Dr. Rob to Offer Day Retreat in Syracuse on February 5th, 2012

The Art of Living with Intent Retreat: Expansion & Love
Sunday, Feb. 5th, 1-6pm
195 Intrepid Lane, CNY Healing Arts Center
$40 per person includes book and dinner
Pre-registration necessary, call 315.671.5755

Dr. Rob Kiltz, Author, Fertility Doctor and Motivational Speaker, is excited to offer his next day retreat. Joining him will be Sheila Applegate, Clinical Therapist, Motivational Presenter, Author and Radio Host, and Teresa Huggins, MS, Inspirational Speaker, Author, and Leadership Facilitator. February’s retreat focus will be on love, expansion, and cultivating a life of being open to possibilities. Each attendee will get a copy of Dr. Rob’s new book, The Art of Living with Intent: 60 Days of Intentions and Inspirations.

Beginner Yoga Workshop Series starting January 2012 in Syracuse

It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the holidays. Our bodies and brains can become out of sync and that’s when stress creeps in. Yoga allows us to hit the reset button and restore harmony to our systems through the breath/body connection. This week, give yourself the gift of yoga and slow down your body so your mind can catch up. Stop in for a class with us – check out the online calendar for all locations.

In Syracuse starting in January we have an amazing workshop series to offer, call today to sign up and it includes unlimited classes during the month of January – 315.671.5755.

Dates: Sundays – January 8th, 15th, 22nd & 29th – 1:00-3:00pm – cost $90
This workshop is designed for people looking to begin a yoga practice or get a great refresher for an existing practice. It includes four two hour classes where we’ll lay down a solid foundation to enhance your yogic experience. History of yoga, Yogic breath work, postures, proper alignment and health benefits will be broken down and discussed and put into practical application in a safe and supportive environment. Workshop taught By Trish Gallen, RYT yoga instructor and certified personal trainer, who trained at the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, CA.

Cost is $90 for the four week course and includes the four two hour classes as well as unlimited yoga classes during the month of January 2012 at CNY Healing Arts. Space is limited. Call 315-671-5755.

This is a great gift idea for someone interested in starting yoga!!! The holidays are coming soon!! Also- GREAT for runners and athletes to add to the fitness routine. ALL levels are welcome- Yoga is for everybody! Start off 2012 with a healthy step. Yoga is happiness.

New Year’s Day Dynamic Vinyasa Class in Syracuse

Join Trish Gallen on New Year’s Day for a 2 Hour Dynamic Vinyasa Class. Start the first day of 2012 on the right foot with a juicy yoga practice. There will be plenty of sun salutations and spinal twists to cleanse, detoxify and rejuvenate your body and mind. Trish always hand picks her playlist for every yoga class so you can be sure there will be vibrant music and best of all, great company!!

New Year’s Day Vinyasa Yoga Class
Sunday, January 1, 2012 – 11:00am-1:00pm
191 Intrepid Lane, Syracuse, NY
Fee is $15 and you must pre-pay by Friday Dec. 30th to attend this special class. Call 315.671.5755 to register and ensure your spot, spaces will fill up fast!

New Year’s Eve Yoga & Kirtan Celebration – Syracuse, NY

New Year’s Yoga Kirtan Celebration
December 31st, 1:30-4pm $25/person
CNY Healing Arts Center at 195 Intrepid Lane, Syracuse, NY
Call 315.671.5755 to RSVP – space is limited so sign up soon!

Join us for this special New Year’s Eve event with Cynthia Powers-Broccoli, yoga instructor, and the incredible Kirtan band, The Now, with Mark Nanni and David DeSiro. This promises to be a powerful afternoon of giving thanks and praise through sacred chanting and yoga!  Welcome 2012 in with grace and gratitude at this amazing live music workshop! It’s not to be missed! Includes light refreshments.

About Cynthia:
A 1993 graduate of Boston College, Cynthia worked for many years in New York City, Los Angeles, and London as an executive recruiter for the Financial Services Industry. Seeking balance amid a stressful career, Cynthia became a student of Yoga seventeen years ago– and her passion ignited. Yoga transformed her life. She became a 200-Hour Certified Yoga Instructor in 2005 in order to help others reconnect to their inner Guru through the healing benefits of yoga. Cynthia believes that the spiritual and sacred aspects of yoga should be honored in every yoga class.  Her classes are infused with the energy and vibration of her many Gurus – Yogi Bhajan, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, David Life, and Sharron Gannon – to name a few. She teaches Yoga for Fertility, Couples Yoga, and Vinyasa Flow at CNY Healing Arts Center. She loves incorporating a mix of ancient Sanskrit chants and spiritually uplifting songs with modern, soulful music for a dynamic and fun flow class.

