The Alignment of Aloha: Teaching Gentle Yoga at the Wailea Yoga Shala: Wailea, Hi: February 4, 2018

One translation of Aloha is "the joyful sharing of life energy in the present". Teaching at the Wailea Shala this winter was a practice of Aloha and I loved every second.

Our Sunday classes have been about Self Love and Self care so that we can show up in the world better prepared for the miraculous and the unexpected.  Today was our last class: our Aloha class. Like Namaste, Aloha is both a farewell and a salutation. We used Richard Bach's words "what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly" to help us align with wonder and awe, trust and joy.

The breath is a steady suggestion by yogis on how we might find such alignments. I was delighted to find that one translation of Aloha is "in the presence of the breath". Another is "the joyous sharing of life force in the present", and if these aren't definitions of yoga I don't know what is. At least that's what I've been learning to practice all winter here on this sweet island in the middle of the Pacific.

Mary Oliver also helped us with her suggestion to "leave room in your heart for the unimaginable" as we moved through our poses on the gentle side of gentle yoga.

Here is our sequence:

Butterfly

Seated windshield wipers
 

Cat and Cow

Gate and Quarter Moon Flow

Plank

Downdog

Uttanasana

Tadasana

Shoulder shrugs

Half cow shoulder stretches

Hula girl

Tadasana

Half lunge salutes

Tadasana with Ananda sharing meditation

Lunge

Hammock

Foot-Heart meditation

Warrior III dance

Reverse trikonasana

Trikonasana

Other side

Palm Tree

Eye of the Needle

Easy Twist

Savasana

Sit

Aloha and Namaste