10 Days To Discover A New You

You know how to change your life, you just sometimes need the help to understand the answers already inside you.

Meditation helps you to unlock your potential and step into who you truly are. It allows you to see the world through new eyes and gain a new perspective on yourself. 

Join Maeve for these short 20-25 minute sessions available in the video library on the Himalaya Yoga Valley app and see the benefits of a daily meditation practice after just 10 days. Share your journey and discoveries with other yogis on our members’ hub. 

Meditation helps you to believe in yourself and your self-worth and when combined with journaling it can transform your life. Make sure that you complete the journal prompts immediately after each day’s meditation to further help you put this practice into action.

Before each practice, find a quiet space and sit comfortably. If your body is not comfortable, your brain can’t relax, so find a space that suits you, as everybody is different. Read our blog how meditation can improve your life for meditation tips for beginners.

Finding yourself

Day 1 

Meditation on So Hum – Journey to ‘I am’ 

This Meditation will take you back to the ultimate source of your being – ‘I AM’

Day 2

Meditation on Self Belief

This meditation focuses on self-belief. You will gradually see yourself replacing your self-doubt with self-belief.

Day 3

Heart Meditation 

Meditating on Heart Centre can bring you joy, compassion, peace and forgiveness.

Day 4

Meditation on Gratitude

This is a meditation to bring you into a space of gratitude. Gratefulness to the present moment brings peace of mind, staying in a mind-space where there are no complaints. All we feel in this meditation is gratitude for what we have.

Day 5

Mindfulness of Breath Meditation 

A mindful meditation and mantra that focuses on breathing and being in the moment.

Day 6

Meditation and Pranayama – Peace and Calm

A short Bhramari Pranayama followed by a Guided Meditation to bring Peace & Calm to your being.

Finding your connection to the world around you

Day 7

Connecting you with Earth Element

A short session of Pranayama followed by Meditation focusing on our connection with Earth Element.

Day 8

Silent Meditation 

This Silent Meditation mainly focuses on watching your mind, managing your thoughts while being silent and looking within. Here Maeve also uses the singing bowl to bring your mind back to the present if distracted.

Day 9 

Connect with the Divine Within

We all have divinity within us, and this guided Meditation will help you touch the divinity within you.

Finding your connection to those around you

Day 10

Meditation on Compassion for Self and Others

Here Maeve guides you to the space of compassion for yourself and others.

After your 10-day meditation journey:

• Work to build meditation into your daily life
• Be consistent
• Find a quiet space and make this your meditation spot

Journal Prompts

Journalling is a great way to set your intentions before your meditation and discover what you learned about yourself afterwards. Here are some prompts that you can write about on your journey:

• What affirmation resonated with you the most during class, and why?
• Before your practice, free write 3 pages, letting your mind clear itself before settling into your meditation. Do you have the same thought patterns? Has anything received clarity or enlightenment?

• In past times, many people believed there were four elements
  • Air represented communication, intellect, and inspiration.
  • Fire represented passion, energy, courage, and freedom.
  • Water represented intuition, healing, cleansing, and love.
  • Earth represented stability, abundance, and staying grounded.

Write about the element that you think is most symbolic of your nature, and why…and/or write about the element that you need most in your life right now, and why.

• Write a meditation for all the things you’re grateful for now…and then write one for the good things that haven’t happened yet, but you know are coming your way
• What thoughts occurred during your meditation today?
  • How did this differ from other days?
  • What do you wish for the world?
  • What do you wish for yourself?

Start your meditation journey today on the Himalaya Yoga Valley App

Find out more on how meditation can change your life

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What is Yin Yoga?

Written by Himalaya Yoga Valley Graduate and Yoga Teacher, Tomoe Watanabe

The word “Yoga” comes from the Sanskrit word Yuj meaning to yoke, join or unite, the mind and body and other complementary concepts like stillness and movement, masculine and feminine, sun and moon to bring balance between them. However, the word yoga has become synonymous with asana, and a focus on dynamic movement has become more prevalent. In contrast, performing asana aims to allow the practitioner to sit for meditation without distraction.

Dynamically practising asanas is termed a yang type yoga practice. Balance is an essential aim of yoga, and to balance a yang type practice when it gets excessive, we need a yin type practice. Yin yoga has been developed to help counterbalance this focus on yang type practice, bringing yoga back to the original yoga teachings.
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Here at Himalaya Yoga Valley, we’re dedicated to bringing you our signature style, whether it’s online or in person. With the current restrictions, we want to ensure that you’re getting the most of your membership with us.

Here are some of our top tips on how to give yourself a yoga studio experience from the comfort of your own home!
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Himalaya Yoga Valley is delighted to invite you along to a Chai, Chat and Meditation online class at 3pm on Sunday, September 6th with all funds raised going to Cork Simon Community and Goa Outreach. Over the past 8 years, Himalaya Yoga Valley have raised over €78,000 for charity and this Sunday want to continue to give back to the community.
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Great News!
We have launched a brand new members hub on Facebook!
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We are so looking forward to welcoming our clients back to our Ballincollig centre from the 13th of July! The safety of our clients and team are our top priority. Please follow these guidelines when attending classes with us.

