Clare Norelle is a bilingual community yoga teacher, songwriter, and storyteller in Madison Wisconsin. She engages children and adults with warmth and humor, supporting a sense of connection with their own bodies, with people close to home and far away, and with animals, plants, and nature.
Clare offers a variety of yoga classes in English and Spanish, including yin yoga, gentle hatha, flow yoga, chair yoga, and yoga for families and young children.
Through Greenroot Yoga LLC she offers individual and group sessions in Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY), an adjunct treatment for complex trauma, and presentations in English and Spanish about complex trauma and body-centered healing.
Clare also offers performances for adults and for children, with songs in various languages and storytelling from around the earth.She has several albums of music available, some for kids andfamilies, and others for adults.
The earth our mother always says yes. From the skins of the mountains to the depths of the sea, across all her vast surfaces, she blooms with as much life as can possibly be. Yesses everywhere swimming and floating and running, dancing a trillion dances for the sun. Can we learn to bring as much life as we can to every place that we are, as she does? Can we learn to nurture what we love and not kill what we fear? What is the answer? Yes.
Love and best wishes to you, as we move through these wild and unusual times. I hope that you’re doing as well as possible with the rapid changes confronting us all, and finding ways to practice loving kindness with your own self and with others.
In crisis times it’s more important than ever to stay connected, both with other people and with our own bodies. Since the pandemic came to southern Wisconsin in mid-March, one of the ways that I’ve tried to do this has been through offering free online yoga classes.
To learn more about these classes, you can scroll down this page to find them on the calendar; below that you’ll also find a series of other free resources:
–Two mp3 audio recordings of trauma-sensitive yoga practices
–YouTube links for yoga videos in English and in Spanish (including a 44-minute yin yoga practice); I will add more links to videos in the coming days.
–YouTube links for a series of narrated slideshows on complex trauma and body-centered healing.
–Also, if you want to learn more about how trauma works in the body and ways to strengthen your body’s resistance to trauma, you can go here: https://clarenorelle.com/trauma-and-healing-in-the-body/ This page is a work in progress, and will continue to change and improve over time! But trauma is best dealt with early on, before its habits become entrenched–so in the midst of potentially traumatizing circumstances I wanted to make this piece available as soon as possible.
Welcome!
Why offer free online yoga classes during a pandemic?
1. I don’t sew well, and can’t make many masks…
2. This is something I know how to do, and although I’m still working, I have time for this, too. Offering these community classes helps me stay centered in my body and connected with other people in ways that matter to me, and it feels like a helpful thing to do.
3. In overwhelming and frightening times people can develop traumatic stress in their bodies, with long-term consequences for their mental and physical health. Yoga can help prevent the habits of trauma from becoming entrenched in the nervous system. With so many people losing their work or their sense of economic security, I want to offer yoga in ways that won’t feel economically stressful.
4. And: Many people depend on being paid to teach yoga. If you can afford to take their classes and support them, I encourage you to do that. If you would like to have yoga sessions online with me and can afford to then make a donation to other yoga teachers, to a local food pantry, or to other efforts that support people in need, I encourage you to do that. And if what you could most use right now is some yoga sessions without any economic activity attached, please feel completely welcome to join me for free.
Free online yoga sessions
All of these yoga classes are informed by my training in Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY), emphasizing skills that can minimize the long-term neurological and whole-body impact of overwhelming experiences, helping to strengthen resilience, immunity, and general well-being.
For all of these online yoga sessions you’ll need to first download the free Zoom app here: https://zoom.us/pricing
Mondays / Lunes 4/27 – 6/1
10:30 amYoga Suave en Sillas, en Español: Hatha yoga suave sentado y parado usando una silla, para aliviar el estrés, fortalecer el sistema inmunológico, y aumentar el bienestar: https://zoom.us/j/886045560
7 pm, Yin Yoga: Long-held stretches sitting and lying down, for a sense of calm and flexibility: https://zoom.us/j/750590961
Tuesdays 4/28 – 6/2
10:30 – 11:45 am Gentle Yoga (now 75 minutes long): Gentle hatha yoga for strength, flexibility, and balance–practiced while standing, kneeling, and lying on the mat: https://zoom.us/j/806158014
1:30 pm Gentle Chair Yoga: Gentle hatha yoga for strength, flexibility, and balance–practiced while sitting in a chair and standing using a chair as optional support: https://zoom.us/j/164122963
Wednesdays 4/29 – 6/3
7 pm Yoga for trauma resilience and healing: Based in my training in Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga, these sessions will focus on practices found by trauma researchers to be especially helpful for creating resilience and healing for people who have had traumatic experiences: body-centered invitation, choice, interoception, present-moment focus, creating rhythms of movement, and attending to the passing of time. The sessions offer nothing extraneous–no poems, no singing, less talk: just a quiet practice of mindful movement, to help strengthen connections and integration in your nervous system. These sessions will be free, but will require registration through this NEW LINK, created on 4/29 (the old link was a mistake):
Web page / “poetry blog”: These are poems that I share in some of my yoga classes, paired with some of my photos: https://clarenorelle.com/category/poetry/ Like yoga, poetry is good medicine.
For families with young children: This is a video recording of an online family concert that I did on March 18th. The resolution & lighting aren’t great, but it’s some fun music for younger children, with some yoga mixed in….and kids who have been in family yoga classes with me might enjoy it.
Two free mp3 audio recordings of gentle trauma-sensitive yoga practices you might try:
Gentle trauma-sensitive yoga, sitting in a chair
Gentle trauma-sensitive yoga resting practice
Some extremely informal yoga videos that I made last year in Spanish; I hope to post some new links to English language videos soon:
The world is full of beauty, magic, miracles, and patterns that induce wonder… Emergence is one of the best concepts I have learned for discussing this wonder.Emergence emphasizes critical connections over critical mass, building authentic relationships,listening with all the senses of the body and the mind.
The crisis is everywhere, massive massive massive.And we are small.
But emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies.Emergence is our inheritance as a part of this universe; it is how we change.Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embodythe just and liberated worlds we long for.
