Be in the Moment with Svit of Yoga
Just Breathe & Smile
Why Yoga?
Yoga is about five-thousand-year old, nevertheless, it is incredibly current and increasingly valuable. Covid-19, political upheavals, climate change, and personal issues are exhausting our minds and ultimately our bodies. We are losing inner peace, which is necessary for proper functioning and strong health. Obesity, addictions, depressions and other neurological issues, leave many of us with poor depleted health. We all know that there is a direct correspondence between fitness and health. It significant for our sedentary, stress-filled modern life and increasingly unbalanced society to be active physically. We have to run, hike, bike, dance, etc.. However, in order to harmonize our existence, we also have to bring yoga to our lives. I know marathon runners who run every day and at the same time carry within so much destructive anger that it is hard to match. During Covid-19 prescriptions for anti-depressants overwhelmingly increased. We have been turned into sleepwalkers: we can neither relax and fall deeply asleep at night nor be fully productive during the day. Our mind is an incredible engine. However, it can also be our worst enemy. How to stop a constant flow of worries, hesitation, anxieties, anger, obsessions, addictions, judgement (first of all ourselves and others), and negative thinking? How to master our own mind? The answer is yoga because only yoga teaches us how to calm down our mind.
What are the effects of yoga?
Yoga has profound effects on our body and mind. It:
Reduces stress;
Recovers our mental resilience and enhances our mental ability;
Improves and restores health in general (it’s never late!), especially cardio-vascular, digestive issues as well as many others;
Strengthens our immunity and even increases production of growth hormones, making us more energized and younger looking;
Improves and balances our life, bringing an optimistic, positive attitude to each of our actions—but first of all—to our thoughts
Yoga can change our destiny (I know it sound a bit over the top but I do believe in every word I am writing here).
Yoga teaches us to unite our body and mind. Yoga helps us to understand how powerful we are. Yoga teaches us to heal our bodies themselves…
What may you expect in my classes?
Everything in this universe and in our body is connected. You can build a deep connection between your body and mind as well. So… bring awareness to your body, breath deeply and relax. The rest is your teacher’s business.
Yoga is most commonly defined as union and discipline. Often contemporary mainstream yoga focuses exclusively on poses. That is not yoga. Yoga is not complicated poses (asanas) or competition. It is much more. As an adherent of Integral Yoga, I offer a tightly interwoven combination of asanas (poses), pranayama (breathing exercises) and meditation (or Hatha Yoga, Yoga Nidra, Pranayama, Meditation, etc.). During our classes, I teach my students to be aware of our bodies, our breathing and meditate on movement as well as on inhalation and exhalation. Thus, I will encourage you again and again to bring your attention to your body and to your breathing. In other words, to bring three Bs together: Body, Brain and Breath. At the end, Yoga is Union!
Our body is the product of our past. It reflects what we eat, how often we exercise, how well we have taken care of it, etc. Our brain could be our friend, but… it could also be our worst enemy, generating constant dramas: anxieties, worries about the future, regrets about our past, etc. In fact, our thoughts are constantly engaged in a zigzag movement, jumping between future and past. Only our breath is in the NOW. It’s always here for us. Our breath can link our body and our brain. In addition, bringing awareness to our breath, or regulating it, is a powerful instrument for managing stress. Therefore, I pay a lot of attention to breathing during our classes. Moreover, at the end of our classes, we usually perform specific breathing techniques, some of which are calming others are energizing for our bodies.
The body can heal itself but this healing energy is usually completely consumed by our negative thoughts and fellings. Doctors know that the body heals itself faster when the mind is less active. All of us also know that relaxation reduces stress. Ultimately, the reduction of stress can solve many health issues. However, it is very difficult for most of us to relax and even harder to meditate. Knowing that, during yoga classes I attempt to lead my students and help them to achieve deep relaxation. This focus is even more elevated during Yoga Nidra (you may read more about it in the forum post), which I offer at the end of most classes.
During a class, I will encourage you not to judge yourself or compare yourself with anybody else but rather to honor your efforts and your beautiful, strong body. When you judge yourself in a yoga pose, that judgement is contrary to the purpose of yoga. Therefore, do not be afraid of some yoga poses. Each pose has many adjustments for each level. I have students ranging from 8 to 80 years old. I apply a wide range of skills and techniques in order to harness the practice to its fullest potential. Yoga’s heritage is comprehensive enough that everybody can find what she or he is looking for. Despite five thousand years of evolution, many of us have still not discovered it. Yoga is an ongoing experiment. Come with me on a great journey! Come to yoga as you are!
