Nicole Doherty: Wellness

YOGI SEASONAL FOOD CLEANSE – Fall Dates Announced!

Tuesday, October 11th – Monday, October 24 (14 days). Just in time for Halloween ;)

It’s time to cleanse before the crazy holidays! Join our professional team of yogis for a 14 Day Fall Cleanse designed to align your physical and energetic bodies as the weather and season changes.  You will learn how to detoxify and heal the body through the use of local, organic, sustainable food and use our yoga practice to further eliminate toxins and boost your immune system in preparation for the holiday and flu season.  This is the ultimate “foodie” cleanse!  No starving here, just wholesome clean foods that will make you feel better than ever!  We hope that after participating in the 14 Day Fall Cleanse, you will attain the knowledge that will guide you toward long term healthier practices and an enhanced life!

14 Day Cleanse Includes:

• One in-person group q & a meeting (optional)
• Daily outdoor yoga classes at “Bronson Canyon Yoga” geared specifically toward the cleansing process. ** if you are out of town email us about discounts or book Skype privates for yoga sessions
• Email forum/Facebook
• PDF workbook including a detailed description of the cleanse, expert advice on how to succeed and get the most out of the cleanse, journal templates, 2 week sample menu, shopping lists, list of local farmers markets and organic markets, vegan restaurant guide, delicious seasonal vegan recipes and more.

Save the Date: (optional class)
Sunday, October 9th
9:30am morning Yoga class + in-person group meeting

Price:
Early Bird Special!!!  Pay by October 1st and pay only $150!!!
$190 (under $14 a day including yoga!!!)
Email us if you are not located in LA or can’t attend yoga for discounted cleanse options.
nic@nicolepresents.com

Yogi Seasonal Food Cleanse

Bronson Canyon Members $50.00 Cleanse No Yoga $80.00 Cleanse Yoga 6 Days $120.00 Full Program – 12 Days Yoga $190.00 Trade (email us) $0.00

The Gold I Gleaned from Wanderlust

The Wanderlust Festival this year was nothing short of incredible. Not only was this festival an opportunity to practice yoga and hear great music, but also it was a chance to collect valuable information from top-notch Yoga teachers around the world and get exposed to yoga modalities I had never tried before.

I think the most important thing that I took away from my Wanderlust experience this year was the importance of being Authentic.  Yoga becomes an expression of who we are as students, teachers and human beings.  The practice is beautiful, ancient and revered. Also, it is a highly creative and expressive art, science and philosophy.  It draws people out of their shell, breaks them down into little pieces and builds them back up into the most powerful expression of Divine love they can be.

We are all unique and it is that uniqueness that develops the Yoga that we teach or practice.  Students will follow whatever expressions they resonate with on a vibrational level and all forms of Yoga are awesome for this reason.

After 12 classes in just four days, I extracted a ton of great ideas and information from the workshops that will improve my practice and my teaching.  Below are some nuggets of information that I wish to pass along from some of my classes.

Rod Stryker
I was fortunate to be able to take three wonderful classes with Rod Stryker of ParaYoga. I could write a few blogs about what I learned through Rod, but will just highlight a few.

Class One – Hatha Yoga Pradipika
He made a point that resonated strongly with me -  a reminder -  that Yoga is not just about the muscles, asanas and breath, but also its about the Endocrine System, our organs.  It’s our organs that give us longevity and we use the breath and the bandhas to change the health of our organs.

Class Two – Treta Bandhas
Udiyana Bandha is the master key to Yoga.  This is where the fire (agni) burns up what Rod Stryker calls our “landfill”, the emotional stuff that resides in our second chakra that we need to burn up to get our spiritual Kundalini energy rising from the base of the spine.  He says Mula Bandha gets all the press, but it’s the Udiyana Bandha that we need to stoke.

Class Three – Prana Viyus
He was masterful in explaining the Prana Vayus. We watched our breath as it relates to the five Vayus. As teachers, we could watch our students’ breath through the five subsets and as it got shaky or stuck somewhere, we could relate that directly back to the physical and psychological blocks they were encountering in their lives.  This exercise was poignant for those participating and a real learning experience on the connection between breath and subtle energies.

Rod’s funny response to our discussion on the Apana Vayu and the importance of elimination on a physical and psychological level….“Spirituality goes out the door if you haven’t crapped in four days!”

I would highly suggest checking out Rod Stryker. His new book the “Four Bodies” was just released and I would bet that it’s nothing short of amazing!
This is his website:  http://parayoga.com/

CorePower Yoga
CorePower Yoga was an expression of Yoga rooted in physical training and fitness. It was a high-energy class filled with lunges and Utkatasanas.  We used weights to sculpt and sweat a bunch.  I could see this form of Yoga doing really well for the gym devotee and was very happy that I got to experience it.  I could see myself hitting one of these classes once a week to really get the heart rate up and challenge myself on a physical level. CorePower Yoga teacher Becky reminded me that, “there are seeds of transformation at every turn.”

