The Value Of Commitment

Most students report that they come to yoga because of strees; and certainly yoga can bring relief. However, yoga offers many more benefits in addition to relaxation, such as flexibility, strength, increased circulation to organs and glands (often resulting in enhanced health), better sleep, improved digestion, and a quieter and more centered mind. Over several years, this practice can add up to the true essence of yoga: living life with a joyful spirit and a peaceful mind in a relaxed and healthy body. Although these benefits are tremendous (and I have found as I get older they are truly priceless!), they cannot occur if students don't come to class.
Most students have sincere intentions when they start yoga, but busy lives have a way of interfering. Unless the student stays focused on a goal of regular attendance, the urgent events in life displace the important things. It's easy to get lost in the pressing details of everyday life and lose sight of the important goal of taking time for personal renewal and nurturing. After missing a few classes it is difficult to get back into the flow and another attempt to find health and relaxation goes by the wayside.
In my 30 years' experience teaching yoga, I have discovered tremendous value in structuring the yoga program in a way that enhances students' commitment. To achieve this aim, Garden of the Heart Yoga Center courses are taught in sessions of 8-10 weeks. This structure means students make a time commitment and a financial commitment for the entire session. Often, in the beginning, it is this structured commitment that keeps students coming back to class.
Because students have made a commitment to yoga, we have a consistent group to work with week to week and we can therefore teach systematically and progressively. My experience has shown that students make more progress in this instructional format. Beginners are grouped together and experienced students are grouped with others having a similar yoga background. In order to protect the experience of those who make this commitment, new students are not accepted after the third week of the session. By that time, new students have missed too much of the groundwork and cannot be incorporated into the class without taking attention away from the rest of the students. With a consistent group attending each week, our teachers build on their previous instruction and develop the class logically and progressively over time. Fourteen class offerings per week at 4 different levels of difficulty with flexible make up policies gives students the opportunity to find the class that's right for them.
You might consider trying our yoga approach to see what happens when you make a commitment! You may discover that you are gradually and systematcally learning to do things you never thought were achievable and you are expanding your horizons of what is possible!...not only for your body but also for your mind and spirit. You then find the essence of yoga :living your life with more joy and greater peace in a relaxed and healthy body.