🌷☀️”Your years of being who they want you to be are over. Now is the time for connection. To the Earth, the Sun, the sky, every drop of rain, every faint breeze, leaf of a tree, petal of a flower, every living breathing creature, every human being, to our higher selves. It is this connection that we see the face of divinity. We let go of ourselves, and know we are divine.” 🙏🏻 🌼
🌷🍃 Hello beautiful souls! In today’s class, we dove into our final Niyama, Isvara Pranidhana.🙏🏻🪷Isvara, the Sanskrit word meaning divinity, deity, spirit, divine, God, universe. Pranidhana meaning devotion to, surrender, connection, the letting go of ourselves. We find stillness, and trust that God, the universe, divinity, will embrace us, favor us, help us, work out for our good. We often see divinity when people are compassionate, helping one another, helping every living thing on our planet, helping creation. We are all connected. Surrender to this connection, and we will see the face of divinity. 🙏🏻🌳☀️
🌼🍃We opened in hero’s pose, with a Anjali mudra, 🙏🏻prayer hands at the heart center, our compassion, our love for the divine. We trusted, knew in our hearts that we ourselves are also divine! Our pranayama was an Anjali breath, where we remained in prayer hands, and brought the hands to the face, thumbs resting under the chin, index fingers resting against the tip of the nose. We drew breath in through the nose, from the root of the earth, up the spine, expanding the lungs, paused at the top to bring the thumbs to the lips, and slowly exhaled through the mouth. By partially blocking the mouth with the thumbs, the exhale slows down & elongates, calming the nervous system.
🌳☀️We softened the body, released jaw clenching, forehead tension, chest tightening. We moved into sidebends, a mini backbend, into puppy pose. We came to our seat for our self-healing reiki practice, focusing on our mental health, becoming present, releasing the past frustrations & future to do lists. We followed with seated twists, side bends reaching for toes, rainbow arches 🌈, another backbend, and forward fold into child’s pose.
🌷🍃We moved in yummy ways, with a fun warm up flow of Cat-Cow +Puppy kicks 🐕reaching the gaze & toes to the sky and melting nose to knee on our forearms. We floated into the hands for a supported side plank and into our Gate for a side bend! 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 moved like water 💦 , as we are in the this Spring showers~ Water Season: Warrior 1 + cactus arms flowing forward and back again as if we were pulling water toward us, flowing into Warrior2 toward the back of our mat. Super yummy fluid transition! More fluidity into crescent warrior to the back of our mat, pulling more water toward us, floating into Warrior3. Half moon 🌙 followed with standing splits and curtsy taps where we landed to our seat for a twist. A counter twist lifted the hips, unraveling us up into a wide leg forward fold facing the top of our mat. We hung our head and shoulders heavy to the earth, connecting, finding movement side to side, the walked the hands to the right where we opened up into Triangle 🔺from the ground up.
🌷🍃Most of us had NEVER seen our own triangles before, and here we were facing the mirror to see ourselves, and make our own adjustments! So fun! We bunny hopped 🐰 into our yogi squat for lots of options: binds, twists, heart openers, heart melts, headstand, crow, but today I called crow: robins & cardinals since those are the birds I awake to every morning in spring! We took flight, opened our hearts, melted the heart, took binds, or lifted into headstands! Listen to what your body needs in this moment! We landed with a palm stretch, walked our hands forward to plank for a flow 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! Crown massage, bumble bee 🐝 humming, temple & jaw release, ear pulls, shoulder squeezes and arm massage, then a spring clean swiping of the whole body swept away anything harmful still attached to the body from winter! 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 lots of balance work beginning with Tree🌲, where we could grow our branches, buds blossoming into flowers🌸, green leaves🍃 sprouting. We could also take half lotus🪷 where one foot melted into the opposite hip flexor/psoas area + our padma mudra, lifting it to the surface of the water to bloom, to then wrap the leg around into our Eagle🦅! We forward folded, stepped back into our downward dog, flipped it into Wild Thing, to land in our pigeon, today Swan🦢, since I’ve seen my favorite swan family all over town this month! We rolled onto the hip to bring the other leg forward where we played with our Baby Grasshopper! 🦗🍃
🌼🍃Our cool down involved Staff forward fold, reverse table, butterfly🦋 , with a foot massage, and big toe extension into straddle, strong through the core, and we slowly & gracefully 😂rolled along the spine, back into our Happy Baby! Tpose, cowface and spinal twists brought us to our savasana! We did a full body cleanse! 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!!
🌸🍃Listen to my “Isvara Pranidhana” class playlist here! 🙏🏻
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4eRkalcVu9UnCHyN7EAhNS?si=WivBwMMfQYWp894GM8U9FA&pi=u-hbTF3hGNTi-j
🍃Come practice with me Mondays at 8:15am!🫶🏻 ✨🌿
