Sun Salutations

Today’s yoga class is designed for the absolute beginner. You can do this class if you have never done a yoga class before in your life. I will give you slow, easy to follow, step-by-step, pose by pose instructions on how to do sun salutations. I will explain to you in detail how exactly to get in and out of each and every pose. Detailed instructions will be given for even the most basic poses and how to breathe. You will be given lots of cues of how to pay attention to your body and where to feel the effects of the yoga poses. You do not have to be athletic, flexible, strong, balanced, skinny or coordinated to do this class. The slow, step-by-step instructions will give you the confidence to let go of your self-judgment and stay focused with commitment and motivation.

Sun Salutation is probably the most famous yoga sequence and there is a good reason for it. Posture by posture, sun salutations are incredibly beneficial for your body. There are 12 names for the sun in sanskrit – the traditional language associated with yoga. Not surprisingly, sun salutations includes 12 yoga postures linked together with breath. Sun salutations are incredibly beneficial for your body and are said to be a complete practice in and of themselves. (With the exception of the fact that there are no twists in sun salutations). Sun salutations improve circulation, stimulate your nervous system and raise your body heat. When you practice sun salutations all of your joints are lubricated. Your spine also experiences a great practice in flexibility. Sun salutations will strengthen your abdominals, your pelvic floor and your back muscles. Sun salutations can clear your mind when you focus on linking the movements with your breath. For the most part, sun salutations are quite an invigorating practice.

Here on planet earth, the sun is our primary source of light. Sun Salutations can be a way for us to connect with our light within and our self-illumination. Sun salutations are a way of honouring the source of light to our planet and our light within or our self-illumination.

When the ancient yogis created this tradition of yoga, they created many of the yoga poses as a reflection of their external world. Poses like the ones we have practiced today, cobra, we created by copying actual cobras that they observed. Likewise, the sun is a metaphor for bowing to our inner light. Surya Namaskar means to bow to the sun or to bow to our inner light.

Let’s look at the benefits of sun salutations posture by posture. You start sun salutations with tadasana or mountain pose. This pose helps you to ground and connect with the present moment. Physically it will allow your feet to connect with the ground, allow you all the benefits of having your feet out of shoes so you can spread your toes, strengthen the arches of your feet, improve your proprioception and balance and strengthen your ankles. This pose also improves the overall alignment of your body and your sense of your body in space. It will give you a chance to connect with your vestibular system sensory system that provides the leading contribution about the sense of balance and spatial orientation for the purpose of coordinating movement with balance.

Next comes standing forward fold or uttanasana. This pose stretches out your hamstrings and calves. Your calves are super short from wearing shoes all the time. Your hamstrings are short whether you are active or sedentary. They shorten from sitting in chairs and from running, walking, cycling and going up and down stairs. This pose will also calm your mind and help relieve stress and anxiety.

From standing forward fold you step back into anjaneyasana or lunge pose.

Gratitude in Action

Over the last couple of weeks in our Yoga for Gratitude series we have reflected on how we can cultivated gratitude in thought and word. In our Gratitude in Thought class we reflected on all the ways that you have cared for your own life and all the elements within your life that help to sustain your life.

In our yoga class on gratitude in word, we learned how to express gratitude when our lives have been enriched by other people’s actions. By recognizing the abundance and life-giving nature of life and expressing how our needs have been met, we offer gratitude. We can also receive gratitude by keeping the celebration alive acknowledging that you are happy that you were able to contribute to another’s well-being.

As practicing gratitude in thought and word becomes a habit we can begin to take grateful action in our lives. Gratitude becomes more than a moment of mindful acknowledgment or expressing thanks. Ralph Marston says, that the real power of gratitude comes from making meaningful and valuable contributions from those things for which you are grateful.

When you put your appreciation into action through creative purpose, gratitude in action is born. Gratitude in action acknowledges the abundance of your life and brings it to life. As yogis we have the opportunity to live our dharma and become agents of collective transformation in the world. By recognizing the good in your life and then turning your abundance into unique value for others, you are offering your gift to the world.

Tim and I have a friend here in Victoria that we know through Trinity’s soccer named Mica. Mica has a gratitude in action practice called Weekly 10 Spot. Weekly 10 Spot is a practice of giving a $10 grocery card to somebody less fortunate and learning and sharing a little bit about their circumstances.

You can find out more about Mica’s gratitude in action practice on instagram at villagepiece or on his website 

I know so many of you are recognizing your abundance and gifts and creatively expressing them in the world just like Mica. Take a moment now to reflect with gratitude on all the good in your life and how you turn your abundance into unique value for others. Now ask yourself, what would you most like to receive from this yoga class, how could your yoga practice today help you most? What would you like to create, sustain, release or rebirth in your life?

