Life is messy

It is stress inducing and anxiety provoking. There are constant challenges to be met with the external demands of family, friends, work, commutes, making meals and somehow staying in shape. We have to look after our kids, our parents, our pets, our employers, our colleagues, our friends and somehow fit self-care into the mix as well.

How do you balance work, family, friends, recreation, and sleep? Is harmony some kind of distant fantasy?

Well, it turns a simple 3 minute time out (you can even do it with your kids) in cat pose can restore harmony to your body rather quickly.

Cat pose affects what is known as your great central channel in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the only regulatory vessel that flows continuously through your body. Your great central channel is used in many taoist meditations to unify your body and mind. It benefits your central nervous system, strengthens your spine and harmonizes spiritual unrest.

Let’s try it now.

In our membership community we take these concepts even further with meditation where you visualize stimulating the flow of energy through your great central channel so that you can move and breathe in harmony allowing you to be in balance with both yourself and your environment. The harmonious movements offered in this traditional chinese medicine inspired class will allow you to relax and recharge yourself. Additionally in this class we will stimulate acupressure points on your hands and your feet that will add to the fluidity and harmony of your spine and your life in only 10 minutes.

We would love to have you as a member of our community where I share all my valued added content and we have a community of yogis from all around the world supporting each other in staying motivated to practice.

 

Text Neck

If you have neck pain, headaches, neck cricks and achy shoulders you could be suffering from what physical therapists have diagnosed “text neck.”

When you spend prolonged periods of time sitting in front of your computer screens and hanging over your cell phones and tablets, your head gets pulled forward and your spine is slumped back in a chair while your shoulders are rounded.

Your head weighs about ten pounds when it is in its neutral position with your ears over your shoulders. For every inch your head moves forward, the load on your spine doubles. So imagine if you are focusing on your smartphone or our computer monitor and your head naturally and gradually shifts forward, what starts out at 10 pounds can very soon move upwards to 20 and 30 pounds.

When your head gets pulled forward for prolonged periods of time, you will start to experience inflammation, muscle strain, disc herniation and pinched nerves. Over time the natural lordotic curve of your cervical spine can flatten out and even turn into cervical kyphosis.

It is incredibly important that we vary our movements and give our necks some alternative movement patterns to the fixed and held positions that they are “frozen” into with computers, laptops and smartphones.

Practicing yoga poses like cat pose will restore the natural alignment of your spine by moving your spine through flexion, extension, rotation and lateral movement bolstering your body’s support system. By moving your spine through its natural range of motion you will start to move your cervical spine again, rather than having it held in a fixed position in front of your body staring at a screen.

Would you like more support in varying your movement patterns? In our membership community I offer my best, value-added, innovative and leading edge research with series of classes like Back, Neck and Nervous System RX.

Neck, Back and Nervous System RX

The series begins with a class that will help to overcome the time you spend in sitting, working at computers and interacting with hand-held devices that create immobility in your spine and move your spine out of its natural alignment. The first class benefits your nervous system, draws fluid into your intervertebral discs and benefits all parts of your back and neck and helps to build bone density. The second class in the series will offer modifications and variations for those with wrist, knee and neck issues as well as options for cat pose in a chair. The third class use the soft foam roller, the slo mo ball and the squash ball to help to keep your fascia hydrated, they help to maintain the mobility, integrity and resilience of your fascia by hydrating your fascia. The fourth class in the series will demonstrate how your nervous system can adapt much for easily when it feels safe. With the use of restorative yoga we can safely increase your range of motion in cat pose.The fifth yoga class uses acupressure and traditional chinese medicine to build your energy reserves and restore harmony and fluidity to your spine and entire being. The sixth yoga class provides options for each of the Ayurvedic doshas bringing balance to kapha, vata and pitta doshas. Finally a savasana for cat pose will allow you to move through your physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual bodies, your chakras, Goddess archetypes, moon phase and ends with a reading from the Radiance Sutras.

