Our neck is our connection between our heart and our head. Often they get tight and tense from sitting, stress, overuse, poor breathing habits, holding the world up on our shoulders, spending too much time living up in our heads and not in our hearts etc… There are many very simple stretching exercises that can be done to alleviate the discomfort of tense, tight muscles. Just taking a five minute break during the day can do a lot to release that stress and make you feel more relaxed and centered ready to face the next thing. Here is my favorite neck stretching routine.
There are so many ways that we undermine ourselves: seeking approval from others, judging ourselves, wanting someone else to have the answers and just tell us what we should do in a difficult situation thus giving our power away. This is all about putting others above ourselves and belittling our own uniqueness of expression, genius and wisdom. I have done this so much throughout my life and I am now in a process of learning how to trust myself: giving more credence to the inner world, the wisdom that comes from within, and less to the outer world, this takes great courage and yet it is highly rewarding. Self love is not something that most of us are taught how to do growing up. It is an art and a way of being that can be cultivated and lived. It is the greatest expression of honoring God. According to yoga God is all of life. God lives within all things: the birds, the trees, every rock, even the table and the rug have consciousness. Therefore God lives in each and every one of us as us. So to honor ourselves is also an honoring of the Divine within; for the body is the temple which houses the soul and the spirit. We must give time, attention and respectful care to every aspect of ourselves. Even little things such as some of these listed here can have a big cumulative effect in the way you feel about yourself at the end of the day. Here are a few ways self love can be expressed in your daily life.
Yoga has become so integrated into my sense of Self, health and well being I really can’t separate them anymore. Days that I abstain from practice just don’t seem to go as well, in general, as days that I do; I tend to be more emotional, a little bit more down, the day just seems choppy; it doesn’t have the same grace and flow. When I do practice everything is put in perspective for the day, I am more clear and centered. It takes much bigger tidal wave to knock my socks off. I just tend to feel happier not just emotionally, my body is lighter too. When I go several days with out practicing my body tends to get very cranky and eventually so do I until I take that time for myself.
Yoga has also quickly become one of the most loved practices for health and well being here in the West. With millions of practitioners this is not just a trend. It is a lifestyle, a way of being in the world with no sign of decline in sight. So if you are just playing with the idea of trying it for the first time or a seasoned practitioner that wants a little more inspiration I give you 50 reasons to get on the mat.
The teaching of sthira and sukha goes back through history to one of the earliest written classic texts about the practice of yoga, The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. There is a story from Indian mythology that beautifully illustrates these two qualities. It is the story of Ananta, the king of the snakes, the king of the Nagas. It is told that Ananta floats on an ocean, his long body is curled up to form a comfortable couch for the god Vishnu, his thousand heads come up like a protective umbrella over Vishnu on which lies our world. Ananta is firm and steady enough to hold the world yet soft and comfortable enough to be the seat of a god.
The qualities of sthira and sukha are essential to ones yoga practice. Without it there is no asana. Early on in my yoga practice, when I started taking classes, I learned about these qualities. I learned at that time that these words simply meant ease and effort and that each pose should posses each of these two qualities equally. Yet there is a richness and a depth to these concepts that I have just recently begun to unravel and shed some more light on. In turn they have brought a deeper awareness, sensitivity and joy to my practice.
Yoga Positions for Beginners Session 1
When I first started exploring yoga in 1997 I remember being very delighted to just practice some basic yoga positions by myself with a routine I created from a book I found on my mother’s shelf. It was called Savitri’s Way to Perfect Fitness Through Hatha Yoga by Savitri Ahuja. It was a very sweet book from 1979 with beautiful hand sketched drawings of people performing the postures and cute yet curious sayings at the top of each page. It wasn’t until a while later that I actually ended up in a class with my first teacher, Judith Dahn. Classes and personal instruction are incredibly valuable and rewarding. However, I would not change how I got started for the world. I highly value my time starting slowly by myself in my living room. From the very beginning I was tuning into myself and my own inner teacher. I invite you to do the same. I am offering here a simple, short sequence to those of you who are just getting started on your own journey of yoga or seasoned studio goers who want some basic yoga positions to practice at home.
