Yahoola's teacher and philosophy
My name is Martha Dickerson; I am an experienced and enthusiastic 500RYT with grown children, and a spoiled fur baby named Ruby plus some grands. I found my path to yoga after moving to Dahlonega while still working in the corporate world. When I retired, teaching was my next step in sharing yoga to help us understand our body, mind and spirit connections.
I have and continue to work with people of all ages and stages in life. With movement we can age with joy and abilities while having the freedom to Thrive in our daily life on and off the mat. Beginners become some of the most committed because they feel the changes after a few classes. I do believe everyone can benefit and enjoy having a yoga practice in their life.
It is never too late you are never too old or too stiff to practice Yoga.
When someone tells me “I can’t touch my toes that is why I don’t go to a class”. I tell them “Just bend your knees”. We have options in all the asanas to help everyone access the pose.
I love to teach a mix of Vinyassa flows and Hatha Yoga I help you understand the connections with breath and movement to being present in the moment. This is what influences and inspires my classes.
Yoga is always a practice don’t take it so seriously!!
sustainable, accessible for all age groups for Every-Body combines movement through a series of Asanas (postures) and Pranayama (breathing) experiencing a sense of fluid physical motion. Ranging from a gentle therapeutic pace to a mildly vigorous practice. You will be challenged to go to your edge, always with plenty of modification choices for your body. The focus turns to engaging your strength and concentration through controlled movements with your postures and breath. Together we will build core strength; increase metabolic processes; and improve flexibility with mindful movement. Yoga helps you maintain strength and stamina to pursue daily functionality with your body, mind and spirit. You will feel more at ease with movement.
"Empower Your Body and Light Up Your Brain"
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Mindful Yoga Flow
This class is designed for the new student, yet experienced students may attend to reinforce the basics or want a slower paced, less strenuous class with plenty of modifications. Mindful Yoga Flow is slower paced than an all-levels class, attention is placed on alignment, breath work, coordination and balance. Revitalize your body, light up your brain, relax your mind, reduce stress. You will experience slow, gentle standing flows and floor asanas (poses) to increase your strength and flexibility and improve breath capacity. Yoga is for Every Body! Learn the foundations of yoga so you can begin to experience its transformational effects in a supportive environment.
Why Practice Yoga?
Here are some of the possible benefits you may experience by having a regular Yoga practice and the impact. Yoga is an integrated practice to help expand and create awareness in your mind, body and spirit! Yoga helps the internal body stay in a steady state, when the external environment is good, bad or ugly.
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Practicing Yoga with mindful movement and holding postures for several breaths, builds strength, flexibility, energize concentration, develop muscle tone and improve metabolism.
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In as little as 90 seconds of deep diaphragmatic breathing, you can initiate your parasympathetic nervous system, which shuts down the stress response by lowering cortisol (stress hormone), blood pressure and heart rate while increasing oxytocin and endorphins (happy hormones). Yoga helps the sympathetic nervous system to settle down.
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What is the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system? The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for intense physical activity and is often referred to as the fight-or-flight response. The parasympathetic nervous system has almost the exact opposite effect and relaxes the body and inhibits or slows many high energy functions sometimes referred to as the rest and digest response.
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A daily Yoga practice can influence and rejuvenate your skin. Many Yoga postures rejuvenate and revitalize the body which in turn firm and tighten the skin. Mindful movements and meditation help relax your body and reduce stress.
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Devoted yogis will tell you that Yoga is not only the path to enlightenment but also happiness. Numerous studies support this claim, pointing to yoga as a general practice for quelling stress, easing anxiety and elevating mood.
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Brain power – Our brain takes up 30% of caloric content, the brain has to be efficient with all the autonomic functions it handles without us even having to think. What and awesome machine we have in our body! Autonomic functions (survival functions) are managed by the brain stem, 95% of what our brain does is below the level of consciousness.
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Yoga practice brings our unconscious mind to the conscious level to help us become aware to make decisions without practicing habits created since birth because we just do what we do. We become more aware of our mind, body and spirit causing us to be more open to change in positive ways.
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Taking over our autonomic breathing in Yoga we breathe deeper and exhale longer affecting the health of our lungs in turn affecting the health of our body.
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Yoga practice can help optimize the functions of the hindbrain, improves balance, coordination, muscular strength, respiratory, and cardiovascular function, promotes addiction recovery and improves sleep.
(C. Woodyard 2011)
Empower Your Body * Light Up Your Brain
The Meaning Behind "Yahoola"
Yahoola (Valley)
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It is from the Cherokee word ”Yahula-i” or “place of Yahula”, a Cherokee trader who was taken away by the Nunne-hi or spirit people.
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Nûñnë’hï
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The Nunnehi are a race of immortal spirit people in Cherokee mythology. In the Cherokee language, Nunnehi literally means “The People Who Live Anywhere”, but it is often translated into English as “The People Who Live Forever”, or simply “The Immortals”. The Cherokee believed the Nunnehi to be a type of supernatural human being, completely distinct from ghosts and nature spirits, as well as from gods. In this sense, the Nunnehi (along with the Yunwi Tsunsdi, or “Little People” in the Cherokee language) are the Cherokee equivalent of fairies in traditional European folklore. The belief in fairy-like beings is universal among all races, including all American Indian tribes.
According to Cherokee folklore, the Nunnehi had many underground townhouses throughout the southern Appalachian Mountains, and they were particularly fond of high mountain peaks where no timber ever grew. Hunters would often hear the Nunnehi in the mountains, singing and dancing and beating drums, but when they would go toward the sound, it would shift about and suddenly seem to be coming from behind them or from some other direction, so that the person hearing the sound would never be able to find where it was coming from.