Yoga with Melissa

Yin Yoga

This yin yoga class will help to support highly sensitive people with overstimulation through the urinary bladder meridian line with lots of yin yoga poses for the urinary bladder meridian line. These are yin yoga poses that focus on the hamstrings. Because of all the straight legged forward folds, this class is generally not appropriate for those with back problems, herniated discs or sciatica although modifications will be given.

Our bladder meridian runs from the inside corners of our eyes, over the top of our head, along either side of our spine, along the backs of our legs, and ends at the outside of the baby toe. It is the longest and most complex meridian line in our body.

Our bladder meridian channel is related to the autonomic nervous system because it runs along the back of the body with two parallel branches flowing along either side of the spine. The four branches of the bladder meridian influence our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Because the highly sensitive person is prone to overstimulation it is not unusual for our sympathetic nervous system to be overly-activated, putting us in a continual state of fight or flight. In this class we will be stimulating the bladder meridian line to connect with the restful, restorative parasympathetic nervous system.

In today´s yin yoga class we will create an abundant balance in our internal bank so that we have a large cushiony reserve from which to lean into when our delicate nervous system gets overstimulated. When we have energy stored away, in reserve it will help us to meet life: the sounds, the sights, the smells with greater ease.

7 days of yoga to relieve anxiety

Elaine Aron Ph.D. Clinical Researcher and Psychologist of the Highly Sensitive Person : Link

Restorative Yoga

Over the last two weeks in the yoga for highly sensitive people series we have focused on how highly sensitive people process more, more deeply and how they become easily overstimulated. As such, restorative yoga is a perfect practice that will give highly sensitive people the time to rest and digest.

In a restorative yoga class we use props to fully support the body into completely relaxing so that our bodies can release accumulated tension. Props like eye pillows reduce the amount of visual stimulus, silence reduces the noise and long slow breathing give you the space to recover from over stimulation.

The guiding principle of a restorative yoga class is that it creates release. Release from doing into being. In each restorative yoga pose we will use blankets, bolsters and blocks to support your body fully so that you can release physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual tension. Once we set up each restorative yoga pose, with the props and you are well supported, you will be invited to go on an internal retreat facilitated by silence and the passing of time so that you can experience deep relaxation.

Elaine Aron Ph.D. Clinical Researcher and Psychologist of the Highly Sensitive Person

Yin Yoga

Do you find you get overstimulated in large crowds, noisy environments or if you have too much to do and not enough time to do it in? You may be a HSP and if so this YIN yoga class for HSP and the small intestine meridian is going to be medicine for your deepest Self.

If you are new here, this class is the second class in part of a series, so if you haven’t done the first class then go to the first class now:

This yin yoga class will focus on the small intestine meridian to help with the overstimulation that highly sensitive people experience.

We will also explore the ways that the four principles of yin yoga: finding your appropriate edge, being still, softening and staying in the poses for five minutes in this class can help you to stimulate the small intestine meridian and deal with the overstimulation that is part of the highly sensitive person’s day to day experience.

The small intestine is about sorting the pure from the impure.

This is not only about taking the best nutrients from our food and moving along the waste, but also digesting the best of the mental, emotional and energetic of our lives and letting go of the rest.

Because highly sensitive people process more and more deeply, making sure that the small intestine meridian system is balanced can help support the overstimulation that they experience.

Physically this class will stimulate the upper back and shoulders.

I want to acknowledge the depth of awareness that you offer as a highly sensitive person.

You process your worlds more thoroughly than 80% of the population. You pick up on small things that others may not notice.

These details give you insight. They make you the compassionate and tenderhearted person that you are.

7 days of yoga to relieve anxiety

Elaine Aron Ph.D. Clinical Researcher and Psychologist of the Highly Sensitive Person Click Here

Yoga for Highly Sensitive People

Over the next several weeks I have planned a series of yoga classes for the highly sensitive person to support them in overwhelm, emotions, empathy, exhaustion, and sensitivity. Today we will begin our yoga journey for the highly sensitive person with the exhaustion that comes from the way that highly sensitive people think.

HSP is rooted in our physiology, it is a real thing. The 20 % of the population found in 100 species besides humans including monkeys, fruit flies, and pumpkin seed sunfish have different genes. 10/78 dopamine genes are specific to those who are highly sensitive out of the hundreds of genes that govern personality.

This particular class is a yin yoga class which focuses on the spleen meridian. Stimulating the spleen meridian line supports the highly sensitive people (hsp) because the spleen meridian out of balanced will dwell on or focus too much on a topic, overthinking, which leads to fatigue. This is basically the HSP experience. Processing everything so deeply that it leads to fatigue.

This yin yoga class for the spleen meridian will ease the overthinking mind and restore energy. Join me for the fascinating clinical research and psychological studies, including MRIs that explain the experience of highly sensitive people along with yin yoga poses to support their everyday experience.

