☀️✨If you peel back the layers of your life, the frenzy, the hurried pace, the heartache, the noise…stillness is waiting. That stillness is you.” ~Oprah Winfrey.
🍃 Hello beautiful souls! In today’s class, we dove into the 4th Niyama, Svadhyaya! We’re almost done! Since my classes began, we’ve travelled all through the first limbs of yoga! There are EIGHT! (The asanas or poses that we all learn first in classes is actually the 3rd limb!) The first limb are the 5 Yamas: Ahimsa, Satya, Asteya, Brahmacharya, and Aparigraha! The second limb are the 5 Niyamas: Saucha, Santosha, Tapas, Svadhyaya, and Isvara Pranidhana!
☀️✨Svadhyaya is our “self-study!” The moments where we take a step back, we look at our life, we pause to observe, we omit things we don’t need any longer, we make time for what we’ve been missing. We peel away the layers of our life: all the things that have been added that can sometimes (or most times) produce a shadow or a cloud over who we really are: these shadows can be pain, heartbreak, loss, grief, stress, depression, trauma, anxiety, destruction, comparison, low self worth, people pleasing, overworking, exhaustion. When we peel away the layers, these shadows, we begin to break down walls, we shed the armor we’ve created to hide those things. When we close our eyes, we find stillness, we feel like we’ve been here before. We have. Before the layers. This stillness is who we truly are. We start to rediscover ourselves. We feel a metamorphosis coming! We write new chapters because our story is not over. We are in fact, the authors of our own life! This self study brings us back home to our purest selves! ☀️✨
🍃For our Svadhyaya class, We opened in hero’s pose, with a mudra for self-acceptance, curling the index finger in toward the base of the thumb, the remainder fingers outstretched. Our pranayama was a nice slow Nadi Shodhana or Alternate Nostril Breathwork. 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, arches, chin drips, another backbend, and forward fold into child’s pose.
🍃We moved in yummy ways, with a fun warm up flow of Cat-Cow +Tiger crunches + and bind, floating knee to chest curls, 1-legged child’s pose to supported side plank into a flowy seated 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 Pisces 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 of exalted warrior into side angle, sky archer, triangle, wide leg forward fold, some 5 pt star plié, shoulder presses, and an eagle arm forward fold. Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, swept away everything in our path with our elephant truck bound arms. We cleared our path for stillness, for our true selves to come home again! A twisted lunge and dragon with a bind closed out this flow. 🐉 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, temple & jaw release, ear pulls, brushing the throat, and sternum massage swept away anything harmful 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: sympathetic & parasympathetic nervous system! 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 Pilar, opening into a big toe extension, into Dancer, keeping that bind into Sugar Cane, releasing the bind into Half Moon, Standing Splits, 3 Limb Dog into Wild Thing, Fallen star, into a plank. Top of the Feet presses lifted the knees toward the chest and down into a mini cow, then softened into a pigeon.
🍃Our cool down involved cow face, Fallen tree folds, rainbow arches, reverse table, seated child’s pose, and big toe extension into straddle, strong through the core slowly rolling back into a Happy Baby! Tpose, shoelace 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! To slow down means to heal! That is why savasana is the most important pose, the goal. To find peace. To 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 “Svadhyaya: Peel away the layers” class playlist here!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5S7zjhcFrvqY7hLQOPFKGP?si=91-QPzcvSjOAYyCsKkA18Q&pi=u-4gys5YMMTrG_
🍃Come practice with me Mondays at 8:15am!🫶🏻 ✨🌿
