to guide you safely through your yoga practice.

Mental Preparation - Commit to where you are, be on the mat, in the moment.
Pace Yourself - Never over extend. Always use your intuition to guide your practice.
Check Your Ego at the Door - Be satisfied with your own accomplishments.
Move Through Soft Space - Try to surrender, not struggle.
Respect the Process - Yoga is not goal oriented, practice will sow the seeds of success.

Yoga will give you an opportunity to identify and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your body and mind. You will experience a higher level of concentration, that in turn will increase your level of awareness, focus and determination.

I hope you will join me.


Below is an email that I wanted to share with all of you.
It is from a woman who I have been working with from Thailand.

Dear Yoga Students,

I found Gwen last year while I was seeking some advice regarding an injury I had sustained during a yoga lesson. Nobody seemed to be able to help me. It had gone on for months and I had severe pain at the top of my ham-string muscle, which was severely hindering my yoga practice.

In desperation I searched for advice on yoga injuries on the internet and found Gwen’s website and contact details. I decided to write to her in the hope that she might respond.

A couple of days later I received a reply from her. She explained what she thought my injury might be and kindly offered her support. She said it would help if she could meet me face-to-face so that she could look at my body alignment and try to ascertain the cause of my injury. This, however, was impossible. Gwen lives in New York and I live in Bangkok – about as far away from each other as you can get!

Gwen reassured me that this was not a problem and asked that I arrange for someone to take photographs of me in various yoga poses - which I duly did with my husband - and send them to her via e-mail.

About a month later I was delighted to receive a package from Gwen containing enlargements of all the pictures with her comments written on each and every one. I was amazed at what she could tell by simply looking at my photographs. My feet were not aligned, neither were my shoulders. My downward dog was twisted and my forward bend was weighted all wrong. The interesting thing was that I could clearly see all these misalignments myself after she had pointed them out. It became obvious to me that I had been straining my ham-string as a result – probably for years. No wonder it finally gave in!

Gwen then set about designing a complete set of corrective exercises for me to practice. She could see that my hips were tight, as was my lower back and advised that I use a fit-ball in order to stretch this area. I began to practice the specific poses. I also asked my yoga teacher in Bangkok to look at the photographs and help me by correcting my posture when I was going wrong. As I worked on these areas I realized that some of my poses were becoming much easier. Suddenly, they felt right. I was delighted.

Today I have no more trouble with my ham-string and my yoga continues to improve. Hopefully, after Gwen’s expert on-line tutoring, I will not have any problems in the future. Gwen is a sincere advocate of yoga and has given her time generously in order to help a struggling student at the other side of the world. I am extremely grateful to her for sharing her astounding knowledge and passion for yoga. Thanks Gwen.