Resource: 

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Supta Padangusthasana or Hand to Big Toe Pose, Counter Rotation Series, Modified Spinal Energy Series, Tree Pose or Vrikshasana, Breath of Joy, Humble Warrior or Baddha Virabhadrasana, Warrior Three or Virabhadrasana Three Pose, Rabbit or Sasangasana, Locust or Salabhasana, Janu Sirsasana or Head Beyond Knee Pose, Savasana or Corpse Pose

Yoga Props: blanket, meditation cushion or chair, yoga blocks, yoga strap

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If you have received value from this 9-class series on gratitude, you can show your appreciation by making a donation. You can also contribute through your time by commenting in the comments section.

Question for the comments:

Take a moment now to reflect with gratitude on all the good in your life and how do you turn offer your abundance in a way that provides unique value to others?

Today we focused on cultivating our creativity, abundance and taking action through gratitude. This relies on connecting with the energy of your chakras.

Are you tired?

Do you want to experience less fatigue and have more energy? Do you have problems falling asleep, staying asleep and or wake up in the morning without feeling refreshed? Do you hit a slump in the middle of the afternoon feeling tired, sluggish and generally dragging your but? The answer could be in your fascia.

You may be wondering what, what is my fascia?

Fascia is a 3D web that seamlessly connects everything from your head to your toe and skin and bones. Fascia surrounds every structure in your body including your bones, organs, muscles and nerves, and even makes up the fluid environment around your cells. It comes in a broad range of densities as fine as cotton candy to as thick as a leather strap.

Your fascia not only connects everything in your body, but it also creates a flexible framework in your body that compartmentalizes and separates everything in your body. Here is where the example of the orange is often given.

Your connective tissue is highly intelligent. It constantly morphs and adapts according to your movements and positions to support your bones, joints and organs. It is actually a communication network. Your fascia creates a 3D interactive environment that supports and informs your cells about mechanical and biomechanical changes around them. It also permits the transportation of oxygen, nutrients and waste from cell to cell. In fact, connective tissue is the environment in which most of your sensory nerves live and work.

So what does this matter if I want to be less tired and have more energy?

Well according to Brook Thomas, the more rebound effect you have in your fascia, the less muscle power you use all day long which allows you to fatigue less rapidly.

When you nourish the suppleness of your fascia, you can restore the rebound effect of your fascia.

So if you are tired all the time, suffering from ongoing fatigue or would just like more energy, join us for the leading edge research and innovative classes using the soft foam roller, slo mo ball and soft squash ball in our membership community where I will show you how to restore the rebound effect of your fascia. I can help you have more energy and move more efficiently in very little time with these tools

Nonviolent Communication

In the words of the Buddha, awakening and freedom are found:

When sitting, standing, walking and lying down,

through right speech, right action, right livelihood,

inwardly and outwardly,

with the whole body, feelings, mind, and relationships;

in solitude and community;

in prison, hut, farm or palace,

in times of war or peace;

in sickness or health.

Today we are focusing on right speech or nonviolent communication. This refers both to the way you speak to yourself and others. Your speech needs to be congruent in your body, mind, feelings, and relationships. As yogis we are familiar with tuning into all these layers of our being – our physical body, our thoughts, our emotions, our energy and our spirit and noticing whether these layers of our being are in harmony with our speech and communication both with ourselves and others. Most importantly, as the Buddha points out the conditions of your life don’t need to be perfect for you to engage in this practice of right speech as he says you can be living in a prison, hut, farm or palace, at war or peace, sickness or health).

Our current culture of system sensory overload dulls our senses and overpowers our inner value system. Jack Kornfield says that Buddha taught that peace is possible both individually and collectively but it depends on skillful causes and conditions. Inner peace requires mindfulness, compassion and respect. Outwardly it grows from those same conditions. The practice of right speech creates an moral character that aligns with your inner values and the creation of harmony in the communities with which you are involved.

A spiritual life is not about sitting in blissful meditation high on a mountain top. Rather transformational consciousness requires a lot more discipline and practice on a day to day basis in our real lives. Spirituality requires an honest, courageous look at real-life situations, your family of origin and your place in your society around you.

As we mature in our spiritual practice we begin to give up idealistic notions of escaping our day to day life, saving ourselves or the world and realize that our relationships and the discipline of right speech can be a transformative, consciousness raising practice.

