🌳Happy Earth Day!!🌳
🌎🌷Hello beautiful souls! In today’s class, we celebrated our beautiful Earth, our Mother Gaia, and all she has given birth to: the soil, the sky, the ocean & streams, the humid air, lightning, flora, fauna, and humankind! We've forgotten we are all intertwined! We don't simply just walk around on this planet, we are CONNECTED within her! The same salt found in the sea, is also found in our tears, the same nutrients, vitamins, minerals found within us, is also found in so much life on earth! It's truly amazing! I knew I had to create an Earth Day Yoga Flow to honor her gifts!
🌎🐞We opened on our backs, so we could completely ground nearly every inch of our body to the earth, from the heels, calves, hamstrings, glutes, pelvis, each vertebrae of the spine, to the shoulder blades, shoulders, triceps, forearms, hands, and base of the skull. We took some full body cleansing breaths, then into our intentional pranayama, deeply inhaling through the nose, and exhaling with an audible bee 🐝 humming breath. We warmed up the body, moving into the hips by hugging the thighs to the chest, slowly lifting each leg to the sky, flowing into supine twists, and a rock n roll along the spine raised us into our seat where we moved through our self-healing reiki practice. We softened the body, released jaw clenching, forehead tension, chest tightening. We focused on our mental health, connected to the body, becoming present, releasing the past frustrations & future to do lists. I read a Love Letter to the Earth, from this book written by the Buddhist monk and poet, Thich Nhat Hanh.
🌎🌻Dear Mother Earth,
Every morning when I awake, you offer me 24 new hours to cherish & enjoy your beauty, your miraculous forms of life: the clear lake, the green pine, pink cloud, snow-capped mountain, fragrant forest, golden deer, white crane, and furry caterpillar, My deep wish is to awake to your wonders, and be nourished by your gifts of life.
~Thich Nhat Hanh 🦌
🌎🌱 We set our intention, moved into sidebends, a mini backbend, into a forward fold. We lifted our limbs, intertwining them into our "Flower" pose, a pose I found in "Children's Yoga" and thought it was so fun, we HAD TO add it into today's practice! We then melted into a backbend, and forward folded into child’s pose. We moved in yummy ways, with a yummy warm up flow of Cat-Cow, adding in lifted bent legs, crunching nose to knee, then reaching back for our foot, into our Tiger! We melted the foot back into calf stretches, 1-legged child’s poses, and then crossed the leg over to stretch the side body. Super delish!! We opened our heart & lungs, lengthened, twisted, extended, flowed linking breath + movement, opened our hips, releasing tension & tightness to release negative energy & nourish the body.
🌎🌷We honored the sun’s warmth & Earth's life-giving energy through plank-downward dog waves, a Sun Salutation A, and came into Tadasana. Our first flow spiced up our energy, kept us warm, and rooted to the earth as we flowed through Warrior 1 paired with cactus arms flowing forward as if we were pulling water toward us, triple times, into a crescent-anjali to knee twist, into a Twisted Lunge, walked the hands around into a wide leg forward fold, rolling up into a Gaia Goddess + ocean waves to the right and left. We melted the hand to the earth toward the back corner of our mat for standing splits and curtsy taps, landing on our seats for a twist in Lord of the Fishes pose. We unraveled into our Heron as we opened the heart, and met back in our standing splits to land in our wide leg forward fold with Eagle arms as we swayed side to side, removing the obstacles out of our way with the help of Ganesh, our Elephant God! We walked the hands to the top of our mat, planted the hand to open up into Side Angle, floated up into Warrior 2, Sky Archer, and back down into Side Angle, into our Lizard with all the options to stay high, melt into the forearms, or peel open to the side, melting the hips, and reaching for a bind! We stepped the foot back for a vinyasa flow to continue on the other side! We encircled the healing space on our mats!