Join our Membership Community Today

 

Boundaries

A couple of weeks ago when we began the niyamas with saucha we explored them this time through with Nischala Joy Devi’s translation as continual refinement to see your True Nature. With tapas we will continue this refinement of our actions through our bodies, minds and speech. Nischala Joy Devi says the Bhagavad Gita speaks of tapas as the kindling of the purifying flame through the refining of the actions of our bodies, minds and speech.

Tapas through continual refinement of our bodies, minds and speech can create great focus. Tapas of our body is defined as service, physical purity, living in virtue, moderation and reverence for all. Tapas of mind is defined as tranquil, gentle, kind, quiet, willpower, and purity of thought. Tapas of speech is described as being truthful, pleasant, serene, beneficial and includes prayers and the repetition of mantra. Speech becomes an important outward expression of our mind and our emotions.

To live a life that matters to us takes a great deal of focus, discipline and continual refinement, in short tapas of body, mind and speech. In our culture we are all experiencing the breakdown of our boundaries both in our personal and work lives.

Thanks to advances in technology there are no boundaries at all when we are expected to be available to work. The boundary of work has edged considerably into family territory. Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, quite rightly points out, many employers have no problem asking people to work from home, but would not be comfortable with children in the boardroom for a Monday morning meeting.

Having discipline to continually refine your boundaries take strength of conviction to know what is most important to you. With Namaste Yoga and our membership community we have a worldwide audience. When one of our overseas students signs up for a membership often that can come in the middle of the night when we are sleeping. Sometimes when we wake up in the morning we receive emails from people asking about their login and passwords. Our members are usually quite understanding, respectful and happy to wait, when we explain that we turn our wifi off at 9:00 pm until 8:00 am for quiet family time and a sound night of rest. Boundaries can be empowering as they allow you to protect what is most important to you.

Our personal lives are another area where someone else’s agenda can cross into what is most important in our lives and distract us. It takes the discipline of awareness to notice when our energy and time is being diverted to what is important to somebody else rather than us. I would challenge you this week to write down anytime you feel violated by somebody else’s request. It doesn’t have to be a huge violate. It can be just that tiniest twinge of resentment that you feel somewhere in your body. You will know. Trust that, those small favors are good for finding hidden boundaries that need continual refinement. Then you can begin to craft a contract with yourself so that you know how you want to spend your time. We just did this over the last two weeks in our membership community in our weekly challenge. So our members can simply refer back to their inner mandalas of being for this. Ask yourself what boundaries you want to keep for yourself. Where do you need to create some refinement in your life?

The Secret Power of Yoga by Nischala Joy Devi

The Secret Power of Yoga: A Woman’s Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras

Help for Degenerative Discs

Degenerative Disc Disease happens when the discs in your spine start to dry out and lose their mobility and shock absorption. When this happens, the inner portion of your discs shrink, providing less cushion between the boney vertebral processes of your spine and the outer part of your disc can suffer from small tears. The result is pain.

Herniated Discs, also called slipped discs or bulging discs happen when the inner material of your disc, the soft nucleus, leaks out of your disc and touches the nerve route. This nucleus is highly inflammatory and so the contact with nerve causes pain. Any numbness, tingling, weakness travels along the path of the nerve, such as the sciatic nerve and goes down the back of the leg, but a disc that herniates in your cervical spine can cause pain that radiates down your arm.

So what can you do?

First of all, make sure you talk to your medical doctor, get a correct diagnosis and find out what you can and cannot do to keep your body safe if you have a back injury.

Yoga poses like cat pose can be helpful for degenerative disc disease and herniated discs. By moving your spine through flexion and extension, you will be drawing fluid and nutrients into the inner portions of your discs, helping to “plump” them up and creating more shock absorption for your load.

The curve of the lumbar spine also bends inward (lordotic curve). This is the area where bulging and slipped discs usually primarily from sitting in chairs – the inward curve goes out into a c -curve and then the weight bearing of sitting starts to push those discs out.

Your low back isn’t the only place where disc herniation occurs. When your head gets pulled forward from prolonged periods of time screen, the natural lordotic curve of your cervical spine can flatten out and even turn into cervical kyphosis. Over time you will start to experience inflammation, muscle strain, pinched nerves and even disc herniation.

