yoga4healthyliving

Yoga Breathing and Stress

Eric spent many years living as a monk in a Zen monastery.  In his first year he underwent a tremendously painful and emotional time.  Completely overwhelmed by the intensity of his feelings he sought out the guidance of before head abbot.  As he sat before the abbot he explained his dilemma and with great hope waited for the abbot to advise him as to how he might alleviate his suffering.  The abbot answered simply : "If you can breathe in...you can breathe out."

Yoga wisdom

Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life.

Joan Lunden, in Healthy Living

NLP, yoga and fear

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and yoga link together beautifully.  In every yoga class I teach I use NLP language to help people to achieve their best both emotionally and physically.  (More about that on a later post.) As a yoga instructor I firmly believe that if we are sound in mind then we are far more likely to be sound in body.  However, controlling the mind can be a constant battle. 

Recently I have learnt of the 'spinning process' devised by Richard Bandler (co-creator of NLP) to rapidly undo feelings of fear.

All you do is notice where the feeling of fear begins; in other words where in the body is its source.  Know that all 'emotion has motion'.  Spend a moment considering which way this emotion currently spins.  Use your imagination to reverse the direction of spin which, becaue you have changed the structure, changes the experiences; the fear stops.    Now don't take my word for it, you won't know if it works unless you do it.   

Yoga Class Dunstable

One of my favourite sayings in my Dunstable yoga class is, 'if you don't use it you lose it!'  Well last week I had to eat my words. 

The class had begun with a little Qi Gong warm up which was a little different but great at generating heat and energy in the body.   We moved on to some floor movements, exploring different spinal twists and directing the breath into different parts of the lungs.  It was time for a back bend and we moved into bridge.  For those of you familiar with bridge you will know that it is marvellous for increasing the flexibity of the spine, balancing the emotional centre in the solar plexus, stimulating the thyroid and much more!

One of  newer my students, who has been practicing yoga for many years and performs her sun salutations everyday thrilled us all by moving into the full bridge posture!  I remarked that I didn't know she could do that and she said neither did she!  As a girl, she found it easy and thought she'd have another go and lo and behold  held  this beautiful full bridge.  Now it would be  indiscreet of me to  take a guess at her  age, but I do know that she has grand children. 

What this story demonstrates is that your nervous system holds memory.  Her body could remember how to perform this bridge and because she had kept her body supple with many years of yoga she could easily achieve it again.

Yoga wisdom

Jump and the net will appear.  The art of living dangerously.

Walking for weight loss

'Walking is man's best medicine'

Hippocrates

Faking it...

Have you ever noticed that the more joy you fake, the more joy you make?

The Peace Within You

From 'Yoga - the Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness' by Erich Schiffmann

'Imagine a spinning top.  Stillness is like a perfectly centred top, spinning so fast it appears motionless.  It appears this way not because it isn't moving, but because it's spinning at full speed. Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life, or movement.  Stillness is dynamic.  It is unconflicted movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action.  It can be experienced whenever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in- when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing.

Moving into stillness in order to experience your true nature is the primary theme of yoga simply because everything about you - every thought, feeling and emotion, a well as very aspect of your behaviour - is predicated on the way you feel about yourself. The way you feel about yourself determines the way you think, what you do, and how you interact wiht the world.  It's the basic factor that governs the quality of your life, the degree to which you are interested in living, and the way in which you interpret what's happening.'

Letting Go

'When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand, nor can your hand pick up anything.'

                     - Alex Haley

Problems

"We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems." 

One of my biggest "shifts" came when I was given the most magnificent nugget of advice, which was "to all of life's problems there is at least one solution, you just need to find the best!"

Now whenever I am faced with one of those 'opportunities' I simply recall that piece of advice.