Featured Pose: Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Upward Facing Dog

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Featured Pose: Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Upward Facing Dog

// Urdhva Mukha Svanasana: Upward Facing Dog

I can find so many reasons to close my heart.  To protect it and hide it.  As the days pass, and the seasons change, as the ball of my life continues to roll on and on, I age, and I begin to acquire more painful experiences both personal and worldly, as every other human does.  Sometimes it can seem impossible to look into the mirror and grieve the failures, the loss of loved ones, and the sheer brokenness written over my body and over the body of the world. Some days they feel so imprinted and vast that I cannot imagine there being any additional space for more broken hearts. This is utterly paralyzing.

Our Yoga practice calls us to show up, each day, and face whatever it is in front of us. When I want to retreat and hide behind my scars, my practice asks me to stand up, step forward, and reveal my face, to look at it, for as long as I need to in order to see the truth.  When I, objectively, look into the mirror and engage with what I see, the imperfections and pain are not the only items of note, I begin to see much beauty and much hope. Then I think, maybe, I can do this again, take a chance, step up, reveal myself, and if my heart is broken again, and it will be, that I have everything I need to pick the pieces up.

It takes a tremendous amount of strength and courage to open our heart and spread our light, but when we do, we can be renewed. The featured pose for this month urdhva mukha svanasana, upward facing dog, is an extroverted pose.  It calls us to show up, open our hearts, and share our light.  The opening of our chest is invigorating. Mentally, this motion can increase self-confidence and aspiration.  Instead of feeling paralyzed, we can feel motivated to promote change, engage with hope, and unabashedly love.  

Somatically speaking, up dog is a strong, powerful pose.  It strengthens nearly the whole body: arms, wrists, legs, core, and back. It provides a deep stretch for the chest, shoulders, belly, and hip flexors.  One of the greatest benefits of this position is that it combats our greatest enemy; sitting at a desk all day long hunched over. To learn how to do this posture, read on.

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Featured Pose: Adho Mukha Svanasana, Downward Facing Dog

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Featured Pose: Adho Mukha Svanasana, Downward Facing Dog

// Adho Mukha Svanasana: Downward Facing Dog

I am. I am. I am. Being, I am being. Here I am being in twenty seventeen.  More than ever my mind is on being, on that which is, rather than the what should be or what should not be.  In the quiet of the now, I am finding great peace in resting in what already exist in me and around me. Paradoxically, I am more motivated than ever to become, to live into all of the other traits and truths that have existed in my spirit and in this world since the beginning of time that I have yet to discover.

The featured pose for this month is one of the most iconic poses in Yoga.  People who have never practiced before can usually name this pose. It’s fame is for good reason, it’s dynamic, rejuvenating, and allows for a healthy pause in a flowing practice to just be.

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Featured Pose: Anjaneyasana, Crescent Moon Lunge

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Featured Pose: Anjaneyasana, Crescent Moon Lunge

//Anjaneyasana: Crescent moon lunge

I am feeling very full at the moment. The experiences from the last year, some joyful, some painful, are within me.  It is time for me to move inward, to reflect on the positive and negative transformations I have taken over the last 12 months, and begin the process of letting go.  Like a snake shedding her skin, or an aged phoenix turning into ash, I release the old ways and avail myself to rebirth. I practice forgiveness with myself and others, accept the imperfect, and extinguish beliefs that no longer serve me.  Like the moon in her fullness ready to retreat into the new, I am eager to enter into the New Year with a lightness of being, and the courage to try again at being me and a creature of this great world.

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Featured Pose: Uttana Shishosana, Puppy Pose

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Featured Pose: Uttana Shishosana, Puppy Pose

//Uttana Shishosana: Puppy Pose or Melting Heart Pose

Hello again, Gratitude. You’re the friend I’m reminded of this time of year, and the one I try never to forget.  You seep into my practice daily, working your magic through each posture to yoke me to the Creator.  Gratitude reminds me that my practice is enough, that my breath is enough, and that I am enough.  More than enough: worthy of wild, unadulterated praise.

Uttana Shishosana (puppy pose) is a simple, feel good motion that stretches the shoulders and spine, invigorates the mind, and relieves stress, tension, and insomnia.  Also referred to as melting heart pose, this mild inversion invites the opening of your heart to the earth and the humbling of your being to the heavens.  In this reorientation of the body, we are able to recognize an imperative notion to believing in gratitude, that we are all connected and bound together by something greater than ourselves. With our heart open to the earth, we receive all of its bounty, we acknowledge that we are not alone and that our existence and breath is nourished by all creatures great and small.  In this I am humbled and grateful.

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Mindful Walking

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// Mindfulness: the ability to maintain a moment-by-moment sense of acceptance and awareness of our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and environment.  Letting the past and the future inform the present, but not control it.

Fall is one of my favorite seasons to spend time outside.  In the Pacific Northwest, the leaves change slowly, allowing the autumnal feelings to linger. With a sweater on, and the crisp air on my face, I touch a greater sense of what it means to be alive.  

Mindful walking, also known as a walking meditation, is an active practice used to promote slow and mindful living, to improve concentration, and to more deeply connect with nature and our body.  It is about breathing in the now, being present with where your feet are at any given moment, and moving forward with intention.  

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