Sacred Spaces Yoga & Pilates Studio

04/28/2026

Good afternoon Yogis! For the last few weeks, we have been working on decluttering our physical, and mental space. Getting our houses organized and keeping them that way also requires that we be incredibly discerning about who we spend our time with, what we spend our time doing, and what thoughts we allow to occupy our minds. If you happen to have any energy vampires in your life, it’s time to put up some boundaries. Energy vampires are people who prey upon kind, heart- centered people. They constantly complain and only want to talk about themselves, or gossip about other others. They need nonstop attention, and will zap your energy! Some are highly narcissistic, and thrive on drama. They can also be highly competitive and won’t hesitate stabbing you in the back to get ahead. These people, instill guilt, and always strive to make others feel like they’re not giving enough. They are manipulative and pathologically self-centered. When you  have an energy vampire who is stealing your energy, it’s impossible to keep your life organized. If there are people in your life who are chronically negative, please limit your time with them or discontinue spending any time with them all together. Upholding healthy boundaries is imperative in this case. To determine where your boundaries are, and to feel if someone is encroaching on them, it’s important to really tune into how you feel when you are around these people, and be very aware of how they speak.
One thing that I have found is: when people don’t have good boundaries, they use their physical possessions- their “stuff” to build walls around themselves to feel protected. It’s so important that we surround ourselves with positive people who uplift us, and practice assertiveness to decline any negativity in a polite way. These strategies will help us maintain our emotional well-being and keep energy draining influences at bay. Be aware of red flags, such as negativity or manipulation, and use visualization techniques to imagine a protective shield around you. Prioritize self-care activities, like rest, hobbies, and mindfulness to recharge your energy. Stay grounded through deep breathig or spending time in nature, and be cautious about sharing any personal information with these people. It’s important to gracefully bow out of conversations that involve gossip, or seems destructive. You can simply say, “ Hey I need to be honest, this conversation is making me feel very uncomfortable and I think it would be better to talk about something else.”
Protect your energy by surrounding yourself with positive people who want the best for you. People who create a nurturing environment, where you feel safe, and secure. People who care to uplift and foster your growth. Join me for Pilates this evening from 5-6pm.

04/24/2026

TGIf yogis! I’m leaving you with a little food for thought on this beautifUl Friday afternoon.

11 practical tips that will help get rid of the brain fog that robs you of a clear and focused mind and the essential things in life.

04/23/2026

Good morning yogis! As we continue to embark on our home cleaning challenge, let’s remember that this isn’t just about tidying up our spaces - it’s about, loving ourselves, enough to create a healthier, happier environment. When we take the time to care for our homes, we’re also nurturing our well-being, fostering, peace, and honoring our worth. Let’s embrace this opportunity to show ourselves love and kindness through small, meaningful actions. The energy we create through these actions will directly impact how we feel both physically and mentally!
In cleansing what once was cluttered and worn,
We invite new blessings to be born.
With each mindful act, our spirits rise, creating space for peace and clarity.
Through humble work, we clear the way
For love and light to shine each day. 
Join me for Pilates from 5-6pm.

What does St. John of the Cross have to do with decluttering? Learn about the spiritual and emotional benefits of less clutter.

04/22/2026

Good morning Yogis! This week I want for you to keep moving forward, and continue to embrace the joy of decluttering! Remember every small step you take to declutter and donate brings more clarity, peace, joy into your home and life. A tidy space is a reflection of a clear mind and open heart. This week I want you to stay committed to the process- each item you let go of creates room for new blessings and positive energy. Leaving you with a little food for thought today! JOin me for basic Yoga this evening from 5-6pm.

These 10 gentle steps will help you declutter your home, protect your time and energy and make a little space for what really matters to you.