Putting your body in a different orientation to gravity from sitting and screen time and moving your spine in different directions is so helpful for preventing and correcting degenerative disc disease and herniated discs in your cervical and lumbar spine

Would you like more support in varying your movement patterns? In our membership community I offer my best, value-added, innovative and leading edge research with series of classes like Back, Neck and Nervous System RX.

Neck, Back and Nervous System RX

The series begins with a class that will help to overcome the time you spend in sitting, working at computers and interacting with hand-held devices that create immobility in your spine and move your spine out of its natural alignment. The first class benefits your nervous system, draws fluid into your intervertebral discs and benefits all parts of your back and neck and helps to build bone density. The second class in the series will offer modifications and variations for those with wrist, knee and neck issues as well as options for cat pose in a chair. The third class use the soft foam roller, the slo mo ball and the squash ball to help to keep your fascia hydrated, they help to maintain the mobility, integrity and resilience of your fascia by hydrating your fascia. The fourth class in the series will demonstrate how your nervous system can adapt much for easily when it feels safe. With the use of restorative yoga we can safely increase your range of motion in cat pose.The fifth yoga class uses acupressure and traditional chinese medicine to build your energy reserves and restore harmony and fluidity to your spine and entire being. The sixth yoga class provides options for each of the Ayurvedic doshas bringing balance to kapha,

Inner Contentment

In our culture our attention is so often pulled up and outside of ourselves. We look for happiness and satisfaction outside of ourselves. Even our self-care practices have an external focus. Contentment requires focus as it is an internal practice. As Sara Avant Stover reminds us, no amount of external pampering can nourish our depths when we’re feeling depleted, afraid, overwhelmed or insufficient.

Contentment means focusing inwards, holding ourselves with loving kindness and trusting our own basic goodness, knowing that even our anger, doubt, aversion, overwhelm, illness, doubt and resistance are held in this gentle loving space.

Nischala Joy Devi says that contentment means firmly identifying with our inner essence rather than with external objects.

We practice yoga and meditation to awaken to our True Nature, to discover our basic goodness. To awaken to who we are, rather than to be a slave to what we do. When we inhabit our bodies we will feel like we’ve come home and we will experience focus and contentment.

Coming into your body through yoga and meditation gives you a safe refuge for self-soothing. It gives you space away from thought and the buzzing busy-ness of day to day life. All day long we are pulled up out of our bodies, distracted by the flashy screens. Connecting with our belly centers we will find a sense of inner safety, home, focus and contentment.

In The Book of She, Sara Avant Stover speaks of one of her students Adrianne who explains, “for most of my life when I felt the rumbles or sinking feeling in my belly, I thought I was hungry, so I just ate something. Now I see that in those cases what I’m really hungry for is a grounded connection to myself.”

When you create that connection with your belly, you are able to give yourself a deeper nourishment, focus and contentment that you are craving on all levels of your being – physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual.

Resources:

The Book of SHE: Your Heroine’s Journey into the Heart of Feminine Power by Sara Avant Stover

The Book of SHE: Your Heroine’s Journey into the Heart of Feminine Power

The Secret Power of Yoga by Nischala Joy Devi

The Secret Power of Yoga: A Woman’s Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Crocodile Pose or Makarasana, Pelvic Rocking, Supported Bridge Pose or Salamba Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, Cat Pose or Marjaryasana, Lunge Pose or Anjaneyasana, Hand body mudra or sharira mudras, Warrior One or Virabhadrasana One, Legs up the Wall or Viparita Karini, Reclined Hero’s Pose Supta Virasana, Bharadvajasana or Zig Zag Twist, Bound Angle Pose or Baddha Konasana, Savasana or Corpse Pose

Yoga Props: folded blanket, yoga blocks, wall, bolster

Members: Practice

Simplicity

This week we arrive at the niyamas, the inner facets of the eight-fold path of yoga. The niyamas allow us to continue our journey inward so that we can uncover our True Nature.

We begin with saucha which Nischala Joy Devi translates as simplicity and continual refinement so that you can see your True Nature. This simplicity and refinement happens through your body, mind, emotions, energy and spirit. In a culture of information overload and endless social media streams we long for simplicity. The truth is that purity lies within us.

