Staying Grounded With Standing Poses

Though we want to be well-rounded students, to incorporate understanding and practice from all categories of yoga asana, standing poses are a great, accessible starting place for new students as they build a strong foundation for positive, grounding effects. Standing poses are often considered the core of asana practice and since we come back to revisit poses, we have the feedback of where we started to help us understand the progress we have made as well as the journey we continue with – this is empowering and motivating in itself. “We begin anew” every time we come to our mat, and with that in mind we want to look and feel and learn something new about ourselves each time, we want to deepen our practice. Your practice challenge for your next practice: especially in your standing poses, try to focus on incorporating both horizontal expansion and vertical extension with your awareness, your actions and your breath. Notice how rooting down helps you to reach up and out. Notice where your breath goes.

Notice your stability. And, your notice your freedom and feeling that you can soar. Use a tree essential oil like White Fir or Cedarwood. Enjoy your practice! Namaste!

Essential Yoga Sangha - 2 Week Facebook Group Experience

We are so excited to announce that our Essential Yoga Sangha (Essential Yoga Community) will be starting in March! Essential Yoga Sangha is a 2-week Facebook Group experience complete with mentors (experts in yoga and essential oils) to guide you and answer questions, collaboration & community, and foundational, step-by-step education for the following groups of individuals:

1. Yoga instructors who want to learn how to masterfully incorporate pure, potent essential oils into their personal yoga practice, and into their classes. Special professional bonus posts will be made available only to yoga professionals, so make sure you select the right ticket!

2. Yogis with all levels of experience who want to learn to incorporate essential oils into their yoga practice (and get a few tips to enhance your yoga practice as well).

3. Essential Oil Users who have always wondered if they could pair their oils with an amazing yoga practice.

For Yoga Instructors interested in our affiliate program, Yoga Sangha is a must, as the education and experience it provides will help you become proficient in the art of pairing yoga with essential oils. This training will help give our whole community a baseline foundation to start with so that further training, collaboration and benefits can follow. For more information about our affiliate program, please visit www.EssentialYogaPractice.com. (You can get additional information and freebies by registering for the newsletter on the home page, and the blog).

For more information and to register, go to www.essentialyogasangha3-2017.eventbrite.com

Aromatherapy for Your Dosha

Aromatherapy whether using essential oils, or fresh herbs, can tap into your body’s natural ability to take care of itself.  Our sense of smell connects us directly with our emotions, including our memories as well as our instincts. By intentionally stimulating our sense of smell, we can use aroma to support emotional well-being, trigger certain emotions and to affect energy levels: grounded, peaceful, energized, relaxed, focused. … In your next yoga practice consider using aromatherapy, whether with a certain mudra or diffuser, to enhance the effectiveness of how asana will open up certain energy meridians and chakras.  Consider your energy state at the beginning of your practice, the outcome you wish to achieve, your dosha, and of course the theme of your sequence.  Refer to the previous blog posts and your copy of Essential Yoga Practice on using a diffuser, on understanding your dosha and consider using one of the six sequences outlined.  The more you understand your dosha, the use of essential oils, and refine your sense of body awareness, the moreyou will use your own intuition to custom-create your own blends for aromatherapy.  Pittas can aim for cooling and calming oils like ylang-ylang, lavender, lemon, peppermint.  Vatas are seeking to support their need for grounding and stress relief to balance restless energy with aromas of Patchouli, Vetiver, and Basil.  Kaphas can seek to use aromas that are stimulating like rosemary, frankincense, eucalyptus, and peppermint  to revive vital energy.  More suggestions are listed and explained in the Ayurveda section of Essential Yoga Practice:  Your Guide to the New Yoga Experience Using Essential Oils.

Your Dinacharya, your daily morning practice

In the practice of Ayurveda, the daily morning routine is termed Dinacharya.  The way you start your day can have a great impact on everything from mood, to energy, to clarity, to outlook and therefore outcome.  The attention first to self-care and then to mindset is the suggestion. Your constitution makes a difference in some of the ways that you would choose to begin your day. See the January blog posts on Understanding and Maintaining Balance in Your Dosha.  Take the dosha quiz on pages 19 and 20 in your Essential Yoga Practice book. Answer all the questions based on general lifelong tendencies, not recent conditions.  The answer will be your “prakruti”, your unique constitution.  Most people are bi-doshic, meaning they have a more dominant dosha and then a secondary dosha.   