7 days of yoga to relieve anxiety: Click Here

Elaine Aron Ph.D. Clinical Researcher and Psychologist of the Highly Sensitive Person : Click Here for more info on Elaine

 

Release for Hip Flexors

In this 60 minute hatha yoga class with self myofascial release for your hip flexors you are going to learn about the amazing sensory world of fascia and mechanoreceptors, specifically: pacinian mechanorecptors.

This hatha yoga class for hip flexors will combine the long holds of hatha yoga with self myofascial release to increase length, reduce tension and improve the strength and integrity of your hip flexor muscles. This class is fantastic for people who spend a lot of time sitting as well as athletes such as runners who tend to have tight hip flexor muscles. I have chosen some well known yoga poses for the hip flexors from lunge pose to warrior one, plus some hatha yoga poses that you may not normally think of when it comes to releasing that posas muscle such as reverse plank and bridge pose.

Join me for this full length, full body hatha yoga class with the latest research on self myofascial release and the best of self myofascial release techniques for your hip flexors.

Your fascia is not just a kind of connective tissue that acts as a scaffolding to hold your body together. It is an exquisitely sensitive system that responds to your every movement, emotion, and thought you have throughout the day.

Fascia is one of the largest and richest sensory organs of your human body. The active sensory fibers of the fascial system are called mechanoreceptors. In other words, connective tissue does far more than connect us altogether, it is an intelligent lining that can feel itself and knows where it is in space.

Mechanoreceptors are distributed throughout your tissues like antennae which are sensitive to and monitor your movement. In essence they say: Hey! Where am I in relation to everything else?

Mechanoreceptors are sensors of different types of sensitivity within the fascial network. They are situated in your tissues, mostly at the joints, along the fascia at the bones and between the layers of fascia. These mechanoreceptors can detect the most subtle shifts in motion and changes in terrain. They sense, communicate and respond to variations in temperature, tension and torsion (which is a fancy word for twisting).

There are different types of mechanoreceptors in the layers and joints through the tissues with a variety of sensitivities to a variety of subtle movements or forces on or through the structure. When we do self-myofascial release like we are doing in this hatha yoga class for the hip flexors we are affecting the pacinian mechanoreceptors. These are responsive to the pressure and movement of local proprioceptive attention.

So in summary, in this class on self-myofascial release of the hip flexors we will focus on the sensory nature of the fascial tissues, both in terms of how we perceive our inner and outer worlds and our sense of inner and outer self.

If you would like a PDF of MY favourite props and how to use them in a 10 week series of videos not available anywhere else on the web, go to www.melissawest.com/props and put in your email address the box.

Our members will be enjoying an entire month dedicated to self myofascial release in our membership community with our myofascial release classes and programs.

Link for members: Click Here

Link to Become a Member: Click Here

Hatha Yoga

This 60 minute full length, neck and shoulder self myofascial release hatha yoga class combines the best of hatha yoga and self myofascial release. Based on the latest, most up to date research on myofascial release we will attend to myofascial tissue of your neck and shoulders that have been misaligned due to trauma, injury, poor movement patterns and emotional stress. The self myofascial release exercises in this class create a neurological response that will give you more efficient movement patterns, greater range of motion and flexibility and greater ease of movement.

The class focuses specifically on movements and yoga poses that will increase the range of motion, flexibility and ease of movement in your neck and shoulders.

Myo means muscle and fascia refers to the network of connective tissue that surrounds and includes your muscle. The fascial tissues get misaligned due to trauma, injury, poor movement patterns and emotional stress.

In this video you will use your own hands to apply compression and massage techniques to create a neurophysiological response in your myofascia.

Your myofascia is rich in nerve endings, so when you apply gentle pressure nerve signals flow to and from your brain. These nerve signals control your proprioception (where you are in space), coordination and your ability to control movement.

So when you apply that gentle pressure to your myofascia either using your hands a signal flows to your brain and back to your tissue signaling that there is no longer the need for tension in your neck or shoulders. In a nutshell, myofascial release creates a neurological response that gives you the opportunity to create more efficient movement patterns for your neck and shoulders.

If you would like a PDF of MY favourite props and how to use them in a 10 week series of videos not available anywhere else on the web, go to www.melissawest.com/props and put in your email address the box.

Our members will be enjoying an entire month dedicated to self myofascial release in our membership community with our myofascial release classes and programs.

Link for members: Click Here

Link to Become a Member: Click here

Yin Yoga

This yin yoga video for the fire element will allow you to open the vitality, radiance, joy and love that we already and always are and express that sparkle in our eyes that is your True Nature.

If you are new to Yoga with Melissa, welcome.

I know that anybody who has chosen devote an hour of their yoga practice to yin yoga and the fire element has a love of nature and is deeply inspired by the way the energy of the elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water are alive and expressing themselves in you.

I invite you to subscribe to my channel for more classes like this that take explore the deeper meaning of five element theory through yoga.

This yin yoga class will allow you to pull and pressurize the connective tissues that run along the heart meridian system and the small intestine meridian system to open to our joy, radiance, vitality, good memory, inner peace and contentment.