Class Capacity, Timings & Student Registration

• Capacity of students in each class will be in line with social distancing requirements of 2 meters

• Each class will be one hour in duration reduced from one hour and fifteen to allow for extra measures between classes

• There is 30 minutes between classes to allow for cleaning studio

• All bookings and transactions made online so that there is no cash transactions in the studio (prearranged exceptions will be made for people with accessibility barriers, no internet, this must be pre-arranged and absolutely the exception not the norm)

• Students must sign in before coming to the studio. We can not facilitate drop in’s

Supplies

• Students are welcome to wear visors and masks and can bring their own masks

• All students must bring their own props and yoga mat- these can not be left at the studio and must not be shared between clients

• We no longer have a water dispenser- please bring your own water

Cleaning and Hygiene

• Students must sanitize their hands before entering and exiting the studio

• After and in between each class the teacher will sanitize commonly touched surfaces

• The studio will continue to be regularly cleaned by a contracted cleaner

• Our downstairs door will be locked while cleaning takes place. Please wait for the teacher in your car or outside observing social distancing until you are called to enter. This prevents client crossover and ensures you are entering a clean and safe space

Practising Yoga

• We have staggered marked out spaces based on current social distancing guidelines for people to practice. Please place your mat on these designated markings only

• Teachers will provide verbal cues and demos rather than physical adjustments

• Please observe 2 meter distancing from the teacher

• Prop heavy classes are not currently on our schedule as we do not provide props

Class Check in and traffic flow

• Our teacher will meet clients at entry door downstairs to check you in on the iPad and there will be staggered entry staggered entry

• Please keep 2 meters apart when entering and exiting the studio and remove shoes at entry and put in bag, and store with other personal belongings in studio cubby holes. All personal belongings including shoes and car keys must be in a clean bag in cubby hole.

• Please come to the studio in dressed ready for practise. We will not be using changing rooms.

Other Important Measures

• Any student who has contact with someone who has Covid-19 must not attend our studio for 14 days and until they have received medical clearance to do so

• Any student displaying symptoms of Covid-19 should not come to class. You can find out about symptoms of Covid-19 and what to do if you get sick, here https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/472f64-covid-19-coronavirus-guidance-and-advice/

• It is imperative that absolutely all students are signed in to class for the purpose of contact tracing should it be required. Please check that your contact details on our system are up to date and we can contact you should we need to

• If you are unwell, or become unwell after class please contact our team on info@yogacorkireland.com and notify us so

Our philosophy on holding space for yoga during these times

We are overjoyed to have you back! We will give you the same warm welcome you are used to when coming to our studio, we may not be able to be physically close to our students but we will still aim for close energetic and human connection. Our space will be a much needed sanctuary that puts safety at the peak of our priorities. We commit to creating a safe space of healing and warmth that is designed promote and protect the health of our clients and team.

If you have any questions please contact us.

Namaste and see you soon!

Here is a simple tutorial for our clients! Himalaya Yoga Valley App & Booking Tutorial

Namaste,

We hope you are all doing well and your families are safe and well too. It came as a pleasant surprise to us on Friday that yoga studios will have the opportunity to become operational again on the 29th of this month. We were expecting permission for yoga studios to reopen in the August phase and our planning has been geared towards that date. We will however now begin a phased reopening of Himalaya Yoga Valley with our Ballincollig centre reopening first and we will also retain and expand our virtual studio offerings. With our capacity reduced by close to 60% and Ballincollig being a much larger space it will be feasible for us to begin our reopening from that location with all of the social distancing and hygiene measures required to do so safely. We aim to reopen in Ballincollig in the second week of July and will notify you when our schedule is up to take online bookings!

Ballincollig

Please see this video of our Ballincollig Yoga Studio which will give you an idea of why it is such a popular place to practise with our clients- we look forward to welcoming you there.

Highlights of our Ballincollig Studio

*One of Ireland’s largest yoga studios spanning over 2000 sq ft
*Located just off the link road
*Beautifully designed, spacious studio with lots of light & overhead heating
*Free Parking on Site
*15 minutes drive from Cork City

Safety

We will be following all HSE guidelines to make practising with us as safe as possible for our team and our clients and we will circulate and publish our practice guidelines and policy in the coming weeks before we open. This will be available to view on our website, social media channels and you will also receive it by email if you are on our mailing list. We were the first studio to close in Cork. We did so early to protect our team, clients and community and we will not rush reopening for the same reasons. We thank you for supporting that decision when we made it and thank you in advance for working with us to keep everybody as safe and healthy as possible.

Classes will be one hour in length to account for studio cleaning and can not cross over so we will have approximately 3 classes per day to begin with in this government phase of restrictions.

Your Pass or Membership

If you had a pass or membership with us with remaining classes or time on it before the lockdown started and have not transferred it for use online, you can now contact us to reactivate it and we will extend the validity equal to what was remaining on it when we closed. If you have a pass or membership that you bought for use in our studio before the lockdown and you reactivated it during the lockdown to use online, you can carry on using it online, in house or blended between both. Virtual studio memberships are exclusively for use online. Our team is always on hand if you need any help or clarification regarding your pass. Simply drop us a line.

