Restorative Ashtanga Series
Life is moving fast.
Your practice doesn’t have to.
Four Wednesdays to slow down, breathe, move,
and find your way back to the quiet that’s already there.
These two words are rarely seen together.
Restorative + Ashtanga.
Ashtanga is the original power yoga—the OG vinyasa practice.
People tend to love it or hate it, especially in its classical form.
Somehow, I’ve always felt compelled to make it accessible.
The It’s Yoga system modified the classical practice to do just that. And now I want to take it one step further.
Slow it down. Make room. Keep the good stuff.
Because underneath the dynamic movement, arm balances and opportunities to fly are the things that really make this practice work.
The breath.
The gaze.
The internal support of the body.
The placement of the hands and feet.
The relationship between breath and movement.
These are the essentials.
We keep those.
And we give ourselves enough space to actually learn them, feel them, and put them into practice.
That’s Restorative Ashtanga.
The Practice
Life is moving fast.
And you don’t need to come to yoga to feel behind.
To feel like you’re not keeping up.
To get confused.
To challenge yourself to keep pace in here the way you sometimes have to out there.
Our bodies are changing.
Our emotions can feel closer to the surface.
We’re getting older—and in many ways, wiser.
And somehow, in the midst of all the doing, caring, working, planning and keeping up, we can lose track of that place inside ourselves that feels peaceful and safe.
We trade it for all the things.
Sometimes you need a place where less is expected of you.
Where no one needs anything from you.
Where you can slow things down enough to hear yourself again.
To feel your body and attend to it from the inside out.
To notice your breath.
To just breathe.
This is a chance to regulate—not later, when everything settles down. Not by trying to get back to the way you felt before.
Right here. Right now.
In the body you have today.
With the life you have today.
With whatever is present today.
We’re not trying to get somewhere else.
We’re practicing being here.
And maybe, from here, we begin to remember that place inside ourselves that feels peaceful and safe.
Why Ashtanga Yoga?
Because I love this practice.
And because beneath the reputation for intensity, strength and athleticism is an incredibly intelligent system.
My teacher, mentor, husband and friend, Larry Schultz (1950–2011), understood that.
Larry was willing to challenge the classical Ashtanga system and ask a simple question:
What if more people could have access to this?
He modified the sequences while preserving the essential ingredients of the practice—the breath, bandhas, drishti, alignment and the relationship between breath and movement.
It got him into some trouble. He was called The Bad Man.
But Larry believed the practice was meant to be shared.
So do I.
I’ve spent much of my life teaching and practicing this system, and I find myself wanting to take what Larry began one step further.
We can modify the practice without losing its intelligence.
We can slow it down without losing its power.
We can make room for the person standing in front of us.
That is the lineage I was given.
And this is one more way I get to carry it forward.
Join Us
Restorative Ashtanga
A four-week practice with Marie
Wednesdays · 6:00–7:15 PM
October 21 & 28
November 4 & 11
It’s Yoga Toledo
4100 Monroe Street
Four weeks together to slow things down, learn the essentials, and experience Ashtanga in a way that meets you where you are.
Your series also includes a PDF of Larry Schultz’s Ashtanga Manual to support your practice.
Not in Toledo?
You can still begin from wherever you are.
The Essentials is our online introduction to the foundational elements of the It’s Yoga practice—breath, bandhas, drishti, alignment and movement—so you can learn them, practice them and begin making them your own.