Yoga Instruction by Trista Thorp

Trista began practicing yoga in 1999 and, after experiencing the myriad benefits, she decided to pursue spiritual teaching and healing. Trista trained under Jazz Poitier, Director of The Yoga Source, In Berkeley, California, and was Certified in 1999.

Trista Thorp was the former Owner of Yoga Sanctuary, a locally-adored yoga studio in the heart of Venice Beach, California. Her intimate boutique-style studio was lovingly deemed “the west side’s best-kept secret” by Los Angeles Magazine and was the winner of Los Angeles Magazine’s “BEST OF LA” Award in 2002.

Trista has spent the last eight years primarily working with private clients throughout southern California. While immersed in Massage Therapy school at the International Professional School of Bodywork in San Diego, California, she also taught yoga as one of the college’s movement classes.

Teaching style

Trista’s teaching style combines gentle encouragement with an energizing pace that leaves the practitioner with a feeling of enlivened relaxation. In her class, you will learn to connect the movement of the body and the fluctuations of the mind to the rhythm of our breath. Through this process of inward attention, we learn to recognize our habitual thought patterns without labeling them, judging them, or trying to change them. We learn to cultivate an awareness of ourselves as body, mind and spirit.

What, exactly, does yoga do for you?

Yoga postures are not only a series of physical poses, they are also exercises in mental awareness. The yogi is deliberate in every movement, feeling and breathing into every muscle. Only through conscious awareness of one’s own body can tensions be felt and, once felt, they can be eliminated by a systematic yoga program. More is involved in asanas than just the promotion of physical health. Through yoga postures one can improve one’s mental outlook, achieve a more harmonious emotional life, and develop expanded awareness and consciousness. Yoga postures not only improve physical health and give stability to the emotional system, but they also create positive mental attitudes.

Asanas (yoga postures) promote the free flow of energy throughout the nervous system and assist in the elimination of toxins and poisons from the joints and other body parts, where these foreign elements tend otherwise to settle – sometimes permanently. These asanas exert beneficial pressure on various glands and internal organs, flushing and stimulating them. Even a small amount of practice can produce amazing improvements in one’s general health. For these reasons, yoga is growing in popularity in the west, and growing very rapidly. Asanas are well on their way to becoming a fad.

The asanas emphasize relaxation as well as making one aware of tension. A yoga pose is not “done” because the physical position has been assumed. It is the breathing and the holding of that pose that develops the physical strength and calms the system. One acts always from a center of poise and calmness of mental and physical relaxation. One must never strain or force into any pose.

Additionally, bodily postures are associated with certain mental attitudes. When one is discouraged, the body tends to stoop forward. When feeling stubborn, a person may jut his chin forward. Suppression of natural feelings can be indicated by holding in the upper part of the chest. Even the pattern of breathing is affected by one’s mental attitudes. Just as mental attitudes affect the body, so also can bodily postures affect the mind. Tense stomach muscles can induce mental anxiety, and a bent spine and slumped shoulders can induce moodiness. Yogis make use of these relationships, and by inducing physical relaxation create serenity in a worried mind. Working on oneself physically to influence the mind is a simple undertaking. For example, change the breathing pattern and one’s mental state may be changed as well.

Contact Trista Thorp for your personalized yoga session today.

Testimonals

Just finished reading about Trista's sideways journey here to Charlotte and am so saddened by her leaving. I have only been to Yoga South once earlier this summer but it was through Trista that I found it in the first place. I'd been so disappointed with Yoga selections in Charlotte and missing the restorative and gentle Hatha yoga I loved back in a Chicago suburb. Trista was so kind and took so much time to talk to me about yoga in Charlotte referring me to her class at Yoga South. I loved it and was so excited about it, but after just one class I was scheduled to spend the rest of my summer in Michigan and Kiawah Island.

I knew she wasn't happy here and was concerned she would leave. I had just a week break back here in Charlotte between those two vacations and thought I'd be back to Yoga South. I didn't get back and now that my daughter is back in school I was so looking forward to seeing Trista again and getting back to Yoga.

Please pass this on to her. I will be forever grateful for her kind spirit who helped me put Yoga back into my life. I understand about sideways journeys as I've been there too. As we all effect each life we touch, no matter how brief an encounter ---I will be forever grateful to that gentle, kind Trista I met in Charlotte when I too was fairly new in town. God bless Trista and good luck in your life.
Rosanne White, Charlotte, North Carolina