Our Story
About your teacher
I discovered yoga in my teens, when my mother bought me one of those books for teenage girls on how to become a good person. The book talked about studying, cooking, ethics, and at the end it contained some yoga poses. I started to practice those asanas myself and achieved amazing results and flexibility. Later, life became busy and… there was no time for yoga, except for a few asanas very rarely. Then life became so busy and overwhelming that I got very sick. Struggling for my life, I realized that I needed to heal myself by myself! I started a profound research and educated myself about sport, nutrition, acupuncture, Ayurveda, etc. In my search, I came full circle back to yoga and realized the tremendous potential of this ancient
science. I realized that yoga is the best answer to my health issues caused by stress. As I experienced the amazing effects of yoga on my body and mind, I wanted to help others to deal with the ups and downs of our busy lives.
I was also studying meditation. As a scholar, I have always searched deeply to try and find a wide range of sources and techniques. Thus, for instance, I was trained in Transcendental Meditation (TM). Famously, as many of you know, even the Beatles became involved with TM after they met the famous TM guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1967. Later, they travel to India in order to learn the technique. However, I am also aware how hard it is for the Western mind to meditate. Yoga Nidra offers a very powerful solution and, therefore, as I mention, I offer Yoga Nidra on a regular basis to my students.
In my search, I seriously explored Kundalini Yoga as well as contemporary Vinyasa Flow, Ying Yoga and other schools. I was looking for the best school and found it. For a few months, I lived at the Satchidananda Ashram in order to learn as much as possible and receive my teaching diplomas. During my studies at the Ashram, my teacher gave me a Sanskrit name—Vidya. Wikipedia states that: “The meaning: Vidya or vidyā (Sanskrit: विद्या) primarily means science, learning, philosophy, knowledge, and scholarship, knowledge… Its root is vid (Sanskrit: विद्), which means "to reason upon", knower, finding, knowing, acquiring or understanding. Vidya figures prominently in all texts pertaining to Indian philosophy – to mean science, learning, knowledge and scholarship; most importantly, it refers to valid knowledge which cannot be contradicted and true knowledge which is the knowledge of the self intuitively gained. Vidya is not mere intellectual knowledge, for the Vedas demand understanding.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidya_(philosophy)
I strongly feel that I can help many people and that is my main motivation.
Svit of Yoga
Svit, this word (or root) has variety of meanings in various linguistic traditions. In Sanskrit, it means: light, sun rise, white, questioning, be bright, shine; in my native Ukrainian, it means: the world, light, sunrise, etc. As Professor Grant L. Voth indicates, “Indo-Aryan people came into the Indus River Valley around 15 B.C.E. These people were part of the larger Indo-European language group, which includes, of course, Greek, and Latin and German as well as Sanskrit, with the entire family perhaps having its origin, as linguists tell us, in southern Russia somewhere.” As you all know, southern Russia in all history books refers to Ukraine which partially was a portion of the Russian Empire for some time.
https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/shvit
Classes and Membership
Most of the classes due to Covid-19 are on zoom.
Please contact me and I will send you the links!
Classes on zoom cost €10 for each 75-90 minute class
Classes on zoom cost €5 for each 30-45 minute class
Classes in the studio cost €15 for each 75 minute class
On Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, classes are at 8 am.
On Tuesday and Thursday, classes are at 7:30 am.
I also offer short 30-45 min classes at 8:30 pm each day but you have to register 24 hours in advance.
You are welcome to share any of the zoom classes with anybody/everybody in your family (but nobody outside of your family please) without extra payment. If you are taking classes randomly, you have to count your classes yourself and pay at the end of each month. I will not count individual classes. My job is to offer you classes. It is your karma to express gratitude. We humans are funny creatures: when you do not pay for something, we do not value it or at least we value it less. Thus, paying the fee in advance will stimulate you to join the classes I offer more often and ultimately take better care about yourself. If you want to harmonize and balance the body-mind relationship, to improve your health and bring balance to your life and learn just to be happy without any reason, to fully enjoy every moment of this life, then you need to make a commitment. You need to commit some time, discipline and effort. In order to help you with such efforts,I have offered you so-called membership, or monthly option.
For €100 per month and you can take all of the classes that I offer. I offer 5-6 classes every week. When you have monthly rate, in addition, you can visit my studio and have classes in person on designated days. When you choose a monthly membership, please make payment by the 5th day of each month.
Important:
For those who wish to try a class before deciding to join my classes or take a membership, the first class is free.
Group zoom classes for school/university students are free.
All benefits I will donate to people in need!
"Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without"
Buddha
