I’ve decided to ship just a few out to those of you that have been asking for the tank as a special delivery!

If you can come to the studio and get them yourself, they are $30 including tax. If you want them shipped they are a few extra dollars.

They are simple grey ribbed fitted cotton tanks, quite long, with Feminist Yogi and the oceanandcrow.ca logo on the front and back. They come in Small, Medium and Large.

You can purchase it here.

Sizes

Small Medium Large

With this new superhero skill (that I’m still working on of course) I made a website through which you can buy the audio yoga classes I’ve been working to create over the last little while. You can download a five minute sun salutation or a full hourlong Yoga for a Hangover. Put it on your ipod, take it to the beach or the airport, do it in your livingroom.

The classes are intended for folks with some experience of yoga since the instructions are purely auditory, but my master plan is to create a big encyclopedia of images of poses and short instructional videos to help with each of the classes. Some of that is already on the website, but I’ll be building that over time. Go check it out and try a class! http://oceanandcrow.com.

In other news, Yoga for Feminists is coming up really soon! Take this course on the history, philosophy, mythology, and culture of yoga through a feminist lens, and then move it through your body with some asana. There are four courses over four months, but you can take as many as you like. The first one is December 6th, but you have to preregister for it by November 29th. Do it here: http://oceanandcrow.ca/node/1257.

My next Teaching as Storytelling Vinyasa Teacher Training is coming up in February. If you are a teacher and you want to work on your skills of cueing, sequencing, and holding space, take the course! Info here: http://oceanandcrow.ca/node/1241.

Over the last week, the hashtag #yesallwomen has been all over my Facebook and Twitter feed. In part a reaction to the misogynistic message of the shooter Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista, the hashtag has created an opportunity for women to express the reasons why it’s tough sometimes to be a woman in the world. Here’s an article with more information: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/05/the-power-of-yesallwomen.html

This social media conversation tapped a line directly to my feminist rage veins. There are a lot of problems in this here world, and when you are sensitive to them, sometimes you get so mad you just feel like you are going to explode. One of the most valuable things yoga has taught me is that every emotion is important and has a lesson, including rage and anger. If you look these emotions right in their piercing fire eyes, you can acknowledge them for what they are and work with them mindfully, rather than, say, directing them at other people. It’s difficult to feel so deeply angry, but not at any particular person. The structures that support violence against women also support violence and oppression of men and other genders. Feminism, for me, anyway, is that which fights against these structures, not the fallible humans who are often unconsciously perpetuating them (including my own self, at times, of course!).

So where to direct this powerful flow of rage? To education, of course. To creating a story that can contain the intangible things I am so angry with. To create a vocabulary so that the structures that oppress us can become visible, so we can see them and work with them or reject them rather than mindlessly following their script.

This is why I wanted to create Yoga for Feminists. It’s starting as a workshop I’m leading in June, where we will take a look at some of the history, philosophy, and mythologies of yoga. Some of these classic structures come from a patriarchal and class-oriented history (for a long time, only upper caste “Brahmin” men were allowed to practice yoga, and lower castes were not allowed to learn or speak Sanskrit), and as Western women have taken on the practice of yoga as a monolithic thing, we are unconsciously filtering it through our religious and cultural values, and when we look at it as purely a path to peace, with no agenda, no critical thinking needed, we sometimes unconsciously support patriarchal and class structures as they work here in the West (lots of yoga advertising features young, thin, white women in exorbitantly expensive tiny pants).

The simple practice of looking at a thing through a critical lens and discussing it can illuminate the whole thing for us, and, in my opinion, tap into some of the aspects of yoga that are, I feel, innately empowering and potentially revolutionary simply because of the mindfulness and connection to the body that it can cultivate.

What I really want to know is what you think about all this. I’ll be offering some information and a yoga practice that feels feminist to me, but I’d love to know how you feel, what your experiences have been like, and what you think a feminist yoga looks like.

June 21st, 2:00-5:00pm, $35 at East Side Yoga, 1707 Grant St. Preregister here: http://eastsideyoga.ca/node/1164 

All levels of practice and all genders are welcome.

I’m teaching another Creative Flow: Yoga and Writing workshop on January 11th at East Side Yoga, and my next Teaching as Storytelling Vinyasa Teacher Training is February 7-10th.

