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Shaili Shafai
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BIOGRAPHY:
I am a Level 3 Iyengar Yoga teacher from Iran and I've been living in Cambridge in the UK since 2014.
My journey with Iyengar yoga started at age ten, in 1994 where I joined the children’s classes of the Iyengar Center of Tehran. As a child I also went to the remedial classes for help with my legs since I was born with hip dysplasia. Ever since, yoga has been a source of strength and inspiration in my life, and the global community of Iyengar yoga practitioners feels like my second family.
Since 2005 I have had the chance to make several visits to the RIMYI Centre in Pune, where I experienced the light of Guruji, B.K.S. Iyengar and his family. I earned my first teaching certificate from my beloved teacher Faeq Biria in 2007 in France and my most recent certificate of Senior 1 from the Iyengar Yoga Association of the UK in 2018. I am an enthusiastic student first and a passionate teacher second, and the challenges of my own practice have made me forever grateful for the beauty, creativity and depth of Guruji’s yoga.
List of Shaili’s Sessions
Title:
Learning through ups and downs
Type:
Sat Brahma Middling
Length:
2.0 hour(s)
Description:
In our journey as a SÄdhaka, we go through many ups and downs. Often it is the downs that provide the most valuable opportunities to learn. These are opportunities we sometimes miss.
Reframing our Äsana practice as a microcosm of the challenges with which life presents us, we can try to realize the value of such unwanted emotions or actions.
In this session, we will work together to identify those moments, on the mat, where a misalignment here or an unwanted movement there may become the basis for correction and a more grounded practice … one that will support and nourish us in new and unexpected ways.
Notes:
What you will need to take part in this Session:
- A sticky mat
- 2 solid bricks
- 1 belt
- 1 chair
- 2 blankets
- An open mind!
I will be unable to accommodate, in this session, specialised adjustments for pregnant ladies; and/or those with chronic injuries.
Title:
Type:
Sat Brahma Middling
Length:
1.5 hour(s)
Description:
The Patañjali Yoga Sutras say “heyaṁ duḥkham anÄgatamâ€, which Guruji Iyengar translates as: "The pains which are yet to come can be and are to be avoided.â€
Ä€sana, done today, is a way of investing in our response undertaken tomorrow. Our practice becomes a method of avoiding the dualities.
We may, for example, dislike virabadrasana III; or perhaps our bete noir is chatturanga dandasana. But that dislike is surely a taster for some bigger dislikes. It in fact gives us an opportunity to master our emotinal response at its very source. We can feel, and also watch, the potential stresses and negative emotions wanting to build up; and then gradually make them disperse as we focus on what we really want, which is balance, poise, and equanimity.
We can therefore learn a valuable skill we can also apply in the future. We can look at the suffering that arises from the thought of some future experience and understand that its reality will not be nearly so bad if we apply to it the skill we are learning in the present. Our daily practice is therefore our own private little internal piggy bank into which we can put our metaphorical savings. Each moment, and every one of our mindful actions, is then an investment that we can learn to cherish and cultivate. It is our positive account from which we can draw when hardship comes. And we not only collect the fruits of our efforts … we automatically re-invest … with extra interest accruing,
Notes:
What you will need to take part in this Session:
- A sticky mat
- 2 solid bricks
- 1 belt
- 1 chair
- 2 blankets
- An open mind!
I will be unable to accommodate, in this session, specialised adjustments for pregnant ladies; and/or those with chronic injuries.
