Meet Nicole Shields, Nicole teaches traditional Hatha Yoga at Wellness Centre Port Stephens every Friday at 6:30am, 9:30am and 6pm and Guided Meditation every Wednesday at 6pm.
Hatha Yoga uses all of who we are – physically, mentally, emotionally – our most subtle & elusive inner nature – as the raw material for learning, seeing & integrating our entire being, opening us to our fullest imagination, intelligence, enthusiasm, energy, & awareness of spiritual life.
The term hatha derives from ha, meaning “sun” & tha, meaning “moon”, symbolizing life force & consciousness. To experience being fully alive & conscious, these opportunities come into one, a seamless harmony of being.
The problem is that we tend to get stuck in our mind, our body, our heart. Hatha Yoga offers a way to experience this integration along a path involving very specific practices that purify the body, calm the mind, & open the heart.
I offer safe & nurturing classes where students are encouraged to explore & experience the connection of the mind, body & spirit through yoga postures & where just breathing becomes a profound tool of awareness..
My classes are suited to everybody as it is my belief that Yoga is a journey which will be as individual as you are! Everybody is welcome & encouraged to work from where you are in this present moment. We move with ease & comfort, flowing with the breath & learning to honour ourselves on all levels of being – physically, mentally, emotionally & spiritually.
My devotion to teaching from the heart, is my gift to you…
Your Yoga mat will become the personal space that you create for yourself, where you will be guided, inspired, supported & encouraged in a nurturing way.
There’s nothing like a great yoga class to help you remember and appreciate the many blessings in your life. I often find myself on the commute home from a particularly amazing class thinking something along the lines of: “I really love breathing!” I realize that this probably seems ridiculous to someone who hasn’t experienced this feeling, but I am incredibly grateful for those moments that I really appreciate those simple things that I usually take for granted.
Expressing that gratitude is healing–and a yoga mat is the perfect place to reflect on and express those feelings. Gratitude is the sweetest of all the practices for living the dharma in daily life and the most easily cultivated, requiring the least sacrifice for what is gained in return. It is a very powerful form of mindfulness practice.
Practicing mindfulness of gratitude consistently leads to a direct experience of being connected to life and the realization that there is a larger context in which your personal story is unfolding. Being relieved of the endless wants and worries of your life’s drama, even temporarily, is liberating. Cultivating thankfulness for being part of life blossoms into a feeling of being blessed, not in the sense of winning the lottery, but in a more refined appreciation for the interdependent nature of life. It also elicits feelings of generosity, which create further joy. Gratitude can soften a heart that has become too guarded, and it builds the capacity for forgiveness, which creates the clarity of mind that is ideal for spiritual development.
The practice of gratitude is not in any way a denial of life’s difficulties. We live in troubling times, and no doubt you’ve experienced many challenges, uncertainties, and disappointments in your own life. Rather, gratitude practice is useful because it turns the mind in such a way that it enables you to live into life. Having access to the joy and wonderment of life is the antidote to feelings of scarcity and loss. It allows you to meet life’s difficulties with an open heart. The understanding you gain from practicing gratitude frees you from being lost or identified with either the negative or the positive aspects of life, letting you simply meet life in each moment as it rises.
As part of the beauty of yoga, meditation is the seed that can always immediately blossom into the thousand-petal lotus flower of happiness, wellness & fullness as an awakened human being. It is both the ultimate form of yoga practice & an integral part of the entire path of discovering, loving, healing & transforming the totality of one’s being. All the various paths of practice lead to meditation becoming a deeper yet easier method of feeling whole within one’s self & connected as part of the whole of the universe.
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. It is an appreciation of the present, a kind of ‘grooving’ with the eternal now, & it brings us into a state of peace where we can understand that the point of life, the place where it is at, is simply here & now.
Namaste & blessings, Nicole