I’m teaching lots at East Side Yoga and still have my regular Sundays plus the occasional sub at Semperviva Yoga. Come see me! Schedule here: https://www.jcpeters.ca/yoga-teaching-schedule/

Here’s hoping for lots of good luck granting our deepest wishes with the moon for 2014!

Wander inside and soak up some poetry and yoga classes that rinse the body, mind, and heart all at once. Get out your notebook and learn the secrets of a great yoga class as a practitioner or as a teacher.

Sound good? On the weekend of October 4-6th, I will be leading a weekend retreat near Diablo Lake at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Centre with Renton, WA studio Maya Whole Health. I am offering several yoga classes in both Vinyasa and Yin styles, with two lectures, one on employing the structure of a narrative to your yoga class for home practice or teaching, and the other on discovering your voice and learning to translate your own body’s vocabulary. Plus delicious food, wine, and beer, a naturalist led hike, and a screening of Wayne’s World (naturally). $480 for the whole shebang, just a 3 hour drive from Vancouver or Seattle.

Click here to register: http://clients.mindbodyonline.com/ws.asp?studioid=801&stype=-8&sTG=33&sView=day&sTrn=100000165

We will explore how yoga can help spark creativity from your body and help you to connect sensation and emotion with language. When we practice yoga, specifically the flowing Vinyasa style, we manufacture the alpha brain state which is the creative brainwave state of the writing groove. We will explore the stories in our bones, and tell a few of them, especially as we slow down towards the end of the workshop and listen more deeply to our bodies in Yin yoga poses. The practice is for any level of yoga and writing, and everyone is welcome. Please bring a yoga mat, any props you have (a sweater or scarf can do in a pinch!) and a writing journal.

Cost $30 ($25 for Just Write Meetup Members)

Saturday, September 7th, 9:30-11:30am

Suite Genius, 210-1737 West 3rd Avenue (near Burrard St)

Not a part of the Meetup? Join here:  http://www.meetup.com/JustWriteVancouver/

Reserve your spot now, space is limited!

Then come back on Saturday for one of my Creative Flow: Yoga and Writing workshops where  I’ll be teaching the ways yoga can help spark a flow of creativity, and we will experiment with ways to turn on the right brain and get translating from body to mind and back again. It’s fun, it’s fascinating, it’s inspiring, and especially lately I’m realizing how incredibly therapeutic it can be to bring a pen and paper onto your yoga mat with you. My next one in Vancouver is May 25th.

I’m also so excited to be teaching a progressive style Teaching as Storytelling Vinyasa Teacher Training here in Vancouver over four Saturdays in August, and then an intensive three day blast of it at Maya in late September! Tell all your friends, Seattle, I’m coming for you! <3

I’m about to start (this Saturday!) my Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Training on Teaching as Storytelling. It’s one of my favourite things to teach this intimate course on teacher development, facilitation, holding space, and of course, sequencing. It’s like showing the little guy behind the curtain running everything: an awesome class ain’t magic, and you can do it too!

There’s still time to jump in if you’d like, I have a couple of spots left, so email me ([email protected]) if you want to jump up on it. If you can’t make it this time, but are interested, email me anyway, I’m considering doing an intensive in August over four or five days, and possibly another weekend series like this one. I’d love to know what would work for you.

I’ll also be teaching another Creative Flow: Yoga and Writing workshop at Semperviva Sun Studio on April 27th, from 1:00-3:00pm. It was SO awesome last time, it was a beautiful and quite emotional experience to explore poetry, yoga, and your own writing. I hope those of you that came last time can come again!

Also, I’ve been thinking a lot about gender issues lately, as those of you that read my articles probably know (did you SEE the Oscars?!), and I am helping one of my good friends, Alla Shishkov, develop a women’s discussion group intended to break our brains and really look at some of the issues that we deal with daily. Womanology: 21st Century Feminism will happen every other Friday evening at 7:30 at East Side Yoga. Manology, for my guys, happens at the Roundhouse Community Centre every Monday.

I have a few poems and articles up on my Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/juliejcp, or you can join my mailing list (which goes out monthly or less) here: http://eepurl.com/mHhlr.