This niyama, sauca is often taught with an external focus. Clean up your diet, clean up your living environment and these are definitely powerful ways to clear the path inwards. It is a gift to be simple. By cultivating simplicity of mind, body, emotions, and energy through yoga and meditation we are refreshed and nurtured in a complicated world.

In terms of focused living, instead of doing things the way you have always done them, following the status quo, consider starting at zero. This can be the equivalent of reintroducing foods after a fast or a cleanse. If it wasn’t already in your life, would you want to reintroduce it to your shiny, clean body? Starting at zero, begin from scratch with your work and career, family, spiritual life, financial life, intellectual life, your health, and your personal and social life.

Every single use of your energy, time, commitment and resources has to justify itself after your cleanse. If it is toxic or no longer fits for whatever reason, it is time to eliminate it from your life.

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Legs up the Wall or Viparita Karini with Alternate Nostril Breathing or Nadi Shodhana, Side Reclining Leg Lift or Anantasana, Pigeon or Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, Gyan mudra for peace, calm and spiritual progress, Tree Pose or Vrksasana, Reclined Bound Angle Pose or Supta Baddha Konasana, Reclined Knee Down Twist or Supta Matsyendrasana, Janu Sirsasana or Head beyond knee pose, Savasana or Corpse Pose

Yoga Props: Bolster, 2 yoga blocks, Folded Blanket or chair, wall, if you have sciatica you will need a chair instead of a wall

Resources:

The Secret Power of Yoga by Nischala Joy Devi

The Secret Power of Yoga: A Woman’s Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

If you liked today’s show, please press the like button

If you are new to our channel, subscribe so that you receive a new class every Friday.

If you know a friend, family member or coworker who you think would enjoy this class then be sure to share it with them.

Thank you so much for your donations. Special thanks to Aviva, Helen, Ivy, Anne Marie, Patrick, Erika, Mindy, Hyon, Linda, Carrie, and Chris. If you would like to make a donation to Namaste Yog...

Awakening

Today we will reflect on our journey of awakening through the story of the Phoenix. We will do this because awakening ironically has as much or more to do with the descending journey as it does to do with the ascending journey.

The phoenix is a mythical story of rebirth and resurrection. According to the parable the Phoenix is a one of a kind bird dressed in a plumage of yellows, oranges, red and gold, corresponding to the colours of a fire. The bird itself lives a 500-1000 year life cycle. At the end of its life the phoenix builds nest of aromatic branches and spices, uses the sun to ignite the fire and his own wings to fan the fire. The mythical phoenix marks its death; plunges itself into the fire, is consumed by the flames and burns into a pile of ashes. Out of the ashes a new phoenix is born with renewed youth to live through another life-span.

The phoenix, like our higher selves is a beautiful bird that lives forever. In the story, many people were attracted to the beauty of the phoenix, the sun even claimed the phoenix as his own giving it the ability to live forever. Although this would seem like a gift, over time the phoenix grew old, tired, and lost its strength. One day it said, “I can’t live this way anymore.” The same thing happens in our lives.

Just like you, the phoenix knows when it is time for its death. Just like the phoenix, we know when things aren’t working, when a certain aspects of ourselves that might have worked at one point, no longer serves us. There is always a deep inner knowing when some aspect of yourself is ready to let go, move on, and plan its funeral.

When the phoenix recognizes the time for ending has come, it creates the ritual fire. A ritual is a set of actions performed for their symbolic value, set apart from everyday life-tasks. Generally rituals are powerful and beautiful. Our yoga practices, meditation, journaling, these ritual spaces apart from everyday life can be a useful to navigate the period of transition.

The question arises, who would actually want to plunge themselves into the fire, inviting their own death? That does sound pretty scary. The fear of death, of endings runs deep in our North American, Western, culture. The death process is nothing to be feared. It is something we do each time we finish our yoga practice with savasana (corpse pose) and each time we exhale or breathe out. In each of these situations there is a letting go and we are reborn, or take our next breath entering into life a little differently.

