🌳🌷 Hello Beautiful Friends!!
✴️It is officially Summer!! My kids are out of school, and so begins the daily effort to make sure they’re still learning in some way, remaining active, happy, and Dad and I trying to shuffle his work schedule with my teaching schedule. Not really a vacation, right parents? 😂🫠 We just take life day by day! Last week was my first class in my Chakra Series, and we dove into the first one: Muladhara, our Root Chakra!
🧡Even more fun this summer, is that my dear friend Alli, fellow instructor at the studio, and mentor and dear friend, is in nursing school, and her schedule is ramping up for summer, so she asked if I'd like to help her load and teach her gentle yoga classes on Fridays! Yippee! A huge yes I said! I truly love teaching the gentle classes, it encourages me to intentionally slow down, both my mind, the pace of class, and really focus on the mental health & somatic lessons, breathwork, and movements. So, on Monday, we dove into the second chakra, Svadhishthana, our Sacral chakra!, and every Friday, I'll be teaching the gentle version of each chakra!
🌅 Our Svadhishthana, Sacral Chakra, is located 2 inches below the naval, is orange in color, and its element is water. This swirling center of energy is where we find our emotion and feeling center, self esteem, our self worth, creativity, joy, pleasure, intimacy, openness to new ideas, new paths, where we form healthy boundaries.
🎊Connected Crystals: Carnelian, Sunstone, Citrine, Amber.
Connected essential oils: Jasmine, neroli, rose, orange, and sandalwood.
When *In Balance*:
We go with the flow, express our creative side, healthy sexuality, respect for oneself and others' boundaries, open to new experiences.
When *Out of Balance*:
We have creative block, are narcissistic, controlling of others, overly protective of loved ones, unable to relate to others, attention seeker, fearful, can't let go, addictive behaviors.
🌇 We opened on our backs, grounding the body, connecting to the earth, opening up the knees into our reclined butterfly, blocks under the knees for support, as we opened our sacral chakra! We formed our Yoni Mudra with the hands, and placed our mudra at our sacral chakra to connect to this energy center. We moved into our Pranayama practice with our mudra, deep inhales through the nose, long slow exhales through the mouth, releasing all our past events, and future to do lists, becoming truly present! We took time just for ourselves, present in this space, in this moment. We extended our breath work into alternate nostril breathwork to slow down the chatter of the mind! We lengthened long, hugged the knees into the chest, then into T-pose, flexed feet to the sky!
🏜️We melted one foot down to the thigh, into our reclined pigeon, gently nudging the knee away with the elbow, opening the sacral & hip! We rocked side to side and opened up, hugging the knee in while the opposite leg extended out to the side, and the opposite knee opening slightly out to the side. A yummy hip opener! We folded it all back in, into our reclined pigeon, planted the foot for a supine twist! We unraveled through center, found bridge pose, and honored the left side!
🍊We rock ‘n rolled along the spine into a comfortable seat, for our self-healing reiki practice! We softened the body, released jaw clenching, smoothed through the forehead, released chest tightening. We focused on our mental health, sending healing energy to the mind: often a time traveler, becoming stuck in the past or traveling too far forward into the future. We connected to the body, which is always present, releasing the past frustrations & future to do lists. We set our intention, inhaled the fingertips to the sky, melted into twists, seated cat cows with arms crossed, opened into a mini backbend, and melted into a forward fold. We care into a child’s pose, extending the fingertips to the right, center, and left, and melted our Anjali mudra, prayer hands down the nape of the neck.
🍑We moved in yummy ways, with a yummy warm up flow of Cat-Cow, adding in organic movements, adding in leg lifts with bent knees, toes to the sky, curling inward, nose to knee, and back up into our Tiger, reaching back to bind the foot! We released the foot out to the side, melting the hips back into a back into a 1-legged child’s pose. We floated forward, brought the foot back through center, and opened up into a supported side plank, 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.