Please note all bookings must be completed and paid for online as we will not be doing transactions in the interest of safety. In the interest of taking care of vulnerable or elderly clients who may not be able to book online we will make exceptions and our team will assist you. You will need to email for this before attending the class and this is in exceptional cases only. We want to keep barriers to practise down so we are here for those clients who can not book online and for all other clients we greatly appreciate your support in keeping our team safe by pre paying and pre booking.

In respect to our clients who have patiently waited to use their passes during lockdown we will not have passes available for sale. Single classes will be available for purchase and use on the same day from the start of our second operational week. We will monitor attendance and open up sales for passes based on our findings. We kindly request that clients attend a maximum of three classes per week online and also use our online classes to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to attend.

Himalaya Yoga Valley Online

Should you wish to practise from home you can join our thriving online community and attend up to 100 classes per month with Lalit, Lisa, Anca, Jim and Carolann from the comfort of your own home for just €19.99 per month! We have up to 5 classes a day, including Dynamic, Themed, Gentle Glow, Restore & Revive and plenty more of your usual favourites. Our clients are thrilled with being able to access the same classes they know and love without the commute. If you wish to become a member of our virtual studio you can do so here many clients have expressed their wish to keep practising from home and we are proud to be able to deliver the highest quality yoga experience directly to them. We have some very exciting international teachers lined up and our online community has grown into a very special one!

Thank You So Much

We appreciate all of the incredible support from our clients over the last few months and our wonderful team who offered so much to our community for the first 8 weeks of the pandemic lockdown with free classes every day- we had attendance of over 100,000 during that period with people from all over the world benefiting from yoga to help them get through a difficult time. We continue to offer free online classes to frontline health workers and we hope to restart Yoga in the Park as soon as possible to fundraise for our charity partners who have been so hard hit by this pandemic. We are in the process of getting relevant permissions from the council to do so.

It has been a challenging time for us as a team and to stay afloat as a business, but the support of our wonderful clients and teachers has kept our spirits uplifted!

Once again, thank you, and we look forward to seeing you in Ballincollig or online!

Yours in Yoga,

The Himalaya Yoga Valley Team

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that we have launched Himalaya Yoga Valley online! Classes will kick off live at our virtual studio on Monday the 11th of May. We have up to 5 classes a day and over 100 classes per month for you to enjoy with our team of expert teachers and here is the really exciting news…after such an incredible response to our community wellbeing classes we are launching our introductory unlimited memberships for just €19.99 a month on a rolling basis!

After seeing the response to our online classes and what they meant to so many, we wanted to offer unlimited access to the highest quality classes for as low a price as possible. We launched our studio 7 years ago with a vision to make yoga accessible and now we open our virtual space with the same mission and hope in our heart- to bring authentic, accessible, affordable yoga from it’s origins to everybody! We are keeping our classes FREE for frontline healthcare workers as a way to say thank you for all that you do and we are also running a free weekly Seva class for all levels each week.

We have kept affordability and accessibility at the core of our vision, and you can expect the same incredible quality teachings that you have come to know from our team, led by Yogacharya Lalit.

Here is what is on offer

-Over 100 classes a month

-Classes 7 days a week

-Various styles

-Something for all levels

-Members-only access to our library of classes that will grow as we go

-Private Classes

-Corporate Classes

-FREE classes for frontline Healthcare workers

-All classes easily accessible on Mindbody Online

If you are already a member of our studio you will have received an email about your existing memberships and passes and if you have any questions you can drop us a line. We look forward to welcoming you all back to our classes online and want to thank you for your support over the last few months.

If you have enjoyed our classes or would like to support us in our online expansion we would greatly appreciate your support!

Do you have difficulty expressing your feelings verbally? Is your inner critic very active in your mind? Are you prone to interrupting people when they are speaking or tune out of conversations? Do you sometimes find yourself with not much to say or then pour out vast amount of words and information with little or no meaning?

Poor communication is the main reason we experience challenges in our relationships.

Mindful communication involves listening, speaking and using non-verbal communication with kindness, attention, compassion and awareness. When we master the art of communication through mindfulness, we know how to be in the moment. We are able to connect with and learn from the people around us. We can strengthen the relationships in every area of our lives and feel confident in our communication too.

Date: Saturday, March 28th 2020

Time: 2pm-5pm

Price: €49.99 per person

Venue: 34 Penrose Wharf, Cork City

What is Included:

· Tips and exercises for mindful hearing, listening and verbal expression

· Understand verbal expression, body language, non-verbal communication and internal communication

· Discover blocks that prevent us from speaking our truth

· Find the cause of our reactions/triggers

· Gain awareness and learn to respond mindfully

· Tailor-made MP3 relaxation recordings. Daily use will help increase confidence and bring an ease around communication

What to Bring: A notepad & pen, a water bottle with water, your humour and an open mind.

What to Wear: Warm comfortable clothing, including socks.