Weekly Class Theme: Yin Yoga for Abundance

By Alia CarangeloYin YogaNo Comments

In a world that often tells us to chase, accumulate, and strive, Yin Yoga invites us to pause, soften, and receive. This week’s theme centers on abundance — not as something to grasp, but as a natural state of being that becomes clear when we quiet the noise and listen inwardly.

Abundance isn’t only about material wealth; it’s the inner richness that arises when we feel spacious, supported, and connected. It’s the fullness that comes when we allow life to flow without forcing. In Yin Yoga, we practice abundance by slowing down, creating physical space, and trusting that what we need will meet us in the stillness.

Below, you’ll find the poses featured in this week’s class sequence along with a dharma talk you can offer during the practice.

Dharma Talk: “Opening to the Flow of Abundance”

“As we settle into today’s practice, take a moment to notice the breath moving effortlessly in and out. The breath is one of our greatest teachers of abundance — always arriving, always renewing, without us having to earn it or fight for it.

Abundance isn’t something we chase. It’s something we uncover. It’s already here, beneath the layers of tension, fear, scarcity, and overexerting. When we soften, we make space. When we make space, we receive.

In Yin, we’re asked to release striving. The stillness becomes a form of trust — trust that the body knows how to open in its own time; trust that we don’t have to push to be worthy of growth; trust that life is generous when we stop gripping.

As you move through each pose today, feel where you might be holding on — physically or energetically — and gently ask, ‘What could I soften? What could I open to?’

Abundance shows up when we align ourselves with flow, not force. Today, let the breath, the ground, and your own intuitive awareness guide you back into the spaciousness that is already within you. When we create room inside, life fills it with exactly what we need.”

Yin Yoga Sequence for Abundance

1. Seated Side Stretch (3–4 minutes each side)

Theme tie-in: Abundance begins with expansion — in body, breath, and perspective.

Invite students to stretch laterally through the ribs and intercostals, creating more room for the breath. Encourage them to imagine widening into possibility, allowing the body to feel spacious and receptive.

Cue: “Breathe into the length of your side body. Picture yourself expanding beyond old limitations.”

2. Child’s Pose (3–5 minutes)

Theme tie-in: A posture of surrender that teaches us abundance flows when we release the weight we carry.

Child’s Pose provides a sense of grounding, safety, and return to self. It softens the nervous system and offers a moment to reconnect with inner knowing.

Cue: “Let the earth support you. Let go of the need to hold everything together.”

3. Puppy Pose (3–4 minutes)

Theme tie-in: Opening the heart to receive.

This gentle, heart-opening shape invites vulnerability and trust. Students can imagine creating space for more compassion, generosity, and emotional abundance.

Cue: “Let the chest melt down. Soften into trust — in yourself and in life.”

4. Caterpillar Pose (4–6 minutes)

Theme tie-in: Abundance sometimes comes through slowing down, folding inward, and listening deeply.

Caterpillar lightly compresses the front body and offers a meditative inward journey. Remind students that introspection is fertile ground for clarity and renewal.

Cue: “As you fold, imagine dropping old scarcity stories and making room for new beliefs.”

5. Reclined Knee-to-Chest (2–3 minutes each side)

Theme tie-in: The abundance of simple nurturing.

This pose massages the organs, eases the low back, and supports emotional digestion. It’s a moment for gentle self-holding and self-compassion.

Cue: “Draw the knee toward the heart as if welcoming yourself home.”

6. Legs Up the Wall (5–8 minutes)

Theme tie-in: Receiving without effort.

This posture reverses stagnation and symbolizes the natural ease of abundance flowing toward you. Students can rest in the feeling of allowing.

Cue: “Let the body absorb this ease. Abundance arrives when we give ourselves permission to rest.”

Closing Reflection

As your students come out of the final pose, invite a moment of gratitude for all the ways abundance already exists in their lives — breath, body, community, nature, creativity, kindness, and connection.

“Remember: You don’t create abundance. You recognize it.”

