Posts tagged: Buffy Barfoot

Pink Yoga, Community of the Heart

By , December 23, 2009 12:30 pm

Pink Yoga GroupPink Yoga was created two years ago in order to create a safe and healing space for women with breast cancer to practice yoga and find community.

My name is Buffy Barfoot and I am a yoga teacher in Denver, My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother all had breast cancer. When I began the process of creating this class, I could not have imagined the beauty and rich community that would unfold. The women who came quickly knitted into a supportive and diverse kula (community of the heart), and brought a current of vitality and wisdom into every class. They truly love, help and support each other without the heaviness and sedentary effects a support group can sometimes have. They are moving together, creating beauty together, and finding such nourishment as individuals within the fabric of a bigger garment.

My intention in creating Pink Yoga is to weave a space for these amazing women faced with this terrible disease to come together and harness their beauty and power and potential to heal. Pink Yoga addresses the needs of women at any stage of breast cancer, from those currently in treatment to those years into their remission. Pink_Yoga_Buffy

The weekly practice includes meditation, breathing techniques that open energy channels in the body and encourage healing, and yoga postures designed to strengthen and free the upper body and open the heart. Every student is honored at the door, regardless of her experience, abilities, or limitations. The themes and contemplations offered for each class are built around issues related to breast cancer.

Pink Yoga provides a safe place to nourish all women, and allows the vibrant and positive healing to begin. Anyone is welcome, including those who do not have cancer but would like to support and be a pearl in this luminous strand of women.

Some key benefits to a regular yoga practice include:

-Increase in energy
-Heightened awareness and clarity
-Deeper sense of joy and connection to a larger current
-Proven decrease in menopausal symptoms sometimes induced by cancer treatments
-Increase in flexibility and muscle strength and decrease in joint pain
-Therapeutic benefits related to post-surgery
-Overall increase in health and well-being
-Increase in personal empowerment and self esteem
Pink_Yoga_handstand
The important details:

Vital Yoga (Cherry Creek location)
2727 E 2nd Ave
Denver CO

2-3:30 p.m. every Saturday
For more information or questions contact Buffy Barfoot at 720-212-9191 or buffymiranda@gmail.com

Here’s what a few of the women who have participated in Pink Yoga have to say about their experience:

“It has been a gift to practice yoga with women in various stages of breast cancer treatment and survival. It feels like a very authentic way to share and grow a friendship. Who knew that taking Pink Yoga ‘for my friend with breast cancer’ would turn out to be one of the most enriching experiences of my life.” Nancy

“What Pink Yoga Means to me…
a community of like-minded women
some of us fight breast cancer in our bodies
others of us help in the fight by being…present and being strong.

Pink Yoga is power. For me, it was claiming my strength, even when I was ravaged by chemo and bald. Pink Yoga means growing stronger, with each downward dog and L-pose. Pink Yoga teaches you balance in a lopsided body.

Pink Yoga means reaching out to another being who is afraid and showing her that things might just turn out OK. Pink Yoga is also being the one who is afraid, and sharing the fear with the others, whose love and strength are palpable. Pink Yoga is being present in my own life and in the life of the community.” Sheila

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