04/21/2026

Good afternoon Yogis!
Spring is a a time to tune into Nature, and to create harmony with the seasons through acts of mindfulness and devotion. All you have to do is look around to be inspired at this time of year; renewal and transformation are literally welling up from the ground. The natural world is going through a rebirth, so be creative and forge a connection to this awesome process. For some of you, this may mean waking up as the sun is rising-turning to prayer or silently devoting your daily yoga practice to nature. An easy starting place is with Sun Salutations, which were traditionally practiced while silently repeating a prayer. Personally, since finishing up my 40 Lenten journey my prayer while on my yoga mat had been- empty me, fill me, use me. Pick one that resonates with you, or simply focus on connecting with your breath. Your efforts to connect to nature can go beyond the edges of your yoga mat. It is SO important to spend times outdoors, in a place of beauty and observe periods of silence.Take time to slow down, to examine the buds and shoots poking out of the earth. Visit them over several days- observe their growth and transformation through daily visits. Spring is also a time to create an outdoor sanctuary on the patio, where you can relax, reflect, and reconnect with nature. With a few simple touches- such as comfortable seating, calming decor, plants, and natural elements- this season offers a peaceful retreat right outside our doors. It’s the perfect space and time to unwind, meditate, entertain friends and family, or simply enjoy the beauty of the outdoors.
Breathe in the Spring air, so pure and sweet.
Feel the earth beneath your wandering feet.
A sacred space, both calm and free- a little piece of serenity.
Join me for Pilates this evening from 5-6pm!

04/16/2026

Spring is the time to aspire to be a butterfly, and not a sluggish bear. It offers Us a time to focus on our asana/ breathing practices, and more awareness about our diet. The most important way to ensure a healthy agni is to find the balance between eating —and not eating at regular intervals during the day; having routine meals with adequate time between them strengthens mind and body. Eat light, easy-to-digest foods during spring and wait at least three to four hours between meals. Try eating less of or eliminating foods that increase kapha—dairy products, iced or cold food or drinks, and fried or oily food—especially in the morning and at dinner. If you’re snacking all day as you did during the holiday season, you’ll disrupt the elimination of kapha or even add to your body’s quota. Instead of a snack, do a short pranayama practice and see what happens. If you’re truly hungry, have something nourishing like miso soup or a few ounces of carrot juice. And remember that strengthening your willpower is an excellent exercise for taming an unruly mind and stoking your digestive fire. To take your ama-flushing a step further, consider a dietary cleanse. As an alternative to strict fasting, spend five to 10 days eating only fresh (ideally local) fruits and vegetables and kitchari, a curried mung bean and rice dish. This will improve your digestive fire and eliminate ama. During your cleanse, you can also drink tea made with cinnamon, black pepper, and ginger one hour after breakfast and lunch. Drink chamomile tea in the evening; it’s beneficial to your digestive and circulatory systems and helps expectorate excess mucus.
During lent I took up 2 half days of drinking fresh juice each week. During the Lenten journey I felt very hydrated and full of vitality. I discovered that when that journey ended, I physically and mentally missed it- and have decided to continue that practice for now. Spring offers a perfect time of transition as well as the ideal climatic conditions for a juice cleanse. Cleansing creates a feeling of lightless in the body and brings new energy, an elimination of toxin accumulations, and improvement of digestion. It also promotes cell regeneration and autophagy. Personally I highly recommend trying it for yourself. Start with a half day of fresh juices, and end your day with a meal. I find juicing and eating a plant based diet in the spring is a great reminder of how wonderful the Earth is, and how good it feels to treat your body well! JOin me for Pilates this evening from 5-6pm.

04/15/2026

Here is a little food for thought on our topic for today!

