Nicole believes the practice of yoga is a process of unfolding how we arrive in each present moment and inhabit that moment with full awareness.
What we do on our yoga mat is a mirror for how we approach everyday life; the successes and struggles we encounter through asana practice in yoga provide tools for coping and growth as we move and breathe throughout our day. When we work energy through our physical bodies, we find a path to quieting our busy minds. This is one of the great powers of yoga.
Group and Personal Instruction
Practicing yoga in community is a very powerful experience for connection, transformation, and personal support. Nicole offers ongoing group flow classes on Vashon Island.
Cultivating a personal home practice is an equally powerful way to nurture and support individual growth. By sinking deeper into your own individual yoga needs, progress will occur at a rapid and satisfying pace. Nicole is also qualified and eager to give therapeutic yoga sessions for specific health needs.
Private personal and group instruction available by appointment. Contact Nicole to schedule at akashaom@gmail.com.
Vinyasa Flow Classes
Vinyasa Flow is a dynamic and graceful yoga style that links together breath, poses, and transitions between poses in a balanced and purposeful way. Vinyasa has roots in the Ashtanga Yoga system. However, this newer yoga style combines tradition with innovation to render a practice which helps the student cultivate both strength and flexibility.
Vinyasa Flow Class Schedule
Mondays, 6:10-7:25 pm, Level 2
Saturdays, 9-10:30 am, Level 2/3
Tuesdays, 10:30-11:45 am, Level 1
Thursdays, 6:45-8 pm, Level 2
Yin Yoga Workshops
Yin Yoga is a quiet practice targeting the less flexible connective tissues of the body. Using longer holds with many seated and reclined poses, the less elastic parts of the body will begin to shift and lengthen. In addition, the practitioner's focus settles inward. It is a wonderful yoga style for decompression and reflection. All levels.
All Yin Yoga Workshops are held at Island Yoga Center. Check IYC website for current Yin Yoga workshop schedule offerings.
Women's Yoga Workshops
Prenatal, Postnatal and Fertility Yoga style workshops are offered at the Vashon Play Space and Island Yoga Center. Please refer to the VPS website and IYC website for times.
Prenatal Yoga
Pregnancy is a great time for moms-to-be to connect with their ever-changing bodies. In prenatal yoga, we explore postures and movements that not only feel awesome during pregnancy, but also prepare the body for strength and surrender in birth.
Postnatal Yoga
Postnatal Yoga is a practice where new moms come to yoga with their babies to reconnect with their own bodies after birth. The class focuses on restrengthening the core, targeting areas of stress or tension in the body, and relaxing with other new moms in an easy atmosphere of acceptance and trust.
Fertility Yoga
Fertility Yoga is a flow yoga style practicing poses that open awareness around the hips and chest. In class, women honor the intense energy around the call to become a mother, as well as cultivate compassion, surrender and patience.
Photo: Jenn Reidel
There are many layers of preparing for birth: acknowledging the changes occurring physically and emotionally; tuning into what we need to be ready to birth; sorting out the cultural and social information about birth; and navigating our changing relationships with our partners and family.
Nicole Grey offers childbirth preparation classes on Vashon Island, WA. The classes are based in the Birthing From Within® model of childbirth education, and therefore honor the notion of birth as a Rite of Passage.
In Nicole's classes, pregnant women and their partners will examine their deepest questions about their own birth preparation, practice coping methods relevant to birth and parenting, learn information about birth in our culture, and mindfully organize the tools they need to embark on the journey of birth and parenting. These birth classes are not only about education, but also about communicating needs, fears, joys and feelings to our partners, families and care providers. In class, couples will also be invited to practice sharpening their awareness of the present moment. As a class, we investigate the possibility of not being attached to an outcome, but rather working through each moment, one moment at a time.
Lastly, these birth classes celebrate and honor the intense evolution of couples becoming parents.
A typical class may contain*
• Pain Coping
• Positions for Labor and Birth
• Massage techniques for labor
• Ideas for Partner involvement in Labor and Birth
• Birth Art
• Doing the Next Best Thing
• Asking Questions and Getting Information
• Mindfulness Practice
• Postpartum
• Celebration of the changing You
… and so much more!
*Class content is largely dependent on what couples in any given session "order up"
Contact Nicole for upcoming Birth Class Sessions on Vashon.
Photo: Pasha Productions
Nicole Grey has been teaching yoga since 2002. It was around that time that she heard what she describes "the call of yoga."
She began her journey teaching prenatal and postnatal yoga while under the tutelage of Pasha Gross and Moving Through in Portland. Nicole gained more teaching experience through her mentor training with Pam England and Birthing From Within® in 2004 when she embarked on a career of doula work and childbirth education. She continued to teach prenatal and postnatal yoga, and began exploring women's yoga classes using Vinyasa Yoga as her instructional foundation.
By 2010, Nicole had completed Vinyasa and Yin yoga trainings with Uma Kleppinger and Tiffany Cruikshank in Portland for both her 200- and 500-hour teacher certifications and is registered with the Yoga Alliance. She has continued to cultivate her own style of prenatal, postnatal and fertility yoga, and enjoys teaching Vinyasa Flow classes weekly and occasional Yin Yoga or Women's Yoga workshops in the Puget Sound area. Nicole's classes as heart-felt, breath based, with focus on cultivating awareness of this present moment. Her classes are dynamic, fun, personal, and relevant to this life we are living day to day.
She welcomes students of all levels and encourages them to approach the practice with a beginner's mind, a spirit of curiosity and playfulness, and willingness to nurture themselves with gratitude and compassion.
Photos: Jenn Reidel