
Ally Mazerolle: Girlvana Yoga and Community
If we’ve learned anything in the past eight months, it has to be the power and presence that occurs when we gather as a community.
The goal for 30-Opportunities was to present a unique variety of classes to engage students in recommitting to yoga during the pandemic. I carefully constructed each day based on the muscles strengthened and stretched the day before to allow the body to rest and rejuvenate so students would not get burnt out.
The 30-Opportunites Virtual Yoga Challenge is available for free on my YouTube Channel.
See if a 30-day challenge is for you and sample different styles of yoga with hatha, vinyasa, restorative, and meditation classes.
The journaling questions are included with the class in the Apps. We also post them to the Community Facebook Group where participants are welcome to share their answers with the community and express how they feel.
The questions received 50-60 responses per day in our first challenge; an amazing feat to witness. We want the Facebook Group to feel like a yoga studio where practitioners are free to talk and hang out to share ideas and inspiration. The journaling questions were a way to get the conversation started and see how everyone was feeling and all that came up along the way much as we would in a shared space at a yoga studio.
“This was a great challenge for inspiring introspection, personal change, and a gentle daily discipline of arriving to the mat. I appreciated the focus on mantras and chanting on some days, and the flexibility to choose among options to fit our schedules. As always, Clara's voice, cueing, pacing and humor make every class a good one - I have a hard time picking favorites!”
Movement and physical exercise represent one small—albeit vital—way we nourish ourselves. For this challenge, mantra and meditation were featured every day. The yoga classes were shorter to accommodate participant feedback and accompanied by short practices of mantra, meditation, and visualization. Participants could choose to do one class a day or all of the classes allotted to that specific day of the challenge. This option allowed flexibility for students to choose the practices that they wished to do on the days where multiple classes were provided.
If we’ve learned anything in the past eight months, it has to be the power and presence that occurs when we gather as a community.
The subtle body, or energetic body, represents one of five body’s within each individual. Alignment within the five body’s creates harmony and unites the physical
Boundaries are a common theme in the world right now. There’s a global shift in how we introduce ourselves with personal pronouns, working from home,
The gift of mindfulness practices is that we start to develop an ear to hear the body’s subtle messages. The body never lies, so if
“I’m so grateful for the time and effort everyone put into putting this challenge together. As always Clara is an amazing teacher! I enjoy her new videos a lot and I appreciate the journal prompts and podcast topics.”
In addition to the pre-recorded classes, this challenge offered weekly *Live* classes. The sequences for these classes were for intermediate/advanced yogis with plenty of modifications for those new to the practice and built toward a peak pose in the flow.
Based on community feedback, we provided customized assets for this challenge to help participants feel · motivated · inspired · accountable · all month long with a calendar to mark off each day of the challenge and a journaling booklet with the daily questions.
We partnered with some amazing brands for this challenge who donated gifts to be raffled off at the end of the challenge.
“I loved it. Really appreciate Clara's style. Very professional, clear instructions, strong guidance, and good balance in the choices of the lessons. I felt it was not a random adding of classes, but a real path I could follow. The big picture made a lot of sense, as well as the specific classes.”
The idea for the challenge was to look at all the ways we interact with the world and within ourselves to see how we might engage with more compassion and loving-kindness.
Seva is performing acts of selfless service for others and the environment without attachment to the outcome or personal profits or gains. The Bhagavad Gita, the much-loved mythical tale of Arjuna on the battlefield, shares the wisdom of performing actions for the sake of action and not the results.
Krishna says to Arjuna, “You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions’ fruits. Act for the action’s sake. And do not be attached to inaction.”
We asked our community to examine their relationship to selfless service and provided the community with 50 Acts of Seva to inspire a daily ritual.
The slower-paced classes varied each week to feature Slow Flow, Hatha, Yin, and Restorative styles.
The commitment to daily practice represents your promise to create healthy habits as you get stronger in mind, body, and spirit.
If you’re not entirely convinced as to why a virtual yoga challenge is for you, here are 30 life-enriching reasons to dedicate yourself to a month of practice.
A ritual brings your awareness to the present moment; it’s a way to transform the mundane into something sacred. Rituals don’t have to be fancy. It could be as simple as taking five deep breaths, lighting some incense or a candle, or pausing between each bite of food. The power of ritual is in the presence you bring to the moment—no matter how great or small the action.
Setting aside a few minutes for conscious breathing has the power to shift our overall mental, physical, and emotional health. By committing to 30-days of practice, be it meditation or a movement, can transform and enrich your lifestyle by elevating your awareness of your body and mind.
A month of yoga asana builds strength and enhances flexibility through the postures. Each vinyasa class offers plenty of modifications for participants to add intensity to create more heat. The offering is to observe how you feel and how your body responds to the poses.
Discipline means you can commit to something and follow it through, which is essential in setting goals. When we commit to our goals and follow through with our intentions, this builds positive self-esteem and inner strength. A strong sense of discipline will help you persevere through challenges.
