Yoga with Melissa

Restorative Yoga

This daily Yoga Practice during Stay at Home Covid-19 Quarantine is designed for this time of uncertainty. I have been listening to your requests, most of you would just like a daily practice for when you are staying at home, some of you on quarantine because of covid-19, practicing social isolation. This is a yoga class you can practice everyday when you are confined to your house. It combines hatha yoga with restorative yoga. It will ground and center you, connect you with your core, help you to find your inner foundation and then allow you to find some inner stillness amidst the chaos. 

If you are experiencing cabin fever and restlessness this daily yoga will help you to feel strong, balanced and resilient. My plan is to help you release the fight or flight chemicals that naturally get released by our body in times of stress. We will focus on contralaterally loaded movement or cross body movements not only to fully and reflexively engage the core musculature but also to create new nerve pathways in your brain, connecting the right and left hemispheres in your brain helping you to focus, think more clearly and problem solve in challenging times. Brain yoga, yoga for focus 

Namaste, Melissa

Yoga Nidra

This 30 minute yoga nidra will allow you to stop comparing yourself to your past self, to a future idealized version of yourself and to others. Through this meditation you will be guided through the opposites in your body: left side, right side, front and back, left ear, right ear, left eye, right eye, left arm right arm, left leg, right left, to connect with the wholeness that you already are.

In yoga nidra, we open to the possibilities that opposite experiences are all part of the whole. Instead of controlling our experience and pushing for good and running for bad, we question the binary survival system. Each opposite informs the other. The bottom defines the top, lightness defines darkness, each is a part of the other. Through yoga nidra we can become rooted in the stillness beyond comparison. In the absence of doing we remember that we are already whole.

This yoga nidra meditation is part of our perfectionism series. You may have perfectionist tendencies if you have excessive concern with details, you are extremely devoted to work and productivity at the expense of leisure, you are excessively conscientious, you are thrifty, you are inflexible and rigid when it comes to morals and ethics, or you are reluctant to delegate tasks or relinquish control. However, as we have learned throughout this series, perfectionism is the result of the culture and families we grew up in, so we do not need to be perfectionist about our perfectionism.

Resource: Present Perfect Samov Pavel

Hatha Yoga

In this 30 minute hatha yoga class we will use 2 blocks to cultivate core strength and back strength. We will practice self-forgiveness by opening to the possibility that mistakes are part of the process of learning. The poses in this class will open your hips, strengthen your core, take your spine through extension, flexion and rotation.

Perfectionists are inwardly oriented to expect themselves to be perfect. When they make a mistake, they are hard on themselves. A single small mistake feels like it wipes out their flawless record.

If we only think in terms of absolute success and utter failure then there can never be small steps towards our success. From this point of view, there is actually something called a partial success on our way to getting better at things.

In this class we will welcome mistakes as part of our body’s way of learning.

Resource: Present Perfect Samov Pavel

Hatha Yoga

In this 30 minute hatha yoga class we will let go of controlling the perfect outcome and be curious about all the ways we can move our hip and shoulder joints. Options and modifications will be given from a chair if you have knee issues. This class will move your shoulders through a full range of motion. You will also practice moving your hips through flexion, extension and external rotation. We will use a block to add some additional exploration to our movement sequencing.

When we demand perfection and excellence of ourselves all the time, we become controlling. In our bodies this feels like tension. In our minds this feels like pressure. In our emotions this feels like anger and frustration. In our energy this feels like stagnation. In our spirits this feels like lack of vision and creativity.

In this hatha yoga class we will challenge ourselves to let go of controlling the perfect outcome, the well-worn path and falling back on what we know. When we open ourselves to trying new things, we can cultivate curiosity. Instead of being the expert we can be curious about what it would like to be spontaneous and be a beginner again. This will allow us to move from stagnation and bitterness to enthusiasm and inquisitiveness.

Resource: Present Perfect Samov Pavel

Yoga in Your Pajamas

Today we are going to do a cozy restorative yoga class in our pajamas. This pyjama yoga Friday is to celebrate some national media coverage that we received on CBC in an article called: Privacy and pyjamas: Why doing online yoga at home is catching on.

