Want a gentle way to improve your strength and flexibility? Slow flow yoga could be the answer you need. This mindful practice combines deep breathing with relaxed postures and remains available to yoga newcomers.

Slow flow yoga shares elements with traditional Vinyasa and Hatha yoga but includes fewer transitions and longer pose holds. The practice helps you release tension and arranges your body properly to create a stronger mind-body connection. Your immune system gets stronger with regular practice. It also improves digestion and reduces stress by lowering cortisol levels in your body.

Vinyasa supports moving into and out of the yoga poses through connection with muscular breathing mechanisms. An inhalation naturally expands the belly and ribs and, with proper alignment, will lengthen the spine and encourage expansion. An exhalation naturally contracts the abdomen and torso and encourages retraction. In general, you inhale when you move into a pose, move against gravity, create upward movements, or arch the spine. You exhale as you move out of a posture, move with gravity, create downward movements, or round the spine. We will transition through various poses and asanas allowing our breath to be our guide.

Vinyasa is a style of yoga characterized by stringing postures together so that you move from one to another, seamlessly, using breath.  Commonly referred to as “flow” yoga, it is sometimes confused with “power yoga“.

Vinyasa classes offer a variety of postures and no two classes are ever alike.  The opposite would be “fixed forms” such as Bikram Yoga, which features the same 26 postures in every class, or Ashtanga which has the same sequence every time.

The variable nature of Vinyasa Yoga helps to develop a more balanced body as well as prevent repetitive motion injuries that can happen if you are always doing the same thing every day.

Restorative yoga is designed to give you a period of complete mental and physical relaxation. Rather than move quickly from one pose to the next (like your traditional vinyasa flow) or through a series of repetitive motions (like sun salutations), restorative yoga sessions are built around fewer yoga poses that you hold for five to 10 minutes at a time or longer. The goal is to deepen your stretch, clear your mind and sink into your body while you focus on your breath.