Are you a yoga lover? If yes, you’ll love this piece! If not, read on and you’ll become one 😉

Why am I bringing this up? Well “Yogalovers” is the name of the awesome workshop I attended in December with the crazy good Olive and her teacher friend Claudia. As a self-proclaimed yoga lover and Olive fan, I just couldn’t miss this! 🙂

It took place in the beautifully oldschool industrial-style Yogalives studio, which Olive has been running for 10 years now. We must have been about 20 yogis but it definitely didn’t feel like it, as the practice room is very spacious.

After a brief intro of meditation and chanting, we started to warm up our bodies with some more non-conventional exercises. The first ones were downward facing dogs backing against the wall – very nice and intense stretch! – and some other more dynamic ones had us wandering around the room. From forward to side hops to dwarf walking, we ended up covering the whole practice room in a fun and effective way. This kind of made me think of the animal locomotion exercises I did with Abi a few weeks back…

Claudia guided us through a brief but very beautifully conceived vinyasa flow, which fully activated our bodies for what came next.

So the core part of the workshop was on acroyoga, which is a funny coincidence for me as previous Sunday I practiced that as well. Thankfully for me, we practiced different poses and my spontaneous partner Susan made the whole experience both fun and safe.

This time, my favourite pose was the “double-decker” downward dog – I’m sure this can’t be an official name but works for me 🙂

Check out the pics below on this and a few of the poses demonstrated by Olive and Claudia.

We must’ve played around with 5-6 poses before starting the cool-down. This brought us back to the wall (sometimes they’re great props!) where we did some supported hip openers and slowly prepared for the final relaxation.

I must say, this was one of the deepest shavasanas I’ve ever had – maybe because of the engaging practice, maybe because it was Sunday evening, or maybe because of the lavender scented eye pillow I simply adore in Yogalives… All in all, just perfect!

The workshop theme was on point: for love of yoga and of yourself.
A gift for the mind, body and soul ♥

PS: This is just the first of multiple workshop series – catch the next one on 24 Feb!