So too many people fear fire, afraid of being burned (please excuse the pun). Throughout history fires have caused great devastation, death, and suffering. In our Judeo-Christian culture fire is linked with hell and damnation. In certain societies, female witches were unjustifiably burned at the stake.

There are however, many positive aspects of fire. The fire of the sun, for example, gives life, light and warmth. Fire invites transformation. Forest fires are a case in point. Forest fires are necessary for the well-being of the environment, because they burn off old, dead material and stimulate new growth. Forest fires cleanse and purify and without them the forest would become stagnant and die. Fire is alchemical as it separates the dross from gold. Fire offers the embers of awareness.

Many people fear this fiery process of endings, cleansing, purification wanting to avoid struggle, choosing instead stability. Better the devil that you know than the devil you don’t, as the saying goes. Most would rather deal with the familiar, even if it is not ideal, than to risk the unknown.

Regardless, our personal fires are times of transition: an illness, an injury, a troubled relationship, discontent in the workplace, financial difficulties,

Sitting Causing Brain Damage?

It is estimated that American adults spend 10 hours a day sitting. That is a lot of time sitting.

Did you know that your brain function starts to slow when your body is not getting movement? When you are sedentary, your brain gets less fresh blood and oxygen which is needed to trigger the release of brain and mood enhancing chemicals.

Taking short movement breaks can start to restore the flow of fresh blood and oxygen to your brain.

Yoga poses like cat pose are super beneficial and in fact you can do it right from your chair.

Your spine houses your nervous system. When you take the time to move your spine through flexion, extension, rotation and side bending, even in your chair, it will improve the sending and receiving of messages through your nervous system to and from your brain. It is through your spinal cord and its branching nerves that your brain influences the rest of your body, controlling movement and organ function and thus your organ function will also be enhanced along with enriched coordination and proprioception.

Would you like more support in varying your movement patterns? In our membership community I offer my best, value-added, innovative and leading edge research with series of classes like Back, Neck and Nervous System RX.

Neck, Back and Nervous System RX

The series begins with a class that will help to overcome the time you spend in sitting, working at computers and interacting with hand-held devices that create immobility in your spine and move your spine out of its natural alignment. The first class benefits your nervous system, draws fluid into your intervertebral discs and benefits all parts of your back and neck and helps to build bone density. The second class in the series will offer modifications and variations for those with wrist, knee and neck issues as well as options for cat pose in a chair. The third class use the soft foam roller, the slo mo ball and the squash ball to help to keep your fascia hydrated, they help to maintain the mobility, integrity and resilience of your fascia by hydrating your fascia. The fourth class in the series will demonstrate how your nervous system can adapt much for easily when it feels safe. With the use of restorative yoga we can safely increase your range of motion in cat pose.The fifth yoga class uses acupressure and traditional chinese medicine to build your energy reserves and restore harmony and fluidity to your spine and entire being. The sixth yoga class provides options for each of the Ayurvedic doshas bringing balance to kapha, vata and pitta doshas. Finally a savasana for cat pose will allow you to move through your physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual bodies, your chakras, Goddess archetypes, moon phase and ends with a reading from the Radiance Sutras.

Join our Membership Community Today:

Resources: Click Here

 

Letting Go

Throughout this focused living series we have been focused on creating a life of less, but better. This aligns perfectly with the fifth yama of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras aparigraha. Often this yama focuses on letting go of material possessions and that will definitely create space in your life. However with this series we are going deeper in how you create real focus in your life.

This time, creating focus through aparigraha means letting go of parts of our identity, relationships, ways of living and being in the world that are no longer working for us. As I’ve mentioned before, that takes time in contemplation to figure out what that is for you. Take time in meditation and time to journal to look at where you are holding on in relationships, where you are holding on in your work life, and where your current behaviour isn’t working for you.

Spiritual teachings remind us that everything is impermanent. All things — our work, our relationships, our identity, our ways of being in the world –are continually changing and will go through many transformations and deaths in our lifetime. When we try to hang on to the way things were with our identity, our work, our way of being in the world, our relationships, we lose our connection with our True Self. It prevents us from opening up to our rebirth and what the gifts that will enter in the next stage of our life.