Eventually everything we seek to avoid must be included in our spiritual practice, nothing can be left behind. Your spiritual practice does not require you to go to India and meditate on a mountain top. When you practice finding peace in your heart, offering peace in your home through right speech, your practice becomes filled with maturity and integrity.

Right speech and non-violent communication means offering gratitude, loving kindness, compassion and forgiveness to those around us – and to ourselves.

Your life is your practice. In Jack Kornfield’s book, Bringing Home the Dharma, I read about the lives of early forest lineages in Thailand that included “soothsayers.” I can imagine that the soothsayers practiced right speech, compassionate communication and gratitude with their words. There are hundreds of ways to practice in your life. If you speak, in your day, bring awareness to how your speech reflects your practice.

Jerry Koch Gonzalez, a teacher of non-violent communication says that “when we express gratitude we celebrate how our life has been enriched by other people’s specific actions. When we express gratitude we reinforce our orientation to that which is life-giving. When we express gratitude we offer a gift to the giver – the knowledge that they have contributed to our needs being met.”

He also suggests that when we receive gratitude it is another opportunity to keep the celebration alive through ou...

Positive Thoughts

Did you know that your body can be one of the best tools to help you think more positively? A 2004 study on “The Effects of Upright and Slumped Postures on the Recall of Positive and Negatives Thoughts” published in the Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback Journal (29 no. 3) by V.E. Wilson and E. Peper, showed that sitting upright helped people generate positive thoughts, while slumping made negative thoughts more compelling.

Today we are going to support our body’s in opening up to more upright postures to help you think more positively. All day long we are slumped over screens from our computers, to cellphones and personal devices.

In our membership community we use props in our restorative classes in our postures and pranayama section. Current research shows that use of props in supported postures that allow your nervous system to relax and feel safe will give you far greater gains in flexibility than stretching.

Join our Membership Community

Resources: Bo Forbes Yoga and Emotional Balance

 

 

Think Gratitude

This is the seventh class in our yoga for gratitude series and will focus on gratitude for thought. Drawing on book two verse 33 and 34 of the yoga sutras we will focus on cultivating the opposite when our thoughts are filled with self-judgment, criticism, shame and unworthiness. This class is inspired by the gratitude and compassion teachings of Jack Kornfield.

Jack Kornfield points out that it can be quite normal to be overcome with regular, repeated destructive thoughts of self-judgment, criticism, shame and unworthiness as you quiet your thoughts and drop inwards and turn off the noise of the external world with practices of yoga and meditation

Chapter Two Verses 33 and 34 of the Yoga Sutras say:

II: 33 When presented with disquieting thoughts or feelings, cultivate an opposite, elevated attitude, this is Pratipaksha Bhavana.

II: 34 The desire to act upon unwholesome thoughts or actions or to cause or condone others toward these thoughts or actions is preventable, this is also Pratipaksha Bhavana.

One of the ways we can cultivate the opposite thought is through gratitude. Cultivating gratitude can be an antidote that transform your unhealthy, destructive, negative thoughts. It is a way to change the channel. The new phrases of gratitude can be the healthy and simple phrases.

Jack Kornfield says that gratitude “is a gracious acknowledgment of all that sustains us, a bow to our blessings, great and small, an appreciation of the moments of good fortune that sustain our life every day.”

Continue to sit with ease and dignity in your body. Allow yourself to be comfortable, open, and breathe with a free and easy heart. Let your gratitude to begin with yourself, and acknowledge that all these years you have cared for your own life.

Now begin to expand your circle outwards and acknowledge all that has supported you in your own care:

With gratitude I remember the people, animals, plants, insects, creatures of the sky and sea, air and water, fire and earth, all whose joyful exertion blesses my life every day.

With gratitude I remember the care and labor of a thousand generations of elders and ancestors who came before me.

I offer my gratitude for the safety and well-being I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the blessing of this earth I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the measure of health I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the family and friends I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the community I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the teachings and lessons I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the life I have been given.

Reflect on how these teachings touch you in your life right now. Form an intention of what you would like to receive from this class. What are you creating, sustaining, releasing or rebirthing in your life right now and how can your yoga practice help you do that?

The yoga postures and asanas in today’s class will release your neck, shoulder and hip joints. They will creates flexibility in your hands, wrists fingers, wrists, and shoulders as all as your ankles, knees and hips.. Our peak postures today will benefit you ankle, knee, hip, wrist and shoulder joints.

We will go through several yoga postures that will alleviates stiffness in your lower back and some kinds of backache. You will stretch your hamstrings, calves, and inner thighs, chest, lungs, shoulders and abdomen. Yoga postures will strengthen your spine, firm your glutes and stimulate your abdominal organs.

