Yoga with Loretta

I’ve been coming to Loretta’s classes for 7 years. Loretta’s teaching style is warm and gentle, and we always enjoy a laugh or two along the way.

Beneath the good-humoured banter, Loretta challenges us to push ourselves. She encourages us to remain in each pose for a while, which helps relieve aches and stiffness and at the same time builds strength and flexibility. If anyone has a physical difficulty, Loretta adapts the poses to suit each ‘yogi’. The classes are well-structured, beginning and ending with a period of relaxation, and with a different focus each week, such as shoulders or forward bends. No two classes are ever the same!

We’re a friendly mix of ages, abilities, shapes and sizes, and many of us have bits of bodies that don’t work as well as they could. By the end of a class we emerge taller and stronger – and often with fewer aches than we started with.

If you want to improve your posture and alignment, and build strength and flexibility that will carry over into everyday life, Loretta’s classes come highly recommended. Standing in a supermarket queue will never be the same again!

I have moved from middle age into older age whilst coming to Lorettta's classes, but feel as if I have become younger in my body and wiser, calmer and more composed in my mind. Loretta subtly, persistently and warmly delivers the essence of yoga's great benefits without us even realising it is happening. The classes are enjoyable and challenging without being an ordeal at the end of a busy day. They leave me feeling in top condition in every way and the effect lasts for the next few days. Over time I have been able to improve aspects of my daily life practices using the ideas Loretta has taught me about awareness and mindfulness. I enjoy the support and warm energy that arises from within the class group, which adapts and changes as members come and go. Loretta is unfailingly positive, supportive and well prepared.

BKS Iyengar writes in the Preface to his "Light on Yoga" " Yoga is a timeless pragmatic science evolved over thousands of years dealing with the physical, moral, mental and spiritual well-being of man (and woman) as a whole."

Loretta's achievement in the Tuesday evening sessions at St Peters is to address all four of these elements with great humour and humility. Of course, a major emphasis in an Iyengar based system is the physical - the exercise - the postures themselves. She is very good at coming around the class - encouraging and correcting as she goes. But each class is topped and tailed with savasana; a relaxing meditation, and at the start there is also a reading to raise our mental and moral awareness.

One of the things that makes Loretta's class is the camaraderie and enthusiasm of the fellow students. This is no competition; we are there to help one another build our abilities and knowledge of yoga.

As a result you leave Loretta's class enriched and energised for what the week ahead will throw at you, and more able as a whole to weather it!

Great classes, lovely venue and definitely worth signing up for the afternoon workshops.