The heart meridian and small intestine meridian will open up your heart center and chest as well as your upper back, shoulders and neck.

This class is a taste of a much deeper dive into our Advanced Study in Yoga and Meditation Five Element Course on the Fire Element that I am teaching in our membership community in May and June 2019.

There are 2 spots left.

In depth conversation about the course: Click Here

If you are a member you can register: Click Here

To become a member to have access to our advanced study and meditation courses that run throughout the year click here.

 

Daily Yin Yang Yoga

Today´s yin yang yoga will allow you to ease into going with the flow in your day and your life. It combines the best of yin yoga for the wood element, liver and gallbladder meridians with qigong inspired fusion yoga. In this yin yang yoga class we will focus on going with the flow to connect with the qualities of wood element in balance, qualities like kindness, acceptance, patience, compassion, benevolence. An ability to go with the flow. We will do so by pulling and pressurizing the tissues of the liver and gallbladder meridians and embracing the balanced qualities of the wood element. These poses affect the inner thighs and side body, but also the liver organ. The yang portion of the class combines poses like mountain, chair pose, warrior one pose, and goddess victory squat with flowing qigong movements that allow us to go with the flow.

Today´s yin yang yoga gives a taste of five element courses that are available in our membership community. We have a fire element course coming up as part of our membership offerings in May of 2019.

We all have the five phases of wood, fire, earth, metal and water within us. Each element exists to nourish all others and in return, to be nourished itself. The movement of our being are like the tides of energy expanding (yang) and contracting (yin) as we are carried along the currents of life.

In each week of the five element fire course we have dharma talks, discussion (in online forums and in class with two way video), self practice of yoga, pranayama, contemplation of poetry and time in nature.

Applications are available for members of our community, we would love to welcome you into our community. To find out more about the application process and requirements email admin @melissawest.com or watch the livestream from April 11th on Facebook or YouTube. Members can apply in our community.

Member Advanced Five Element Course Application: Click Here

Become a Member: Click Here

Yoga Nidra

This daily yoga nidra will allow you to release the tyranny of productivity that can push its way into our day so that we can go with the flow and honour the cycles and rhythms of our being with ease.

By taking this time in stillness and quiet to be fully present to the divine within you are offering yourself unwavering connection and unconditional love each day.

Deep nourishment through yoga nidra, away from thinking, allows you to be supported and cared for on a deep level.

The grace of setting aside a time to open to your self-worth through your spiritual practice allows you to relate to the relate to unfolding of the day as the rich and vital energy that it offers you.

Relating to our rich inner world through daily yoga nidra allows us to trust the mysterious unfolding of your life.

This yoga nidra is recommended for repeated listening.

Regular practice of this daily yoga nidra will augment the positive results you will experience from your meditation sessions.

Repeated practice allows for cumulative and enhanced experience.

Members Download the Audio Track Here

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Yoga Nidra Playlist: CLICK HERE

Short Videos about Yoga Nidra: CLICK HERE

Download our Daily Yoga Chart and recognize your own self-worth, radiance, interconnection, joy, warmth and love through your yoga practice, daily.

Download it here

Full Body Yoga

This 60 minute total body yoga class will give your full body a total body a deep yoga stretch and strengthening routine that you can do every day.

Total body poses that strengthen your back open your chest and tone your abdominal organs will allow you to let go of unhealthy feelings and thoughts so we can connect with our self-worth and take in vital energy.

Yoga poses for your hamstrings are fantastic for back pain and will allow you to let go of fear, anxiety, overwhelm and trust the flow of your life. Yoga poses for your core strength release fuzzy thinking and provide security and support.

There are fabulous poses that strengthen your upper body, open up the flow of energy in your upper body and also improve breast tissue health and improve the flow of lymph.

Standing postures will strengthen your lower body, improve the flexibility of your joints, improve your balance and with the added stability and groundedness will give you a sense of safety, security and trust in your life.

Finally in savasana we will have the opportunity to open to poetry as a spiritual practice. We will let go of our analytical mind and open to the pleasure and mystery of poetry after a full body deep stretch and total body yoga practice that is suitable for daily practice.

In April in our membership community we will be supporting our members in their primary aspiration of commiting to their daily yoga practice by formulating daily yoga timetables and extra support like a Daily Yoga Chart and a live class with two way video teaching our members how to use the Daily Yoga Chart.

I will be releasing 5 new classes into our membership in April including:

* 30 Minute Daily Hatha Yoga

* Daily Hatha Yoga for Grounding (30 mins)

* Daily Hatha Yoga for Strength (30 mins)

* Daily Hatha Yoga for Optimal Digestion (30 mins)

* Daily Hatha Yoga for Breast Tissue Health (20 mins)

To receive a daily yoga chart to support you in your daily yoga practice enter your email below.

We would love to welcome you into our community and support you in your daily yoga practice in April and beyond:

https://www.melissawest.com/membership/