Seane Corn
Seane is epic all the time!  I don’t even know where to start other than to say that I find her to be one of the most empowering individuals on the planet.  She always has a huge message and it calls you to do great things. When I leave her classes I want to be her – a badass – ready to save the world, raise money and do something great!

I could write a book of favorite quotes from Seane, but this one was particularly funny and it stuck out in my mind…(it’s paraphrased)… “Wow, I just whiffed the alcohol some of you are sweating out. I’m getting high off your sweat. Luckily, Yoga is a practice of detoxification!”

Shiva Rea
I walked out of Shiva’s class with Random Rab and Steve Gold and found myself walking around completely stoned off her energy. It’s Shakti -  its sensual and mystifying.  I don’t even know if we did much asana, but we sure shifted our consciousness quick.  What I love about Shiva is her willingness to be spontaneous, her ability to hold space and allow people to dive into their sensuality. I get high off her love of music and dance. It’s a breed of Yoga that’s just plain … Shiva.

Off the Mat and Into the World – “Finding Your Voice” with Suzanne Sterling, Kerri Kelly and Hala Khouri
A revealing and empowering experience!  We worked with our fifth chakra, Vishuddha, to enhance our ability to communicate.  In our society, many of us are told at a young age that we can’t sing or that we shouldn’t say something when maybe we want to.  From these mini traumas we close down in this center.  We are dying to express ourselves! We learned the power of singing as a tool to heal, express and release the tension we’ve accumulated at the throat.  Together, we practiced opening this chakra through asana, moaning, groaning, shouting and above all singing as a large community.   I realized that we are all amazing singers and have tremendous voices when we can sync up as a community and feel safe and supported! Beautiful.

John Friend, “Creating Potent Themes”
All heart, all the time.  John Friend is a devotee to Bhakti – devotional being and practice. He embodies Yoga as a prayer. In his workshop, Creating Potent Themes, we discussed the importance of language in creating an experience for students of Yoga.  He taught us how we can call upon themes as they relate to the Universal Divine and how themes draw upon heart characteristics. As an example, we analyzed the ‘Five Elements’ and how they relate to actions in our bodies, characteristics of the heart and ultimately express the Divine.  I love Anusara and its intention to open to grace and love!

Kathyrn Budig
I knew Kathryn was beautiful as I see her in Yoga Journal all the time, but I had no idea how down to earth and absolutely adorable and funny she was until Wanderlust.  She’s hilarious and promotes fun and joy! She also has a sick practice and is really great with analogies, simple instruction and making really hard poses achievable.  I look forward to taking many more classes with her in the future.

Michael Franti
I captured part of a story he was telling and thought I’d share it. It’s a little cut off at the end but you can just see his sweetness! He is astounding. Michael is a family man, a musician, a Yogi, a businessman and a spiritual guy.  His energy is profound and intoxicating.  He’s got a heart of gold and a real purpose on this planet to help transform it.

Overall, Wanderlust Festival was amazing and I look forward to next year and all the related events they are hosting around the U.S.

Yoga is a conscious practice that is raising the vibration of this planet one breath at a time on a massive scale. I feel so blessed, honored and grateful that I am able to get on my mat every day and experience this gift of breath and transformation.

Great thanks to the Wanderlust Festival founders for having this vision and manifesting it into our reality!

Results are in!  Empowering Yourself to Transform Workshops are Complete.

We just completed my post-South American spiritual journey inspired workshop series called Empower Yourself to Transform™. I must say the jungle did us good! We experienced two weeks of Yoga every morning and 3.5 hour Sunday Workshops that included one hour of motivational speaking and two hours of meditation, chanting, pranayama and Yoga. The Sundays were just outstanding!

Getting up every morning at 6:15a to get over to The Dance Loft in San Francisco was no small feat. I was used to doing this when working with the Amazonian Shamans since they rise with the sun, but in the city, when it’s cold and windy, it’s a different feeling. But every morning like clockwork, I entered that beautiful studio and found myself remarkably at home, on my mat breathing. I was so inspired that by the 7th day I started a food cleanse so I could boost my energy naturally instead of using those morning lattes!

We worked through the Chakra system for the first 7 days visualizing each energy body, beginning to understand where it is and how it affects the whole body temple. We observed each chakra as a container and asked to release emotional tension, resistance or fear. We went within to understand where blocks might reside. We accepted the emotions as they bubbled up and addressed them with compassion and love.