December 9, 2025

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Citta

By Julie PasqualYoga PhilosophyNo Comments

One of my favorite teachers tells this story:

There is a shy, young man who finds a woman he knows extremely attractive. For months he has endeavored to work up the courage to ask her out, and finally… he does! To his great amazement, she says YES! The days leading up to the date, his thoughts are only on her. What her smile will look like, the touch of her hand in his. He walks about in a happy cloud of thoughts for days. The big day arrives. She looks as beautiful as he had imagined. They go to the movies, the conversation is flowing, and in his mind, he is envisioning their life together. Just before the movie starts, he realizes he had not gotten them popcorn. Excusing himself, he walks to the lobby. By the time he gets back, the lights are out, and the trailers have begun. His heart is so full of happiness, but he is still feeling quite shy and feels a little foolish for forgetting the popcorn. He does not look at her as he sits down, placing the popcorn between them. The movie starts – it’s a RomCom – perfect for a first date, he thinks. His mind is more on her than the film. He sees the hero of the movie hold the heroine’s hand and he does the same for his date, still too shy to look at her. As the movie goes on, he follows the cues of the actor on the screen, and he eventually puts his arm around his date! His heart is beating so fast, every cell in his body is in pure bliss. At long last, he feels brave enough to look at her, and kiss her, as the two characters are doing on the screen. But suddenly, he turns – WHAAAAAAAT???? He realized that he sat down in the wrong seat!!! This is not the woman he came with – in fact, it is a person that he finds totally revolting. All the joy he had been feeling is gone, and he scurries away.

Poor guy! Wonder what his real date had been thinking? Let’s look at this. One moment, he was in ecstasy, the next, sick to his stomach. What had changed? It was still a hand that he been touching, a shoulder he had caressed. But now everything he had been experiencing had changed. Why? Because it wasn’t the physical sensation that brought him joy – it was his thoughts, his perceptions – and the place where we house all our thoughts, and actually experience our lives is the Mind. In Sanskrit the word for it is Citta.

What does Citta mean?

While sometimes the word Citta can be used to refer to thoughts, it is mostly used to speak on the producer of the thoughts, the very mind itself. As we see in the story above, it is really the mind where we experience things. Two people can have the exact same external realities, but they can see them completely differently depending on how it is playing out in their minds.

The mind, says the Bhagavad Gita, can be our worst enemy, because of it’s constant creating of thoughts that block what we really are – a soul, from seeing itself. Think of the mind like dirt on eyeglasses, the poor soul is trying to peek at itself in the mirror, but the lens of the mind is blocking it. In a way, you can’t blame the mind – it’s not personal, it’s just doing it’s job, which is to think. Every time a soul takes birth in a body, it gets this computer-like device called a Citta. From this we can conclude that the goal of any path of yoga, is, in some way, to deal with the mind.

Sometimes in English we interchange the words mind and brain, but in yoga, and for this discussion, we will really separate those two things. The brain belongs to the physical – what in yogic language is called the gross (not like ew, disgusting but tangible) body. It is the organ that is located in your head, and, to me anyway, looks like cauliflower. The mind belongs to what is called the subtle body – like the Chakras (energy centers) or the Nadis (energy pathways). It is not something that you can see on an MRI, but like the soul, it is no less real, and is said to be located in the region of the brain.

The nature of the Citta

When looking at the Citta the first thing to realize is that it is not, as the expression says, “set in stone.” It’s more like a lump of clay. Just as every time a piece of pottery is in the hands of a potter, it takes a different shape, so too does the mind constantly change shape due to the things that are taken in by the senses. Instead of an artists fingers sculpting a bowl, it is seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting that mold the shape of the Citta; the instrument that literally guides our day to day experience. And the impressions that shape the mind are called Samskaras.

Just as the brain has three main parts, so does the Citta. They are:

The Manos – the lower, primitive, instinctual mind. In yogic texts, it is often referred to as “the mind”.
The Ahankara – the seat of identity. This is usually the most utilized part of the Citta. The feeling of “I am American” or “I am a woman” or “I am a doctor.” The labels we wear in life live here. This is often called “the false ego”.
The Buddhi – This is the seat of intelligence, or discernment. The place where the ability to see that one is a soul within a body, as opposed to being the body, resides. This is the part of the Citta that all the yogic practices try to get us to aspire to. For it is only from viewing the world around us from the viewpoint of the Buddhi mind, can the soul ever free itself from the illusion that it has fallen into when it takes on a body. This is most often labeled “the intelligence”.