🐡Our first flow spiced up our energy, kept us warm, and rooted to the earth as we flowed from our downward dog, into plank, creating waves as slowly as possible, pranam, low cobra, downward dog, into our tadasana, rooting the feet into the earth, feeling that grounding energy all the way up to the crown. We flowed through side bends, forward folds into plank, chaturanga, upward dog, downward dog + knee to tricep taps, and knee pushups with extended toes, coming up and stepping the foot between the hands into Warrior 1. We cactused the arms opening the chest and extending the arms out then forward, pulling water toward us: water is the sacral element! We created waves and fluidly moved into Warrior 2 to the back of our mats. We lengthened into Sky archer, into Warrior 2, Sly Archer, and melted into our Triangle. We floated forward into our Half Moon.
We walked the hands to the long side of our mats, into a WideLeg Forward Fold, rolled up into a 5 point star, into a Goddess creating more waves to each side fluidly moving the arms! We extended back up into our star, folded forward, letting the head and shoulders hang heavy. We walked the hands to the top of our mat for our Twisted Lunge with an option to bind the back foot! We flowed through vinyasa to honor the left side. We encircled the healing space on our mats!
🦁Somatic experiencing gave us tools to regulate our nervous system, to agitate those emotions, to help them release, and to serve as a reset button. We began at the crown, massaging the fingertips all over the crown, into the temples, the jaw, the perfect release for jaw clenchers like myself. We pulled gently downward on the ear lobes, outward at the ear edges, and upward at the tops of the ears! We tapped into the collarbone, and into the sternum! We inhaled through the nose as we tapped into the sternum, and stacked the hands at the heart as we exhaled while audibly humming! If you hold tension here in the chest, this is a nice release! We ended 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, horses, perhaps you've done this as your child is waking up. It's a nice calming tool, so today we nourished ourselves with the same gesture! We squeezed into the shoulders, deltoids, biceps, triceps, and forearms, and swayed noticing the effects: coolness, heat, or tingling sensations! We removed anything stuck, 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 helped our body adapt to triggers. 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, grounding into one foot as the other lifted at the knee into our Pilar, opening out to the side like a gate, and stepping out to the side, squaring the hips, back into the open gate, 2 more times, coming through center, closing the gate, and lowering the knee to reach back for the foot, coming into our Dancer pose! We released the foot back with control to the back of our mats, planted the hands, swept the opposite foot through center into our 3-limb dog. We bent the knee, opened the hip, circling through the hip, or flipping our dog! We extended the leg, hovered the knee at the chest, and thread the foot through into our Fallen Star, and unraveled back into our downward dog! We melted the knees down, flowing into our dancing camel, moving like water once more! We honored the left side of this final flow!
🏜️Our cool down moved us from downward dog, into our plank, adding in a few to taps out to the right and left, and melting to the belly, and to our sacral chakra. We moved through low cobras, broken wing, sphinx, pelvic rocks massaging our sacral! We reached for one foot lifting up into our half bow, opening through the chest, reached for the opposite foot for half bow, eventually into our full bow! Even adding into a little rock forward & back! We opened one knee up toward the elbow into our half frog, into a supine twist, honored the opposite side, and then melted to our backs! We lengthened long, hugged the knees into the chest, extended the feet to the sky into our T-pose, crossed one foot over the other, bending at the knees, hugged the thighs together and reached for shins gently pulling the knees toward the chest. We released the shins, planted the bottom foot, for a supine twist! We honored the opposite side, and then opened up into our Happy Baby, with a little sway side to side. We made time to come into any final poses we needed before our final rest!
🧡We made it to our PEAK POSE: savasana! Together, we completed a full body cleanse! We found meditative peace, a calming of the mind, insight into ourselves, we experienced growth fearlessness, release, and freedom. 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.🙏🏻
✴️ I loved creating our Svadhisthana playlist! Listen here!!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1P4wHKUMqycumPcc07g2CR?si=X4XgoG2DS0u4-KpbEdn_Vw&pi=u-gzWTpthmT7y0
🍃Come practice with me Mondays at 8:15am!🫶🏻 ✨🌿