About Kirtan:
Kirtan is a musical call and response where the “band” calls and the “audience” responds. In reality, however, we are all the “band” and the “audience” is the Divine. We chant to the different forms of the Divine, mostly in Sanskrit. Don’t worry if you’ve never been to a Kirtan or don’t know Sanskrit: you can learn the music and the words on the spot, and although everyone is encouraged to sing, you can also feel free to dance, clap, or even just quietly meditate upon the music and the occurrence of the vibration of the mantras. Kirtan is a form of Bhakti (devotional) Yoga.

Here are a few words on chanting from a Thanksgiving message from Sai Maa Laxmi Devi: “Chanting is like vitamins or a tonic—it nurtures and nourishes our inner being, our subtle being. As when we eat food to nourish our whole body, when we chant we please the Atma. We get intoxicated by chanting our Beloved’s name. Chanting rejuvenates the whole being. Chanting brings the mind to the heart and the heart to the mind. Chanting with devotion is pure bhakti: when we get lost in the chant, our devotion has increased to a point where we become the name we are chanting.”

CNY Healing Arts Yoga in Syracuse, Rochester and Latham, NY

Featured Tonic of the Month for October: Female Tonic

Female Tonic has a number of uses but overall it is a great hormone enhancer.  Some of its uses include fertility enhancing, painful or irregular periods, PCOS, and menopausal symptoms.  This tonic contains herbs that help to warm the reproductive organs and has a mild anti-spasmodic action on uterine muscles.   It also acts as a uterine cleanser which helps to remove incompletely flushed menstrual fluids from month to month.  One of the herbs contained in this tonic, Mexican Wild Yam, is one of the best herbs to help regulate the menstrual cycle because it contains the steroid diosgenin.  This steroid is 75% similar to the hormone molecules of estrogen and progesterone.  These in turn work to supply the ovaries with required hormones.  Additionally, the Mexican Wild Yam helps to alleviate severe hormonal fluctuations of menopause and PMS.

There are a number of contraindications with this tonic so it is very important that you speak with a Maya Abdominal Therapy practitioner so they can review each of these with you.  The Female Tonic should not be used in conjunction with any Chinese herbs, birth control, IVF related hormones, hormone replacement therapy, pregnancy or breast feeding.

Female Tonic is our featured tonic and is 10% off during the month of October. Please feel free to contact any Maya Abdominal Therapy practitioners at any of our CNY Healing Arts locations for further information.  Click here for contact information at our Syracuse, Rochester and Latham locations.

Our Tonics are now available online here.

Does Acupuncture Hurt?

At our CNY Healing Arts Centers in Syracuse, Rochester and Albany, NY we perform acupuncture to treat many different health issues from infertility, sinus pressure, smoking cessation, migraines, arthritis and more. Clients sometimes come to us with different levels of anxiety regarding the needles used during acupuncture. Some have a lifelong fear of needles while others are just nervous about whether it will hurt.

Now that’s a logical fear, right? Will the needles hurt? We are taking a needle and inserting it into your skin in many different locations. Seems logical that it may hurt. The truth is most people who have had acupuncture describe it as virtually painless or far less painful than, for example, plucking out a hair. The sensations that follow needle insertion can range from nothing at all, to mild tingling, to slight numbness/achiness, to electrical pulsations in areas distant from the site of insertion. These subside once the needles are removed.

The size of the needle is part of the reason that some people think the acupuncture treatment will hurt. Most people who are having a treatment for the first time don’t realize how small the needles actually are. The needles used for acupuncture are much smaller than the standard hypodermic needle. They don’t draw blood and are solid, not hollow.

We want to dissuade your fear of acupuncture and the needles that are used. Please don’t hesitate to call us and ask for more information. We have several acupuncturists waiting to assist you at all of our locations. We hope you will allow us to aide you on your path to better health and wellness by utilizing acupuncture.

Contact us today!

Syracuse – 315.671.5755

Rochester – 585.244.1280 ext 2

Albany – 518.724.5750

The Health Benefits of the Yoga Pose Pranamasana

Pranam means salutation and asana is a posture. Pranamasana is the posture of prayer or salutation. It is also the starting and finishing pose of the asana series Surya Namaskara or Sun Salutation. This pose is one of those wonderfully simple ones that can be practiced easily at any place and moment in time. It is very useful for getting you back to center when you feel a little out of balance or just in need of some extra inner nourishment. This pose is also an ideal one for prayers and chanting mantras.

