I don’t know about you but the winter months are very challenging for me. I struggle to stay in balance and not get sick. I am getting better at it as the years go on. I used to get sick every single winter with a bad cold, or a sinus infection that turned into bronchitis. But with the help of my yoga practice, I am finding it a lot easier to stay in balance.
When the winter months come and it is dark and cold, we must pay even more attention to our health, eating right, staying hydrated, and getting plenty of rest. It is also easier to get depressed when our energy is lower. So keep yourself warm and stay inspired. Study something that you have always wanted to know more about. Read a good book suggested to you by a friend. Sit down somewhere cozy, light some incense and a candle, nestle up to a great book of devotional poetry, like Rumi or Hafiz to warm your spirit and wake yourself up! Beautiful background music will inspire your own inner music to sing!
When it comes to your yoga practice, climb onto your mat daily and make it devotional.! Fire up your practice with some purifying Breath of Fire Pranayama. Start in a comfortable cross-legged seat with your arms extended up into a V overhead. Curl your fingertips in toward the pads of your hands and reach your thumbs out like a spiritual hitchhiker. Begin with rapid inhalation / exhalation in and out through the nose. Take an equal emphasis on the inhalation and the exhalation and continue to pump it in and out rhythmically and rapidly. Light that internal fire, the desire / discipline to go out beyond the limitations of your mind. In Sanskrit it is called “Tapas”- the discipline which will carry you through the dark, cold months of winter. Fan that flame with your breath. Ancient yogis were sometimes called “Tapasvin” which means, one who takes on Tapas or voluntary self discipline.
Stoke it up by moving through some grounding standing poses. Feel your presence in the moment as your connect to the feet sturdy on the mat. Add in some devotional warriors, allowing yourself to surrender into the moment, bow down to your life as it is right here, right now. It is very humbling. Rise up and tip it back into a peaceful warrior, draping your arm down the back leg as you extend up through the other arm. You will start to feel the peace as you flow through these movements with the current of your breath carrying you into the moment.
Make sure to spend plenty of time at the end of your practice down on the floor forward bending, diving in to your center to honor the process you have been through to open up to your life. Lastly, take an extra long savasana, resting flat on your back. Roll up a blanket as a bolster under your knees to release the low back, place a blanket under your head as a little pillow and even cover up with a blanket to stay warm, and settle in for a deep relaxing, rejuvenating rest after all the movement. If you have an eyebag place it over your eyes for the ultimate dropping down into the moment. Devote yourself to uncovering who you are beyond all the thinking. Our minds are always so busy, now is the time to stop the thoughts and see who you are when all the judgments and the attachments have been released. Experience the vast space, the warmth and the freedom that is inherent in every moment!
-Betsy
( this blog first appeared on January first 2011) on the Laughing Lotus Love Blog
Playlist:
“Mumtaz” Bombay Dub Orchestra
“Temple Gateway” Desert Dwellers
“Something About Us” Daft Punk
“I feel Awake” Suphala feat. Edie Brickell
“Ganesh Is Fresh” MC Yogi Feat and Jai Uttal
“Smithereens” Annie Lennox
“This Must Be The Place” Talking Heads
“Inside” Moby
If It Is Not Too Dark ~ Hafiz ~
Go for a walk, if it is not too dark.
Get some fresh air, try to smile.
Say something kind to a safe-looking stranger, if one happens by.
Always exercise your heart's knowing.
You might as well attempt something real along this path:
Take your spouse or lover into your arms
The way you did when you first met.
Let tenderness pour from your eyes
The way the Sun gazes warmly on the earth.
Play a game with some children.
Extend yourself to a friend.
Sing a few ribald songs to your pets and plants -
Why not let them get drunk and wild!
Let's toast
Every rung we've climbed on Evolution's ladder.
Whisper, "I love you! I love you!" to the whole mad world.
Let's stop reading about God -We will never understand Him.
Jump to your feet, wave your fists,
Threaten and warn the whole Universe
That your heart can no longer live Without real love!
WHEN GRAPES TURN ~ RUMI~
When grapes turn
To wine, they long for our ability to change.
When stars wheel
Around the North Pole,
They are longing for our growing consciousness.
Wine got drunk with us,
Not the other way.
The body developed out of us, not we from it.
We are bees, And our body is a honeycomb.
We made the body, cell by cell we made it.
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