Sunday, May 8th was Mother’s Day and our Releasing Negative Thoughts and Patterns workshop. What a perfect day! For the moms in the room we gave eternal gratitude for their courage to bring energy into form, into matter, the root word for mother.

We discussed the human condition of the mind and its role in our experience here on this plane of existence. We explored how we use tools like Yoga, Meditation, and Inspirational Teachings to guide us out of the subconscious negative thinking to a more conscious awareness of who we really are.

We learned to not think of “negative” as being bad, but as a gift and a signpost along our journey that we can acknowledge to help guide us to decisions that feel good. Negative is not to be judged as bad, but simply the opposite of positive. We addressed the concepts of negative thoughts being fear and resistance. Once we could see our fears and resistance we could acknowledge those fears, identify the resistance and challenge our thoughts. In challenging our thoughts we became creative and could see other perspectives. We also played with tools from Yoga and the Law of Attraction. In Yoga when we are addressed with negative thoughts we replace them with positive ones, called Pratipaksha Bhavana. In the Law of Attraction, we call this Pivoting.

On Sunday, May 15th it was Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. A big day of celebration in the city, so it was vibrating with some seriously fun energy! This was our Tools for Transformation workshop day. This workshop was designed to be the follow up to the prior week. Once we release emotion and identify our resistance what do we do with this new information? I have spent the last several years in deep study of the Laws of the Universe and I wanted to share some fun games that I’ve encountered along the way. We laughed, we shared, we cried. It was a beautiful day. We watched videos about the power of language and words. We shared some of our patterns of thought. We explored partner work using affirmations and journaling. We powerfully affirmed each other’s gifts. We used engaging tools from the Law of Attraction work and other great inspirational teachers. In the end, we started to feel how we really could EMPOWER OURSELVES TO TRANSFORM™!

After each inspirational discussion, we got on our mats and explored the various gifts that we were granted 5000 plus years ago. I’m sure these gifts are a lot older than the recording of them. We practiced meditation and pranayama techniques to clear our mind and extend our prana through the breath. We chanted beautiful mantras and then opened our bodies with Yoga asanas.

Just writing this I get goose bumps (or as my friend calls them, truth bumps!). This work really resonates with my heart. I know that my path, my dharma, is to help inspire people to reach their highest potential. I am here for Joy and Love. That’s it. I want to bring you more Joy and Love!

Below are testimonials from some of the workshop attendees. If you wish to bring these workshops to your city, I would be honored and I love to travel!

“You are pure BRILLIANT Nicole-your words of wisdom, your knowledge, your teachings all truly Inspiring and Uplifting!” ~Val C

“Thank you for such a great workshop. Even though it was just an afternoon it shed light on what has been happening for me this entire year. Such a gift you are! ” ~ Michelle M.

“Add “motivational speaker” to the already impressive array of hats that miss Doherty wears. I just attended her Sunday class on “How to get rid of negative thoughts and patterns” and have instantly noticed a boost in my energy, outlook and general satisfaction with life. I only wish the sessions were longer and had more interaction between classmates. Next up: Tools for Transformation. If I am a better yoga practitioner and person at the end of this year, Nicole will surely be a huge part of it.” ~ Michi V.

“I have been taking private yoga as well as group yoga from Nicole for a couple of years and she is a truly gifted teacher. Her warm approach and extensive knowledge of anatomy make taking class with Nicole not only relaxing but beneficial for our tired, tight bodies. Most recently I attended a workshop called Empower Yourself to Transform with Nicole. The information she gave us was very helpful and pertinent to anyone’s yoga practice. The fun style in which the workshop was held makes it accessible for any level yoga student from the beginner to the seasoned yogi.” ~ Roxanne G

“Thanks sssooooooo much for the workshop.  I truly enjoyed it.  I’ve already had 3 opportunities to apply what we learned about the power of words!  It is amazing how sharing that with 3 different friends was so inspiring.  I didn’t really intend that to happen.  I was just going to start applying it for myself.  But, Sunday evening a friend called and said something like, “Wouldn’t it be nice if all I had to do is (blah blah blah?)”  And, I just said, “OMG, I have to share what I just learned in this workshop today!”  And, we just had a great laugh.  Then, early this morning, a friend started texting me from NYC about how horrible her life was going to be as soon as she moved and how she wasn’t looking forward to it.   And, of course, I immediately sent her the video via email and started explaining the power of words and what I’d learned.  Then, this afternoon, I was talking to a friend about her career….same thing!  So, I just wanted to share with you the impact you made on my life this week and thank you again for an amazing yoga class.  I look forward to another one soon.” ~ Lisa H

To bring these workshops to your city email Nicole Doherty at nic@nicolepresents.com
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