Restorative yoga is a style of yoga that allows us to recover from the exhaustion of the relentless pace that we keep through artificial stimulation such as anxiety, body tension, caffeine, sugar, and supplements to activate your sympathetic nervous system. All of this masks a deep exhaustion that lies underneath our constant doing mode.

Long days spent working and studying, high emotional and mental stress, not getting enough deep sleep through the night, and spending too much time indoors contributes to our exhaustion. Overworking, self sacrifice, overextending yourself, burning the candle at both ends, sitting all day are other contributors to the exhaustion. Living in our minds with information overload and an inner dialogue that can be unkind is also exhausting. All of these are reasons for restorative yoga in addition to the traditional reasons of healing from illness, chronic illness or injuries that require restorative rest.

CBC article: Privacy and pyjamas: Why doing online yoga at home is catching on.

Click here to read

Tight Hips

As yogis we spend a lot of time stretching out our hips but in reality we actually need to be spending time strengthening our hips. In this video I am going to show you how to test if your hip is weak and a hip strengthening exercise that is part of my progressions for preparing for malasana pose video.

Today I am going to show you how to test if your hip flexors are weak and then show you one way to strengthen your hip flexors that I use in the malasana prep class that I filmed for our members.

Malasana pose requires mobility and stability of the hips and pelvis. It requires a deep bend at the hips bringing your legs up to the troso/your torso to your legs. This mobility and stability of your hips/pelvis will be supported movements that include both strengthening hip flexion as well as the mobility of the hip. In the class I filmed for our members, I did this with several yoga inspired movements using mini bands and blocks.

Once we test out if your hip flexor is weak from overstretching in yoga poses like lunge pose/anjaneyasana, dancer pose, bow pose or warrior one pose I will show you a hip flexor strengthening exercise that will also strengthen your core using the mini band.

How to Progress Malasana Pose /Garland Pose in Yoga

Malasana pose offers mobility and stability of your ankles, knees, hips and spine. It is a wonderful opening for your back, groin and increases circulation to your digestive and menstrual systems, relieving sciatica, menstrual cramps and constipation.

This pose can be incredibly challenging so we will focus on progressions that target:

1. Mobility and Stability of your ankles. Malasana pose requires dorsi-flexion of your ankles meaning that you have to draw your toes back towards your shins. Often restrictions in your achilles tendon, calf muscles, especially the deeper soleus muscle will prevent you from being able to lower your heels to the ground. While sometimes restrictions in this pose are skeletal and structural, we will do some myofascial release using a foam roller to help lower your ankles to the ground.

2. Mobility and stability of the knees. Garland pose requires deep flexion of your knees, in other words, a deep knee bend. There are several movements in this class that will build the safe alignment of knee flexion with the mini bands including quad strength, hamstring strength and glute strength to support your knees, but also your hips and ankles.

3. Mobility and stability of the hips and pelvis. Malasana pose requires a deep bend at the hips bringing your legs up to the troso/your torso to your legs. This mobility and stability of your hips/pelvis will be supported movements that include both strengthening hip flexion as well as the mobility of the hip using yoga blocks and mini bands.

4. In malasana your spine needs to be able to move into axial extension. This is a fancy way of saying that your spine needs to be able to lengthen up towards the sky. Movements that develop strong core muscles and erector spinae muscles - the muscles along either side of your spine along your back, will support you in lengthening your spine in this pose.

Thanks so much for watching and if you would like access to the full video with step by step progressions into malasana pose including ankle stability and mobility, mobility and stability of your knees, core strength and back strength in addition to hip mobility and strength then I will leave a direct link for members as well as a link to join our membership community.

Yin Yoga

You may have perfectionist tendencies if you have excessive concern with details, you are extremely devoted to work and productivity at the expense of leisure, you are excessively conscientious, you are thrifty, you are inflexible and rigid when it comes to morals and ethics, or you are reluctant to delegate tasks or relinquish control. However, as we have learned throughout this series, perfectionism is the result of the culture and families we grew up in, so we do not need to be perfectionist about our perfectionism.

