Nunavik videos encourage inner peace through yoga

Christine Watt demonstrates a yoga position in a Timiliritsianiq Nunavik Yoga video.

Christine Watt and Louisa Yeates demonstrate yoga poses in the trailer to the Timiliritsianiq Nunavik Yoga videos.

If you enjoy yoga — or even if you don’t know anything about yoga at all — you can now watch a new set of online yoga videos — the Timiliritsianiq Nunavik Yoga series — from Nunavik.

These feature two women from Kuujjuaq — Christine Watt and Louisa Yeates, who demonstrate yoga poses and will guide you through sessions of yoga, a physical, mental, and spiritual practice or discipline that originated in India.

They do that on the scenic plateau outside Kuujjjuaq with the Koksoak river, Arctic cotton and mosquitoes providing a uniquely Nunavik background.

Now, you can join Watt and Yeates in your own home through the Timiliritsianiq Nunavik Yoga DVDs, which are now available to download on Vimeo.

There’s the 32-minute Instructional and the 41-minute Journey to the Inside.

Vimeo will also allow you to download the practices — “customized for the realities of Nunavik” — to your computer or stream them on your devices.

The introduction to the videos, supported by Véronique Dion Roy, the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services, First Air, and the Kripalu School of Yoga, is in English, subtitled in Inuktitut syllabics.

And if you want to know more about the videos and the practice of yoga, which includes physical positions, breathing and meditation, you can watch a three-minute trailer.

Some in Nunavik have worried that yoga is a religious practice, because it includes sequences of movements known as “sun salutations.”

But the Timiliritsaniq trailer tries to address these concerns, by highlighting the connections between Inuit culture and the practice of yoga.

“In Inuit culture, there are breathing practices for hunting in extreme conditions, and many games shared during the long hours indoors that built strength, focus, flexibility and well being like yoga does,” the narrator says.

“The word Yoga means union, or literally to ‘yoke’ or harness the body, breath and mind to nourish and grow all that we are. This harnessing of the healing power of the breath and movement can easily be imagined when imagining the power of a dog team pulling a Qamutik. In Inuktitut, one possible definition for yoga is “taking care of our body.”

“Yoga is about being in your body, in your breath and in connection with all the sources of support that you get strength from — whether that is nature, Jesus, elders, ancestors, your community, or people that we admire.”

The release of the yoga videos came after community response to the recent 30-day “community yoga and mindfulness challenge” in Kuujjuaq which involved daily yoga practice and took place this spring when the community was dealing with several youth suicides.

“Due to many requests for the Timiliritsianiq Nunavik Yoga DVD was shot on the tundra a few years back, I am enclosing the Vimoe links in this post for community members in Kuujjuaq and around the region to easily access the practices,” said yoga instructor Salimah Gullani in a recent posting on a Facebook news page in Nunavik.

The physical sequences are intended to help build strength, flexibility, and relieve tension, she said.

“It is hoped that Nunavimmiut of all ages will enjoy and find new strength, relaxation, connection, and comfort in doing this practice. The hope, particularly for youth, is that regular practice will contribute to finding peace and trust within oneself, to find tools for self-contentment and self-acceptance, to highlight the uniqueness and special gifts each person has and harness those gifts for the betterment of the families and communities that youth are a part of,” she said.

There’s also an extended version of music developed for the videos, which incorporates throat singing by Karin and Kathy Kettler interwoven with relaxation music.

You can find the 32-minute Music for Yoga from Nunavik here.

Its music loop will stream or download as a video on your iPhone or other device.

On the Northern Lights Yoga website, you can also find several guides for yoga youth sequences and class formats, in English and Inuktitut, which designed to reduce tension, anxiety and stress among youth.

Community Yin & Restorative Yoga practice are set to start up again in Kuujjuaq in early July.

In Iqaluit, you can also find yoga classes on a regular basis at the Saimavik Studio.