Types of Classes at Namaste Yoga

At Namaste Yoga in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona, we offer a variety of classes and workshops for all abilities and interests. Our classes are themed around the five elements — fire, water, air, space, and earth — and are designed to take you on a sensory journey that transports you out of your daily life and into your inner self. We use pure essential oil aromatherapy, cinematic video screens, tactile surfaces (like our special antimicrobial flooring), and a state-of-the-art sound system to focus your energy inward.

In ancient yoga philosophy, everything is believed to be made up of a combination of the five elements. While all styles of yoga help balance your chakras and your relationship to the elements, we’ve drawn on certain aspects of each element for inspiration in developing our classes. Classes like Seasonal Fire, Supported Warm Yin, and Warm Flow have deep meaning to us, and we want to share that with you.

Earth Element

The earth element is associated with your root chakra and is tied to safety, support, and stability. It’s common to feel out of touch with the earth in our modern lives. If you’ve heard of “earthing” or “grounding,” these are techniques designed to bring us back to our most basic and natural selves. Earth and water elements are increased through yin and hatha yoga practice, which help you feel more grounded and stable. Poses that bring awareness to your feet, hands, sit bones, legs, and hips — like mountain pose, warrior I, warrior II, child’s pose, forward fold, and corpse pose — help you feel like you’re on solid ground.

To honor and nurture our connection to the earth element, we created a class called Supported Warm Yin, where we focus on bringing you stability through a slower-paced, deep tissue stretch in a warm room. You can expect to hold poses for an extended time, relieving stress and anxiety by teaching us to sit with and observe sensations as they arise in the body, while improving mobility, flexibility, and releasing tension.

Water Element

The water element relates to your sacral chakra and is associated with adaptability, flow, feelings, freedom, fun, and change. Poses that focus on ease and fluid movement — goddess pose, pigeon, seated forward bend, and Malasana (yogi squat) — help increase your water element, inviting softness, agility, and fluid movement into your life.

We were inspired by the element of water to create our vinyasa-style class, Warm Flow. This class is beginner-friendly while still being great fun for advanced practitioners. In the spirit of water, the class is always changing.

Fire Element

Fire is linked with the solar plexus chakra and relates to purpose, identity, metabolism, transformation, intensity, abundance, and power. Ashtanga, power, and hot yoga classes are said to increase your fire and water energy. Poses like plank pose, warrior III, boat, handstand, and bow pose increase heat and build confidence by physically challenging you.

At Namaste Yoga, our signature class is called Seasonal Fire, designed to light a fire in your yoga practice and in your life. The sequence stays fixed for three months so you can learn it by heart, enabling you to flow through the series while connecting your breath to your movements, reaching a meditative state while you burn calories and detox in this hot yoga class that changes with the seasons.

Air Element

The element of air is associated with your heart chakra and your sense of touch, representing motion, expansion, and lightness. It’s expressed through both the breath and creating space in the body. If your air element is out of balance, you may feel anxious or overwhelmed — on days like that, a slower-paced practice can be a good fit. Poses such as wheel, camel, cobra, upward-facing dog, and mountain pose help increase your air element, bringing a sense of rhythm, grace, mobility, and an open mind.

We offer special breathwork (pranayama) workshops at Namaste Yoga to connect us to the air element.

Space Element

The space (or ether) element corresponds to your throat chakra and is tied to openness, communication, spirituality, and consciousness. Cow pose, fish pose, and neck stretches are great ways to open your throat chakra, while poses like extended triangle create more space inside, lifting you up and full of possibility. Staying present and increasing awareness are the effects of cultivating more space in your practice.

As we progress in our yoga practice, we become increasingly conscious, bringing our practice “off the mat.” There are eight limbs of yoga, and asana (postures) and pranayama (breathwork) are only two of them. When we broaden ourselves by attending workshops that teach us about the other six limbs, we step into the realm of the space element.

We look forward to honoring our connection to the elements with you at your next class.

Namaste.