The postures in this yoga class help to relieve arthritis pain in your knees and hips. They relieve back pain and stiffness between the vertebrae of your spine and can be useful for slipped discs.

Welcome Difficulty

A few weeks ago in my yoga class my teacher, Carly Forest, shared a teaching which opened and softened a lot within me. She suggested offering a prayer, “May I open to difficulty.” For all the controlling, and planning, there is no way to avoid difficulty. It is going to arise in your life. The more we resist the difficulty, the more we create resistance in our bodies, minds, emotions, hearts and spirits. What if we welcomed the difficulty. What if we gave thanks for the difficulty?

This week as I was doing my research for this class, I read a story about Chuck. Chuck was born with a severed spine due to a delivery room mishap. The doctors told Chuck’s Mom that he probably wouldn’t live into his twenties. Chuck’s Mom simply told the doctors, “You don’t know me.”

Chuck is paralyzed from the waist down. As a child, Chuck’s mother reminded him that Franklin D. Roosevelt ran the war from a wheelchair. What stands out to me about Chuck’s story is his complete surrender to what is, his resilience of spirit and his lack of resistance or wanting things to be other than they are.

Chuck decided that his self-worth is not dependent on whether he sees the world standing or sitting. He tells school kids that success does not depend on your arms and legs, but your heart and your head. In a body-centric, image-heavy world of yoga, I think it is important to remember our hearts. While images of flashy yoga poses splash our mediasphere can we remember Nischala Joy Devi’s beautiful translation of the opening line of the yoga sutras? “With humility (an open heart and mind), we embrace the sacred study of Yoga.” Yoga Sutras 1:1

Chuck says he has never prayed that he would someday walk. Instead he prays for the ability to figure things out, that he has a bottomless reservoir of resilience and strength. He says he has let go of things over which he has no control. I receive many requests from yogis all over the world with body-centered requests that honestly, just don’t matter in the grand scheme of our lives. I want to be able to touch my heels to the ground in down dog. I want to be able to stand on my head. I want to be able to do wheel pose. I want to go faster in my yoga class. I want to be able to touch my toes. Let’s reflect on Chuck’s example, drop deep inside and ask ourselves, what is the deeper intention and purpose for practicing yoga. What is the aspiration deep within your heart that keeps you coming back to your yoga mat?

Grateful people trust life enough to give it a second chance. Many people become undone by crisis. Grateful people are not. Grateful people recover more quickly from cardiovascular speech tests and also in their day to day life. People who practice gratitude prior to an adversity are better at adaptive coping. The connections and bonds that have been emphasized during their regular gratitude checks offer strength both during and after a crisis.

Reflect on a challenging time in your life. What is one situation that you have been able to turn around in your life?

Resource: Thank You Power by Deborah Norville

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Bridge Pose or Setu Bandhasana, Side Plank or Vasisthasana, Cat Pose or Marjaryasana, Plank Pose or Utthita Chaturanga Dandasana, Boat Pose or Navasana, Varaha Mudra in Sukhasana or Easy Pose or Sukhasana, Tadasana or Mountain Pose, Warrior Three or Virabhadrasana Three, Dolphin, Upward Facing Dog or Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Matsyendrasana or Half Lord of the Fishes Twist, Turtle or Kurmasana, Savasana or Corpse Pose

Yoga Props: yoga block, yoga blanket, meditation cushion or chair, bolster

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Beginners Start Yoga with Namaste Yoga

Are you new to yoga? Have you always wanted to begin a yoga practice but don’t know where to start? This August we are going to be leading a beginner yoga challenge right here and on Instagram. As luck would have it, Namaste Yoga has 31 beginner yoga classes. One for each day of the month.

Each day we will be posting a beginner yoga class from the list of 31 beginner yoga classes below on Instagram. Follow me @drmelissawest on Instagram and follow the hashtag #beginningwithnamasteyoga You can go through the list below, and each day, post you photo of you doing this episode of Namaste Yoga. I’m so looking forward to seeing all of your creative photos, yoga spaces and the ways you are practicing a Namaste Yoga beginner classes pn each day of the month in August. You may join at any time.

When you post your picture add the tag #beginningwithnamasteyoga and remember to tag me @drmelissawest so I can see you and comment on your posts.

I so look forward to connecting with you and seeing your posts. Feel free to share with your family, friends and any co-workers who have been talking about wanting to start a yoga practice.

The Fruit of Gratitude

: We know from Namaste Yoga, that the stories of the Hindu pantheon and Hindu mythology are no strangers to gratitude and spirituality. When Ganesh was challenged by his brother to a race around the universe, instead he showed his devotion to his parents by circling them, saying, you are my entire universe.

