Spring Session

Hi and thank you for visiting Holness Yoga.  Please stay and pock around. Feel free to ask me anything. I’m always happy to answer your questions.

 I’ve been teaching Yoga and Pilates classes in the Haliburton Highlands since 2003. This is when I moved up to Haliburton with my husband/lover Mike. Before that I lived in Bolton, as a single mom with my two boys, Michael and Andrew. I owned and operated a small restaurant in Etobicoke.  It was a very hectic and stressful time of life. It was also when I was introduced to yoga. Yoga was the calm my life was missing. Yoga was the inspiration for change.

Many people think of yoga as a way to work out and  improve flexibility. When I think of yoga I think practice and awareness. I think the time we spend on our mat in a yoga class is the tip of the iceberg. Yet it’s amazing how that one hour class can calm us, ground us and improve the rest of our week. What we really practice is awareness. What we learn to become aware of is ourself.  

We begin by noticing what our body can and can’t do. We notice how we hold our body. We notice how we breathe and we notice how we think. We notice that we spend a great deal of time talking to thoughts inside our head. We notice that we time travel. We spend time revisiting the past (memories) and forecasting the future (imagination). All this noticing creates a lot of awareness and that’s where the power of yoga happens.   We quickly realize that too much time in the past makes us feel depressed. And too much time in the future makes us feel anxious. We practice staying in the present moment, with our body and mind in the same place at the same time.  We begin to live consciously and our lives change. We feel healthier, happier and more alive than ever before.

It really is a beautiful thing. I would love to help you experience it.

Gail Holness