Emotions live in the body. We revitalize the parts of the body that hold stored emotions through movement. The release of tissues, muscles, and organs may surface emotions such as sadness and fear. Yoga may offer a moment of freedom to clear stuck energy and emotions.
The calendar and journaling prompts are resources provided in the challenge for you to track your results, specifically how you feel and perceive your practice as we move through the month.
A skill is a practice that’s been refined over time. This challenge focuses on one thing; making it to your mat. The goal is to do the daily class or take 5-minutes to be conscious of your breath.
Dance in your body. Breathe deep. Take in the elements around you. Revel in the sight, sound, taste, and smell of your environment.
Vinyasa classes that build to a peak pose mean you’ll get to test your tapas with crow pose, handstand, wheel pose, and other yoga postures to learn about the body and the demands of each pose.
Share how you feel and what practices you prefer with a community of yogis worldwide. The challenge supports conversation in the app in the comments and in our private community Facebook Group where practitioners can share feedback, photos, and emoji’s on each day of the challenge.
A big part of the challenge is the community support in holding each other accountable as we commit to 30-days of yoga. Posting in the community Facebook Group or sharing your comments in the app holds you accountable to your shared goal.
Through yoga classes that weave in the yoga sutras’ wisdom embody the philosophy that formed the Asana’s primary practice.
Sometimes clearing lethargy and anxiety needs to be expressed through the body; flow through classes to burn off excess energy, and take restorative yin classes to ground and connect to inner calm. The challenge provides the space to honor how you feel and hit reset on whatever you’re feeling that day.
Especially if you’re new to yoga, a 30-day yoga challenge is a perfect opportunity to push yourself out of your comfort zone in the comfort of your home. Embracing a new pose or style of breathing may show you how capable you are in developing strength and perseverance.
It takes courage to try something new. When you accept the challenge and commit to the 30-days, you may feel how your mind and body adapt and receive physical and mental demands. Practitioners of past challenges have said that witnessing their practice’s evolution helped them develop faith in their capabilities.
No two people enter and exit a pose the same way. This act is no different from how we live our day-to-day lives. Hopefully, as you move through the 30-days, you begin to trust in your process and celebrate how unique your practice looks and feels each day.
Idle time is significant to make space for play and daydream. Let yoga become your playground.
There will be a day (or more) during the challenge you don’t want to practice. Showing up for the community may encourage you to push through mental and physical roadblocks.
When we devote ourselves to someone or something that is not us, it sparks a sense of compassion and curiosity we may lack when considering ourselves. Devote yourself entirely to your commitment to show up, be present, and contribute to the collective to develop Bhakti, the practice of devotion.
As you develop your practice on the mat, you’ll start to see how yoga benefits your lifestyle off the mat. When we take care of ourselves, we’re better able to tend to others. If you come with us for the challenge, write down how your overall mood and reception of those around you shifts throughout the month.
We tend to live in the busyness of the mind, the constant chatter, and ongoing thoughts. The practice is one place you might release your mind, put it all down, and surrender completely to the body and the ride of the subconscious.
The challenge is designed to stress specific muscles on set days, so your body has time to restore and release. Each day offers a different class style such as vinyasa, restorative, Hatha, mantra, and meditation. Varied and creative sequencing means you’ll never be bored or want to check out.
The repetition of yoga poses throughout the challenge is ideal for beginners. Attending to a new skill every day will accelerate your learning and understanding of each pose physically and mentally.
To enhance your learning development, practitioners of the challenge have the option to engage with fellow yogis in the challenge and with Clara in the community Facebook Group. Dissection of poses, questions, and feedback are all welcome and encouraged.
Once you stick it out and commit to one thing entirely, it becomes easier to commit yourself fully to your next goal. Sustainability is a skill that you’ll develop during the 30-day challenge.
Surrendering to breath and body is a crucial ingredient in yoga, and it doesn’t always come easily. Letting go takes practice, but the more you can release what doesn’t serve on your yoga mat (for example, negativity or ideas that are not your own), the more you’ll be able to take this practice of surrender off your mat and into the world.
Talking about health with people who are conscious of feeding their bodies and minds nourishing things will encourage you to do the same.
As you feel the positive results of the practice in mind and body, spending time on destructive habits may be less enticing. Once you start the shift to a more positive and productive lifestyle, you’ll be able to see with more clarity all the ways certain habits may be holding you back.
Yoga reminds us that we are in constant flux. Nothing stays the same, and we receive the practice based on how we are doing on that particular day. Through yoga, we witness our potential for beauty and despair. Yoga teaches us that we can welcome all the aspects of ourselves, especially when we show up feeling anxious, angry, tired, fidgety, and dull.
Yoga reminds us of how to be with ourselves. It’s a space we come back to and remember our inner quiet and how to attune to our body. Through movement, philosophy, and attunement to breath, the practice of yoga may teach us how to come back to our heart and receive all the things that light us up!
All of the Practice with Clara programs follow a formula to build strength and enhance flexibility while allowing for adequate rest between effortful exertion.