🌎🌱Somatic experiencing gave us tools to regulate our nervous system, to serve as a reset button! We began with the feet, forward folding and pressing the hands into the feet to feel the grounding energy from the earth. We let go, and formed fists gently pounding our way up the body, releasing tension in the calves, quads, hamstrings, hips, glutes, low back, abdomen, up the arms from the hand to the shoulder, ending in butterfly taps across the chest. If you hold tension here in the chest, this is a nice release! We moved up, massaging into the jaw, the perfect release for jaw clenchers like myself, massages into the temples, and then ending with one hand pressing into the base of the skull where the vagus nerve begins, and the other hand pressing the index + middle fingers at the hairline, and slowly moving down between the eyebrows, down the bridge of the nose! We often do this massage for our cats, dogs, even horses, as a calming tool, so today we nourished ourselves with the same gesture! We finished with a crown massage! We removed anything harmful & toxic still attached to the body! We stimulated the vagus nerve, the super highway of information located at the base of the brain and runs throughout the entire body, touching every organ system! We sent messages to the brain that the body is not under threat, it does not have to exist in a continuous active state (fight mode). We have the ability to help our nervous system shift fluidly between states when each are needed, the sympathetic & parasympathetic nervous systems! Both are useful and 100% needed, but we do not want to become stuck in one state for too long. These practices are so useful off the mat as we encounter stress or triggers in our daily lives!
🌎🌻Our final flow began in Tadasana, and moved into a downward dog, we walked the hands to the feet for a forward fold, grew our Tree from the ground up, extending the arms like branches, flowing into our Half Lotus +padma mudra our lotus flower, lifting it up through the dark, murky water to the surface to find the light, flowing into our Eagle for a few crunches before melting into a yogi squat. We flew our crow, only today it was our choice of Bird of Prey! A red-tailed hawk, bald eagle, falcon, great horned owl! An homage to the creatures of our beautiful Earth! We lifted the hips for a fold, walked the hands forward, bringing our shin with us for our pigeon! We didn't stay there long, before rolling onto the hip to bring the leg forward, hugging the knee in to cross over, to take flight in our Baby Grasshopper! We moved into our Staff for a fold, a reverse table, seated child's pose, and rock n rolled along the spine to come into Tadasana without the help of our hands!
🌎🍃On the other side, after our staff fold, we walked the hands up the legs into our Butterfly pose, then hooked our big toes and extended the legs out into a straddle, or Balancing Bear, and slowly rolled back into our Happy Baby! A little rock side to side massaged the low back, and then we lengthened long, pulled our knees to the chest, then melted the knees to the right, where we extended the right leg long, kept the left bent, as we rolled to our belly for Half Frog. We rolled to the back for a supine twist, rolled to the belly for half frog on the other side, rolled for a supine twist, then melted to the back. We inhaled out like a starfish, envisioned suction cups on the bottom of our arms & legs anchoring us to a rock as the tidal waves washed over us! We exhaled the limbs into a cow face, pulling the shins to the chest to lengthen through the IT bands & relieve sciatic nerve pain.
🌎🍄 We then settled into our savasana! Together, we completed a full body cleanse! Each student even received a little gift too: CRYSTALS!! A Beautiful deep green bloodstone: its element is earth, and has the ability to help calm and stabilize emotions. It can promote self-confidence, reduce stress, boost immune system, and bring about a sense of inner peace!
🌎🌼Yoga helps us shed what we no longer need, so we may see our most purest selves! Connect to divinity! 🙏🏻To slow down means to heal! That is why savasana is the peak pose, the most important pose, the goal. To find peace. In the stillness! We surrender. We discover ourselves again without the layers, the armor, the walls. They all come down, revealing our divine self.🙏🏻
🌎🌱That’s what I LOVE about yoga, it renews the soul! What we do on the mat, transforms our life off the mat! It is beautiful!!
🌎🐞 I had a total BLAST creating this class’s playlist!! Listen to my “Earth Day” class playlist here! 🙏🏻
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2zwpGAJn6lwLzLIJijyxpK?si=ng-u2r9NS5-qkLKuapjAkA&pi=u-h2RhuJ0mSr62
🌎🪺Later in the afternoon, our dove, who we’ve named Josephine, returned to her same hanging basket she used last year for her nest! And a single egg had been laid! What a lovely Earth Day gift!!🐦
🍃Come practice with me Mondays at 8:15am!🫶🏻 ✨🌿