Hanuman lived his life in gratitude to Ram. His attitude of devotion is another example of gratitude.  On our mala beads, there are 109 beads, for chanting mantra 108 times, on the 109th bead, you stop and take a moment to thank your teacher.

Today I am going to share with you a story of Shabari, a female saint who was a devotee to Rama. I learned this story from my friend Indie, you can find her at her website here and her YouTube channel here.

Shabari was the daughter of a hunter who was supposed to be married. The tribe she belonged to had gathered sacrificial animals to be sacrificed at her wedding. She was filled with such compassion for the animals that she decided to flee her tribe to avoid their killing and went to live a life of devotion to Rama. She eventually grew old, with only one desire to meet her beloved Rama.

One day, she found out that Rama would be coming to grant her wish. She began collecting fruits to offer her beloved. In order to select the most sweet fruit for Rama, she took a bit of each one, setting aside only the best for Rama. According to the rules of prasadam (offering food) it is definitely not ok to offer food that has been tasted!

Shabari was so intention on finding the best, most sweet fruit for Rama, that she totally forgot. When Rama arrived with his brother, Lakshmana, Lakshmana was appalled at the sight of all the half eaten fruit for Rama!

Rama on the other hand recognized the purity in Shabari’s actions, he was filled with gratitude for her act of devotion. He said that one devotee like Shabari is better than millions of others who simply pray to him for personal gain and materialistic motives.

Rama was filled with gratitude for Shabari’s devotion. He looked deep into the heart of his devotee Shabari and not at the superficial details of the food that she was offering. In this story Rama shows us that as long as our intentions and hearts are filled with love, that is all that really matters.

Today we will practice poses that will open our hearts and fill us with gratitude.

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Cat Pose or Marjaryasana, Lunge Pose or Anjaneyasana, Table to Child’s to Downward Facing Dog Flow or Balasana to Adho Mukha Svanasana Vinyasa, Hridya Mudra in Easy Pose, Dancer Pose or Natarajasana, Wide Legged Standing Forward Fold or Prasarita Padottanasana, Dhanurasana or Bow Pose, Dying Warrior, Revolved Head Beyond Knee Pose or Parivrtta Janu Sirsasana, Savasana or Corpse Pose

Yoga Props: yoga blocks, meditation cushion, folded blanket or chair, yoga strap, bolster

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Question to leave your comments about below: What fruits of gratitude are you offering to another this week?

You can show your appreciation for this series of classes on gratitude which is going to take us on a journey towards feeling better about your life,

A surprising way to become more flexible

: Did you know that your brain encodes strong emotions such as stress, anxiety and anger as acute stress? You may not have considered those day in and day out stressors the same as life or death situations, but your nervous system doesn’t actually know the difference! Your nervous system can not differentiate between outer danger and inner emergencies. Your inner environment which is made up of thoughts, feelings, sensations and emotions is just the same as almost being hit by a car to your nervous system.

Even a perceived danger, an imagined one will kick your nervous system into high gear in just the same way as your nervous system is designed to help you lift a car off your first born child. So if you continually worry that you are going to lose your job, this is going to chronically amplify your nervous system.

The culture we live in – with its continual stream of social media and consumer culture – endless information can also trigger an endless stream of cortisol in our body. Just because we have become used to the constant overwhelming demands and no longer recognize them as stress, doesn’t mean they are not stressful. When our body’s are constantly in fight-flight- and freeze response, this causes muscular tension.

So what is the solution? When we teach our nervous system to relax through yoga, our nervous system can start to tap into our parasympathetic nervous system and come out of overdrive. Our muscles can begin to release tension naturally, relax and our flexibility will begin to increase.

Restorative yoga is particularly useful for this. We also have several restorative yoga classes in our membership community. Restorative yoga uses props to minimize muscle tension and maximize muscle tension and relaxation. It reduces sensory stimulation and keeps your nervous system calm all things that reduce anxiety.

Waning to the Dark Moon

72 minutes of glorious restoration with every prop you own. Ahhhhhhh.

Yoga for Adrenal Fatigue

A short restorative class (20 minutes) that uses a bolster and a chair.

Short Restorative Class

This short restorative class (18 minutes) has been nick named the Winter Hibernation class.

Who is Arjuna?

In this class you will get to meet one of the main characters of the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna is a warrior prince in the Bhagavad Gita and you will learn who is character represents. This 28 minute class is a restorative class and you will need an eye pillow, bolster, and a blanket.

Resource: Bo Forbes Yoga for Emotional Balance