There are far more relationships, work opportunities, and activities in the world than we can commit ourselves to. Aparigraha asks us to filter through the many options available to us, let go of even good options and choose the best. Aparigraha reminds us that is not about getting more done. We have to let go of this seductive cultural myth that we can get more done. Instead, what is getting in my way of knowing my True Self in this moment?

We tend to value the things that we already are connected with more than they are worth, so we find them difficult to release. You must ask yourself, if I didn’t already have this in my life, what would I be willing to exchange in terms of my time to get this in my life? If this wasn’t already in my life, what would I be willing to do to get it? or If I didn’t have this opportunity what would I be willing to do to acquire it?

It takes courage to say no, a real strength of conviction to stay grounded in your truth in the face of social pressure. Saying no will feel physically uncomfortable. Courage is the key to letting go. Without courage the choice to let go is only skin deep. We can all talk about living a life that really matters, but only the brave are willing to let go. We have to have a strong sense of internal clarity of what really matters to us so that we can have the conviction to say no to what isn’t bringing us closer to our personal Truth.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Bound Angle Pose or Supta Baddha Konasana, Apanasana or Knee to Chest Pose, Supta Matsyasana or Reclined Bent Knee Twist, Ganesh Mudra, Goddess Victory Squat or Utkata Konasana, Warrior One or Virabhadrasana One, Dolphin Pose or Ardha Pincha Mayurasana, Matsyasana or Fish Pose, Balasana or Child’s Pose, Paschimottanasana or Seated Forward Fold, Savasana or Corpse Pose   

Yoga Props: Bolster, 2 yoga blocks,

Do you have back pain and problems?

It could be that sitting for prolonged periods of time is causing your back pain and back issues.

It is estimated that American adults spend 10 hours a day sitting. That is a lot of time sitting.

Did you know that sitting puts more pressure on your spine than standing? Even more scary is the postural patterns that happen when you spine adjusts to sitting in front of a computer. Some research suggests that 40 percent of people with back pain spend long hours at their computer each day.

In our culture we spend a lot of time sitting, working at computers, and interacting on hand-held devices. When you sit, the disks of your spine get compressed and can lose flexibility over time. Sitting for long periods of time can also increase your risk of herniated disks.

All of these activities (or inactivities) create immobility and move your spine out of its natural alignment.

Practicing yoga poses like cat pose will restore the natural alignment of your spine by moving your spine through flexion, extension, rotation and lateral movement bolstering your body’s support system. By moving your spine through its natural range of motion you will draw fluid into your intervertebral discs creating more shock absorption for your load. When your spine expands and contract as you moves it allows you to absorb blood and nutrients into your intervertebral discs.

Would you like more support in varying your movement patterns? In our membership community I offer my best, value-added, innovative and leading edge research with series of classes like Back, Neck and Nervous System RX.

Neck, Back and Nervous System RX

The series begins with a class that will help to overcome the time you spend in sitting, working at computers and interacting with hand-held devices that create immobility in your spine and move your spine out of its natural alignment. The first class benefits your nervous system, draws fluid into your intervertebral discs and benefits all parts of your back and neck and helps to build bone density. The second class in the series will offer modifications and variations for those with wrist, knee and neck issues as well as options for cat pose in a chair. The third class use the soft foam roller, the slo mo ball and the squash ball to help to keep your fascia hydrated, they help to maintain the mobility, integrity and resilience of your fascia by hydrating your fascia. The fourth class in the series will demonstrate how your nervous system can adapt much for easily when it feels safe. With the use of restorative yoga we can safely increase your range of motion in cat pose.The fifth yoga class uses acupressure and traditional chinese medicine to build your energy reserves and restore harmony and fluidity to your spine and entire being. The sixth yoga class provides options for each of the Ayurvedic doshas bringing balance to kapha, vata and pitta doshas. Finally a savasana for cat pose will allow you to move through your physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual bodies, your chakras, Goddess archetypes, moon phase and ends with a reading from the Radiance Sutras.

Join our Membership Community Today:

Resources