How to get into the pose:

Stand straight with your feet together focusing on the perfection of the pose and the spine being aligned and your posture being erect. Join the palms in the center of your chest and inhale. Take a moment to go inward, share a mantra or prayer with yourself and be grateful. Then exhale and release while pushing your hands down, straightening and lowering the arms until the elbows touch the sides of your body. You may keep your eyes closed or stare straight ahead.

The Benefits of Pranamasana:

This asana gives balance to your body and eases your nervous system and body. Anyone who can stand erect can practice this asana without any precautions or guidance.

As you continue to cultivate a yoga practice remember that what you are doing right now is perfect and there is no wrong way to go about it. Your intent for working on better health and wellness through a yoga practice is what brought you here at this very moment. Please allow us to assist you by attending a yoga class at one of our Centers or a yoga workshop. Visit the calendar to see all of the upcoming opportunities.

Surya Namaskara (Sun Salutation)

Surya Namaskara, or Sun Salutation as it is known in English, is a sequence of yoga asanas that has origins in the worship of Surya, the Hindu solar deity. Many prefer to perform this series at sunrise, which is considered to be the most spiritually favorable time of day.

To perform this sequence you will link together twelve asanas in a dynamically performed series. These asanas are ordered so that they alternately stretch the spine backwards and forwards. A full round of Surya namaskara is considered to be two sets of the twelve poses with a change in the second set to moving the opposite leg first through the series.

Surya Namaskara like most yogasanas is best performed on an empty stomach so it’s best to have a gap of at least 2 hours after eating before beginning. Breathing is synchronized with the asanas as you can see referenced below. There are a total of 8 different postures in the sequence of 12 posture changes of Surya namaskara with some asanas being repeated twice in the same cycle. It is said that by performing Sun Salutation day by day your age, conscious, strength, essence of humanity and glow would never fade away.

• Exhale – Pranamasana
• Inhale – Hasta Uttanasana
• Exhale – Hastapaadasana
• Inhale – Aekpaadprasarnaasana
• Exhale – Dandasana
• Suspend breath – Ashtanga Namaskara
• Inhale – Bhujangasana
• Exhale – Adho Mukha Svanasana
• Inhale – Ashwa Sanchalanasana
• Exhale – Uttanasana
• Inhale – Hasta Uttansana
• Exhale – Pranamasana

Below is a video for you to watch if you would like to see an example of the series and practice on your own. Of course we would also love for you to join us for a yoga class at one of our CNY Healing Arts Centers and enjoy this series together.

Off the Mat: Yoga is a Lifestyle

At CNY Healing Arts Centers in Syracuse, Rochester and Albany, NY we offer many different opportunities for participating in a yoga class or workshop. Check out our current yoga schedule here. As you practice yoga and learn more about it you will see that it doesn’t take place in the studio only. Yoga is a lifestyle and it can enrich your life once you learn to integrate it into your life and practice off the mat.

Below are just a few ways you can integrate yoga in your life and begin to practice off the mat. You may find you have already been doing some of these, keep up the good work!

Live in the now, be present.

Live in the present, in the day-to-day. This is a fundamental lesson we re-learn every time we place our bare feet on a yoga mat. It is a useful way to practice living off the mat as well. Practice resisting the thoughts and temptations that may tempt you out of the present moment.

Spiritual growth through the body and mind.

The word yoga means “union” in Sanskrit, the language of ancient India where yoga originated. We can think of the union occurring between the mind, body and spirit. Yoga truly is a unique union of physical practice, mental focus, stamina, flexibility, relaxation and above all else, a healthy balance between mind, body and spirit. As we deepen our practice and become more aware of our mind and body we begin to open up spiritually and are more receptive to what the Universe offers.

Focus on the breath.

When practicing yoga, remaining in the present moment can be a constant challenge. The breath is always with us; by focusing on this rhythm we can stay anchored in the moment. Focusing on the breath is useful off the mat as well as on. Day to day we encounter many different things that impact our stress levels, and sometimes coming back to the breath can be the most effective tool to remain balanced.

Focusing on the breath offers the opportunity to learn about ourselves and grow. When pull ourselves back to the breath, we can see where our mind tends to wander and are often confronted with our repetitive thought patterns. Negative thoughts can be seen and worked with after their recognition. Through yoga we unite physical movement to the breath and, in effect, draw our focus inward.

There are many other ways to practice yoga off the mat. How do you do it?