This week we will focus on how impatience shows up as one of our perfectionist tendencies. A couple of weeks ago, one of my students told me that when she heard that we were going to be in a pose for 10-15 minutes she thought that is way too long to just rest “I don’t need rest” and she almost got up to fast forward to the more active yoga poses. Impatience shows up in many ways in our lives. It is a rejection of the pace of a given process, because you think it should be unfolding faster.

This 1 hour yin yoga class will pull and pressurize the tissues of your body and meridian system in a relaxed and comfortable way. This class is part of our perfectionism series. If you have ever struggled with patience, the teachings on perfectionism in this class will open you up in a mindful way to become comfortable and relaxed with waiting.

We will begin our class with centering and go over the principles of yin, specifically how the principle of staying for awhile relates to patience and the recognition that things unfold in their own time. While you are holding your yin yoga poses for five minutes I will offer strategies for becoming more relaxed and comfortable with patience, from how to be with waiting, to opening to process awareness. In this class you will focus on wide-knee child’s pose, sleeping swan pose (modifications will be given for knee issues), bananasana, broken wing pose and savasana. As always we will close our class with poetry to open us to the the perfection of patience.

Slow Flow

This 30 minute slow flow hatha yoga class will use a block to be present and open your awareness to how we are part of the flow of change in the world. The poses will focus on core strength, back strength, and leg strength. Moving slowly through these flowing hatha yoga poses with a block from bridge pose, side plank, boat, lunge, tadasana, warrior one, standing forward fold and reclined twist will remind us that “mindfulness is timefulness” (Pavel Somov).

Throughout this series on perfectionism we have talked about how perfectionism is often future minded. We imagine a future that is better than your present moment experience. In many ways, perfectionism is a rejection of our present moment experience in an exchange for some kind of imagined better future.

Time is something that we perceive. It can feel like was have all the time in the world or we can feel like we are racing against time. In our current culture there is a lot of time terrorism inflicted on us. There is a tremendous amount of time urgency created in advertising in order to get you to buy now. Time is presented as running out. All of these things are an attempt to commercialize and commodify your time. I would encourage you to slow down, make peace with time and embrace the ordinary perfection of the present moment.

Being present means being present in time. Awareness happens against the backdrop of time. We are all part of the flow of change. We experience ourselves in relationship to a world that is constantly in process and movement. When we slow down enough we can notice ourselves being in time.

Yoga Nidra

This yoga nidra meditation will support you in cultivating self-love and unconditional self-acceptance, worthiness and value. This yoga nidra is part of our yoga series on Perfectionism. I would highly recommend checking out the rest of the series as well as Pavel Somov’s book Present Perfect.

This guided yoga nidra meditation will support you in letting go of judgment and comparison and open to the acceptance that is available in the present moment. This yoga nidra includes a body scan, breathing, body awareness, sensory awareness and teachings on self-acceptance, self-love, unconditional worthiness and value.

I want to acknowledge you for taking this time to cultivate self love and recognize your unconditional value and worthiness. Looking after your own well-being from moment to moment, being your own support and companion is a beautiful act of self-love and self-service.

Not only are you cultivating self love as it is expressed in you and through your day but also your awareness of how it is expressed in each living being in your life. Thank you for taking this time out of your day to cultivate this self-love.

Member Audio Download of Yoga Nidra for Self Love

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Yoga Perfectionism Series

Restorative Yoga

This restorative yoga class is going to leave you feeling renewed and rejuvenated.

Chronic fatigue can leave you feeling tired, sleepy, experiencing headaches, dizziness, muscle aches, difficulty making decisions, irritable, moody, difficulty focusing, and low motivation.

The restorative yoga poses in this class will gently invert your body and bring your body into gentle supported back bends to restore your energy. By letting go of our addiction to compulsive doing, we can rest our seeking mind and find the inner freedom of authentic rest and being-ness.

Resting deeply through this supported yoga sequence for chronic fatigue will bring back your energy, leaving you feeling nourished, refreshed and whole from the inside out.

Conscious resting through restorative yoga is self-kindness. It is a way we can offer ourselves unconditional warmth, openness and care.

Join us for this restorative yoga class which will be deeply healing for your body, mind and heart and rejuvenating on all levels of your being.