All the ghees and Ayurvedic tinctures are available after free phone consultation with Vaidya Dr Gupta. Call Now : +1613 422 0936 Dismiss

04/15/2026

Good afternoon Yogis. In our Asana practice at the studio we are turning up the heat! According to the principles of Ayurveda, a healthy digestive agni, or “fire,” is key for health. Agni gives us the physical power of digestion as well as the energy to digest our sensory impressions, thoughts, and feelings. A strong agni is thought to arm you with the discrimination and courage to separate what is essential from nonessential, healthy from toxic, wise from foolish. Strong agni prevents you from producing ama, a heavy residue left in the body when you experience or consume things you can’t assimilate or completely digest. Ayurvedic physician Vasant Lad describes ama as a “morbid, toxic, sticky substance that is the root cause of many diseases.” Unlike kapha, which is a natural by-product of metabolism, ama is a poison. It contributes to fatigue, weakened immunity, inflammation, cravings, and depression. If left unchecked, it can lead to more serious conditions such as obesity and heart disease. Personally I have found that the recipe for balancing kapha includes stoking agni in your practice, your breathing, and your diet. To produce agni in your practice, you must generate tapas, or inner heat. You build this heat by doing strong standing poses, all kinds of Sun Salutations, and backbends, which pump prana throughout your body. The prana acts like a bellows and gradually builds the heat of tapas. You support and sustain tapas mentally by concentrating on your breath. Try practicing Uddhiyana Bandha Kriya, a traditional cleansing practice. When you suspend the breath after you exhale, it encourages your mind to focus, which stabilizes the flame of agni. Likewise, creating a smooth, rhythmic breath while performing postures, particularly Sun Salutations, is key for maintaining concentration and ensuring that prana spreads heat equally through your body. But don’t confuse inner heat with outer heat—a sweat-drenched yogi is not necessarily the poster child for tapas. When you breathe this way, you actually sweat less because the heat stays inside. This inner heat melts the kapha and breaks down ama in your tissues so your body can eliminate it. If your breathing is erratic or forced, it will disturb both sukha and agni; as a result, kapha and ama won’t budge—and may even increase slightly. You will know when you’ve created enough tapas if, after practice, you feel light, warm, and invigorated, with an alert mind, clear senses, and fluid emotions throughout the day. Or you can follow Lad’s advice to exercise to half your capacity, just until you feel sweat on your forehead, under your armpits, and along your vertebral column. How soon this happens into your practice will vary and will increase as you build strength. To keep the momentum of tapas going, it’s important to be consistent this time of year. Showing up regularly on your mat ensures your body will get what it needs for a gentle, gradual reduction of excess kapha, and your mind will wake up from the fog of wintertime habits. Tomorrow we will chat about the importance of eating lighter in the Spring.
I want you to continue to declutter the new space in your home, that you have decided to focus on this week. If for whatever reason you have not finished last weeks space, make a plan to knock it out this week. THere will be NO basic yoga this evening. Make today a good one!

04/14/2026

Good afternoon Yogis! Yesterday we we spoke about creating good space in the lower half of the body- today let’s chat about how to increase sukha in the upper half. The stomach, chest, throat, and head are the energetic seat of kapha, because all of these areas produce and tend to accumulate mucus. Practicing deep, rhythmic Ujjayi breathing (Ocean Breath) is a technique used in yoga to calm the mind and heat the body by slightly constricting the throat, creating an audible sound similar to ocean waves. It involves deep, slow inhalations and exhalations entirely through the nose, creating a, relaxing, yet energizing rhythm. The asana practice consists of Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I Pose), Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation), Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose), and seated twists helps circulate kapha by alternately compressing the abdomen and expanding the chest. Similarly, inverted forward bends such as Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose), standing forward bends, and Halasana (Plow Pose) all strengthen the diaphragm and encourage excess mucus to be excreted through the mouth and nose. Kapalabhati pranayama (Skull Shining Breath) is excellent for strengthening your lungs and clearing your head and sense organs. While the best way to circulate prana in your legs is by engaging them willfully, the best way to circulate prana in the internal organs is to engage in conscious relaxation. Try to combine the complementary actions of willful effort with relaxation in each breath. As you inhale, guide awareness into your pelvis and legs, refining the qualities of muscle tone, circulation, and stability. As you exhale, hold your lower body steady and imagine a wave of relaxation moving up along your spine. As you do this, pay special attention to your upper back, heart, throat, lungs, and brain.
Last week I challenged you to choose a space in your home to declutter. I hope you enjoyed the process and can see and feel how that space has shifted physically and  energetically! This week, I invite you to pick another space in your home to focus on. It could be a drawer, a shelf, a closet, or any area that needs some loving organization. Remember Yoga is also about balance and harmony., it’s about creating a peaceful environment that helps support your practice both on and off the mat. Join me for Pilates this evening from 5-6pm.