Daily Morning Routines – Dinacharya

·      Upon waking, think positively, starting with focus on gratitude.  Rub face, look at hands and anticipate your daily seva, the work of your hands in service to others

·      Eliminate

·      Brush teeth

·      Scrape tongue with steel or copper tongue scraper

·       Drink a cup of warm water, with optional lemon for Vata, and honey for Kapha

·      Massage body with sesame oil for Vata (begore and after showering), coconut or sunflower oil for Pitta, and dry brush instead for Kapha before showering, and then use sesame or almond oil or coconut oil.

·      Relaxing practice for Vata – yoga, pranayama, meditation; Meditation and quieting yoga and pranayama practice for Pitta, and meditation and energizing pranayama and yoga practice for Kapha

·      Plan to drink 8 glasses of water per day

·      Eat primarily cooked foods.  Vata- avoid excess dry foods, hot spicy foods, and excess bens, and eat balanced meals to include healthy fats.  Pitta- avoid hot spicy and deep fried foods, as well as moderate fermented and salty foods, red and fatty meats and minimize or avoid alcohol and processed sugars and grains.  Kapha – eat larger meal at lunch, avoid red and fatty meats and wheat and flour based products, while considering whole grains in moderation. Eat a lot of vegetables and a moderate amount of fruits.

Ayurveda defines optimal health as different for each person, taking into account the individuality based on dosha. This holistic system of healing educates and empowers us to take responsibility for our own wellness regiment to include diet, movement and lifestyle.  Aromatherapy to support each dosha is quite useful not only in meditation and yogic practice, but anytime of the day.  Refer to pages 22 - 24 in your Essential Yoga Practice book to learn more about specific essential oils to use for each dosha, but generally energizing scents for Kapha, grounding scents for Vata, and calming scents for Pitta are a great rule of thumb.

Stay tuned for more tips for this week’s blog post on our social media sites this week.  Stay tuned for mudras to practice for each dosha and Ayurvedic healthy dietary tips in next month’s blog. 

The Meaning of Asana

The word yoga is typically associated with “asana,” the practice of the postures.  The gateway for Westerns into beginning a yoga practice is typically group yoga/asana classes.  This is only wonderful because new and seasoned students begin to “feel” different as they connect to their bodies, recognizing how asana practice includes stretch, balance, strength work and then rest, and all of this somehow invokes a sense of peace and offers much more, to include mindfulness, a change of perspectiveand a sense of being “open.” That word “asana” actually has a deeper meaning, "a place that the mind can take a seat."   When we begin to enjoy a comprehensive yoga practice, we begin to affect the 12 meridians of the body, the 7 chakras, the centers of energy, and we open up stuck pathways. The emotion(s) behind them can then come to the surface. This is a gift, an opportunity to give away the tension and stress that you do not need to hold onto. To access this great advantage of yoga asana, we must be willing to build time, learning not only the postures, but our place in the postures.  We must practice with awareness of action within alignment, so that we not only have safe progress, but that we build resilience and thus build time in each posture, giving our attention to what comes up.  We must allow the mind to take a seat and sit with the various emotions, reflecting on the lessons that the body is teaching us. This is the way to self-understanding.  This is how asana practice leads us to knowing the next steps in our life’s journey.  The way out is in.  Do not be surprised if your asana practice leaves you feeling lighter, more open to what comes ahead in your day, and gives you more patience to reflect before you react.  This may seem like a lot to expect, but yoga delivers!  Show up ready to pay attention.  Open your mind and trust the practice!  Get ready to learn and practice more than just asana with us.  Start with aromatherapy today, an essential oil that supports the theme of your practice.  Want to know more, look to your copy of Essential Yoga Practice.  Sign up at our website to receive a free diffuser eBook with great ideas.  Namaste friends!