Taming and training the Citta

Just as we are the ones that turn on and off our computers, decide what we want to download into it, how we want to set up the programs we use on it – the same can be said for our Citta. The fact that we have the ability to transform the Citta, and hence transform our lives is what yoga is actually all about. It is the thing that most of us either forget, or do not know we have the ability to do in the first place.

This awareness is the first step of something within the yogic text, The Caintanya Caritamrt called Ceto Darshan: Cleaning the mirror of the heart and mind. Is it any wonder that the concept known as Saucha (cleanliness of the body and mind) is the first principle listed in the Yoga Sutras as the way a Yogi wants to walk in the world (Niyamas)? It is the very key to wiping away the dirt which is blocking the view of the soul, which is our true identity. When we sweep away the false concepts of who we are, when we rise up from just the lowest level of thinking, when we take the time to get still and quiet, then the Citta, which has been racing around and blocking the soul from seeing itself, falls away. To quote the very famous Yoga Sutra, “Tada drastuh svarupe avasthanam” – The seer (who we really are) sees itself!

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December 8, 2025

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Samskaras

By Julie PasqualYoga PhilosophyNo Comments

A friend of mine told me this story long ago – “I was a shy kid. Not really fitting in, no friends. Then one day a group of the “cool kids” asked me to come along with them to the store. When we got there, they said we should all run in as fast as we could, grab as much candy as we could, and then run out without paying. I had never stolen anything before, but I was desperate to be part of this group. My heart was beating so fast, I thought, young as I was, I was having a heart attack. My mouth was dry. I kept seeing my parent’s face in my head – the disapproval, the anger. I felt a little sick to my stomach, but in I ran with the others.

I was the slowest one, because my guilt stopped me from going at top speed, but I made it out of the store and several blocks away without being caught. For a week I was shaking – but then, the feeling of shame went away. And, when that group asked me to come with them again, I did. My heart didn’t beat as fast, I felt less shame, I got more candy. After that, stealing in this way, wasn’t a problem for me, in fact it became a habit, that took a very long time to break.”

I remember looking at my friend, who I now could not even imagine doing anything that wasn’t righteous and wonderful, and understanding that the process of going from being afraid of being caught breaking the law, to being nonchalant about it, was demonstrating what happens when something becomes habitual behavior. We all have habits, patterns, things that we do without really even thinking about them – it just seems like they are part of us. Where do these things come from? In Yoga, we would call these patterns Samskaras, and they reside in the mind.

The malleability of the Mind and Samskaras

It’s important to note that in Yoga, when we say the Mind (Citta), we aren’t talking about the brain. The brain is the thing that looks like cauliflower between your ears, while the mind is part of the subtle body. It’s not any less real than the physical brain, but not tangible in the way, say, your frontal cortex would be. The Mind is not hard like a stone or a piece of wood – it’s more like a ball of clay – completely malleable, totally changeable. Everything we see, smell, touch, hear, feel and experience makes an impression on the Mind. Those imprints are called Samskaras. Knowing this fact lets us know that we really can change our minds. Not just “I changed my mind, and I am going to wear my blue shirt, instead of my grey one.” But, like a sculptor creates a vase out of a lump of clay, we have the ability to change the very shape of our Mind, and therefore change the very outcome of our lives – for where does everything in our lives actually stem – our Mind!

The thoughts that our mind produces are the engine to our actions. When we understand that, it spurs us to be more mindful about what we allow into our Minds. Think of all the times that you read a label before you buy a food item, or check the ingredients before you put something on your skin – can we say we are that mindful about what we allow to roll around in our Minds? Each time we think a thought, a grove is created in our Minds, and the more we think it, the deeper the Samskara gets – going from a light stroke to a deep impression.

We can think of this only in the negative connotation, but it could be thought of positively, too. What modern day science calls affirmations, is simply the acknowledgement of Samskaras. When we read that we should speak optimistically to ourselves – this is the process of creating and then deepening Samskaras that will shape our Mind to be more the way we want it to be. This is why it is said, “What you say to yourself, WILL come true!” – because if you have spent a life time making Samskaras of it being okay to steal – then guess what – that’s exactly what you are going to do.