04/13/2026

Happy Monday Yogis! We can ease the transition to spring by creating sukha, which means “good space” or a general state of health and happiness. You can do this by eating wholesome food and practicing yoga and pranayama daily. Creating sukha is especially important when you’re trying to wring out excess kapha, because it enables prana (vital energy) to move freely through your body. Like wind moving clouds through the sky, prana propels kapha, so that fluids and phlegm move easily through the body. If you don’t create sukha, the flow of prana is restricted and contributes to dukq (bad space). Dukha represents misery of any kind and restricts or confuses the flow of kapha. To increase sukha and prana in your practice, add squats, which free up “good space” in the densest part of the body: the pelvis and legs. The pelvis and legs represent the earthy-watery part of the body and are prone to retaining fat and water. Poses like Utkatasana (Chair Pose), Malasana (Garland Pose), SImhasana (Lion Pose) and Khanjanasana (Tail-Wagging Pose) all create heat, improve joint mobility, aid digestion and elimination, and increase circulation. Of course, these poses are also physically challenging. You might feel your legs quiver, as if someone were pouring cement instead of prana into them. During these intense moments, remember to preserve sukha. Don’t overcontract your muscles or compromise your breath by transferring tension into your chest, shoulders, or neck—or you’ll risk creating even more kapha, which the body produces as an antidote to excessive muscular and nervous tension. I hope you have all been hard at work tackling the one ☝🏼space I asked you to declutter last week, because tomorrow I’m going to ask you to pick another one! Wishing you all a wonderful day.

04/11/2026

Good morning Yogis! Today let’s talk about how to shed our winter coats. To enjoy a healthy spring, you need to understand the kapha dosha and bring it into balance. Of the three doshas—vata, pitta, and kapha—it’s kapha that endows your body with its earthy-watery qualities in the spring. It provides lubrication for joints, as well as mucus to protect the sensitive tissues of the sinuses, lungs, and stomach; it also determines the size, strength, and suppleness of your muscles. When kapha is in balance, you feel strong, composed, and stable. When it’s out of balance, you might feel sleepy, mentally dull, or depressed. You may also experience excess phlegm in the lungs or sinuses, nausea, unhealthy weight gain, water retention, or heaviness in your limbs. It’s especially important to balance kapha in the spring, because kapha accumulates during winter and can create diseases by the time spring arrives. As the world becomes colder and wetter in winter, your body mirrors these kapha-like changes. You tend to eat, sleep, and stay inside more during winter, which can result in a “winter coat” of insulation. In spring, you need to shed this excess kapha or risk becoming vulnerable to seasonal allergies or head colds. You might also gain or retain weight or succumb to a general lethargy or emotional dullness. Your Ayurvedic prescription for spring is to develop a rhythm and routine that helps you gradually lighten up physically, mentally, and emotionally without disturbing the stable virtues of kapha. The best approach is multidimensional and includes eating lighter foods, adding certain herbs to your diet such as: ginger, turmeric, cardamom’s, cumin, black pepper, tulsi tea, dandelion greens, arugula, asparagus, and broccoli. Your Yoga practice is essential during the spring, as well as pranayama (breathing techniques), meditation, and some form of devotional rituals. This may seem rather overwhelming at first, but you can begin to integrate change anywhere you’re most comfortable—maybe you will choose to begin with your yoga practice or with your diet. Whatever changes you decide to make, even if they’re small, commit to sticking with them. Successful transformation rarely happens with a quick fix or a brief burst of dedication, especially when you’re dealing with the kapha dosha. Because of its earthy-watery nature, it’s very dense and heavy, and it can stick like mud.

04/10/2026

TGif Yogis! Make today a great one.