What the Yoga Sutras say about Samskaras

In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the goal of Yoga is stated definitively as “Yoga citta vritti nirodha” – meaning that Yoga is the stopping of the turnings (or chatter) of the mind. We can think of the Samskaras as the thing that helps turn the mind (the seeds if you will) from where thought starts.

In the Yoga Sutras, we find this:

1.50 – The Samskaras born out of truth – bearing wisdom obstruct other Samskaras from emerging. Meaning, if we can create positive Samskaras, those can help us overcome the Samskaras that are not so good for us. We all have probably experience that it is easier to break a bad habit, by replacing it with a good one, as opposed to just trying to shut it down.
3.9 – The state of restraint, nirodha (the stopping of the turning of the mind) is when there is disappearance of outgoing (worldly) Samskaras and the appearance of restraining Samskaras. These emerge in the mind at the moment of restraint. Here we see how important Samskaras is to the goal of yoga! The first commentator on the Yoga Sutras – the great sage and writer, Vyasa says that the mind is made of Samskaras, and what is actually happening when we meditate is that we are not wiping away Samskaras, but rather creating Samskaras that are helpful, in that they are quieting the Mind – stopping the turnings of the Mind, so that – as the Yoga Sutra says – “Tada Drastuh Svarupe Vasthanam” – the Soul, that has been caught in the whorl of the Mind, can finally perceive itself. This is backed up by:
3.10 – The mind’s undisturbed flow occurs due to Samskaras – it is through these helpful Samskaras – that one can conquer the Mind. It is important to note that Samskaras do not evaporate – both the beneficial and the detrimental ones, remain either active, or inactive – but they are there. Another reminder that we must be careful what we put into our minds.

Creating Samskaras that are beneficial to us

I heard a speaker once say, “The subconscious mind cannot take a joke!” When we truly understand that the thoughts that we invite in, and then spend time unpacking – even if it does not turn into an outward action, is doing something to us in a very impactful way. It is digging a trench in your Mind – a Samskara. So, in our every day life, as we carefully keep harmful things out of our digestive system, and train ourselves to reach for an apple instead of a candy bar, we must do that with our Minds. This is the very heart of much of yoga philosophy.

The Yoga Sutras 2.33 says,

“Upon being harassed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate counteracting thoughts. Create a positive Samskara, and keep reminding yourself that you have the power to shape and control, the most powerful thing in your body – your Mind.”

Learn more about yoga philosophy with Julie!

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December 3, 2025

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Virabhadrasana 3 (Warrior 3) – 60 Minutes

By Alia CarangeloYogaNo Comments

Virabhadrasana 3 (Warrior 3) – 60 Minutes

Peak Pose: Warrior 3
Level: Mixed Level
Style: Hatha
Teaching Focus: Straight Legs, Extension
Props: 2 blocks, strap

Warm-up:

Reclined Hand to Foot A + B (Supta Padangusthasana) with Strap
Downward Facing Dog > Hop or step to Uttanasana > Ardha Uttanasana > Urdhva Hastasana >
Tadasana
Tadasana with fingers interlaced overhead. Switch the interlace to equally stretch the shoulders.
Urdhva Hastasana with strap on arms, strap below elbow on the upper arm.

Sun Salutations:

3 Round of sun breaths: Tadasana > Urdhva Hastasana > Uttanasana > Ardha Uttanasana > Uttanasana > Urdhva
Hastasana > Tadasana

Standing Poses:

Round 1: Triangle Pose
Round 2: Triangle Pose > Extended Side Angle
Round 3: Warrior 1

Balance/ Twist:

Tree Pose
Standing Hand to Foot at Wall

Peak Pose:

From Warrior 1 > Warrior 3 > Warrior 1

Cool Down:

Virasana with Gomukasana Arms
Locust
Supine twist
Savasana

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December 1, 2025

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Looking for “Yoga Teacher Training Near Me”? Try YogaRenew’s Hoboken Studio & Online YTT Options

By Alia CarangeloOnline Yoga, Yoga StudiosNo Comments

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