Changing up your yoga practice, lifestyle and props for Autumn

Whilst a regular daily routine is one of the keys to a more balanced, calm, productive and healthy lifestyle, we benefit from changing things up from season-to-season. We humans are animals, just like the birds and squirrels outside, and before we shifted to living domesticated indoor lives, we would have been deeply connected to the subtle changes from season-to-season, and adjusted our lives accordingly. Today however, we need to be a little more purposeful in living seasonally, and make more conscious decisions when it comes to changing how we live, what we eat, and the way we practice yoga throughout the year.

Think of your daily routine as your anchor point – perhaps you always drink a large glass of water when you wake up; maybe you always practice a few minutes of yoga in the morning. Maybe you always pause to eat lunch, or always take a moment to cultivate calmness when you arrive home with yoga nidra, or a few moments of meditation before bed. If you’ve found a daily routine that serves you well, keep that as your anchor, but allow the season to influence a change in how you go about your day. For the tips on changing up your yoga practice, props, lifestyle and foods as we move from Summer to Autumn, read on!

How to refresh your yoga practice

Summer and Autumn are two very different seasons in an energetic sense. Whilst summer is the peak of ‘yang’ energy in the year, Autumn sees us swiftly moving towards a distinctly more ‘yin’ feeling, and our practice benefits from mirroring this change. As Dallas Hartwig writes in the 4 Season Solution, Summer is very conducive to leading a ‘yang’ lifestyle, where we socialise more, stay up a little later, engage in lots of fun activities, and navigate the world in a more extroverted way. As you can imagine, living life in Summer mode can be tiring, so when Autumn arrives, it’s important to recognise this as a signal to slow down. Try changing your sun salutations to moon salutations, switch up one of your vigorous vinyasa flow classes for a slow and stretchy yin session, or give yourself more stillness by choosing meditation instead of a sweaty hot yoga class. Restorative yoga is one of the best choices we can make when choosing a yoga practice to support us through the ‘yin’ seasons of the year, and when we give ourselves this time to recover and restore, we’re more able to literally ‘spring’ back into action when the warmer months return.

How to make more mindful food choices

When we consume local, seasonal foods, we give our bodies the exact nutrients they need in that very moment. Take blackberries for example, which are ready to pick at the beginning of September; these delicious berries are full of antioxidants, which help our cells recover from the natural oxidative damage that happens when we’re exposed to lots of sunshine, stress or exercise during Summer. Blackberries are also very high in vitamin C, which helps boost the immune system in preparation for Autumn and Winter. As well as eating seasonally, we can turn to the wisdom of Ayurveda (yoga’s ‘sister science’ and an ancient health system) for guidance. Ayurveda reasons that Autumn is a season comprising more of the qualities of coldness, dryness in the form of drier air, irregularity in the changeable weather, and lightness in the way the plants and trees lose their leaves and pause their growth. When we’re exposed to too much of these cold, dry, irregular and light qualities, we can become imbalanced and unwell. Because of this, we benefit by bringing the opposite qualities of warmth, oiliness, heaviness and regularity into our lives. Try consuming more cooked foods, use coconut or sesame oil in cooking (and oil on your body too!), use ghee in recipes, enjoy warming spices like cinnamon and ginger, and ensure you’re eating regular meals at regular times – your digestive system will thank you!

How to upgrade your yoga props

Whilst Summer may have been all about grippy yoga mat towels, cork mats that work better the more you sweat, and eco yoga shorts, it’s time to introduce more cosiness to your practice as we head into Autumn, especially if you’re going to be practicing a different style of yoga such as yin or restorative. Try the Yogamatters Wellness Pilates mat, which is super cushiony at 8mm thick. For your restorative practice, use the Yogamatters Organic Relaxation Kit. To really relax your nervous system, a sandbag and lavender-scented eye pillow are wonderful additions, and well worth adding to your home yoga practice kit.

How to refresh your lifestyle and home décor

After the extroverted nature of Summer, Autumn invites us to rest and nest, and start living in a more introverted way that allows us to make deeper connections to friends and family. Instead of frolicking with acquaintances, Autumn is about strengthening the relationships we already have, and getting to know ourselves a little better. Is there a friend you haven’t seen in a while? A family member who would love you to call them? As opposed to the expansive energy of Summer, think of Autumn as a time to contract inwards a little more – wind up projects and resist making lots of new plans until the Spring. Focus on finishing tasks you’ve been working on throughout the year, and get yourself organised with The Positive Bullet Diary. A regular practice of journaling is a great way to allow your mind to process thoughts and emotions, and to wind down at the end of a long day, treat yourself to a bath with Epsom Salts.

Balancing the masculine and feminine

In the beginning of time, a divine being sat absorbed in deep, blissful meditation. He sat with legs crossed at the mouth of a cave on the peak of a cosmic mountain, meditating upon his breath. Millions of years passed with his every breath. His name was Shiva.

In his state of complete and full absorption, he was unaffected by the external world. He was anchored in bliss and felt great contentment. But one day, Shiva felt a stir inside him. From a still, silent place within, the subtle pull of kama (desire) awoke. This stir of desire grew into a rippling, pulsating field known as spanda.

Shiva opened his eyes from his millennia of deep, transcendental meditation. His gaze landed upon the figure of the Goddess, Shakti, dancing and weaving around him in beautiful spirals. As their eyes met, spanda pulsed with an even greater vigor, and Shiva’s longing for her grew.

As the Goddess danced, Shiva held space for the beauty of her form and movement. In that moment, the world was born. The Goddess pulled a great cauldron out from the ether and poured in the element of earth. The cauldron gave birth to great mountains, canyons and plains that carved their way into our great and powerful planet. She poured in the element of water, which nourished the ground with rivers, lakes, streams and divine oceans. She poured in the element of fire, which brought us summertime, blooming flowers, bonfires and our sun-filled days. And finally, she poured in air, which brought us the great winds and gaseous chemicals that support all of life on earth. These elements stirred and churned with the great spanda, pulsation, of divine masculine and feminine connection; this gave birth to animals, plants and the entire world as we know it.

Masculine and feminine energy exists within each and every one of us, regardless of our sex and gender. Both of these energies are necessary for the balance and longevity of life here on earth, but can easily fall out of balance.

HARNESSING THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE

The masculine in balance offers us structure, discipline, organisation, protection, and containment. When the masculine is allowed its true expression, it holds space for the more organic parts of life while keeping us on track with our vision and goals. In our modern day, we’ve found ourselves in a time of excessive masculinity, which has led to a culture revolved around overachievement, overconsumption and reckless overuse of the resources of the earth for personal or industrial gain. We’re left feeling overworked, stressed and undernourished. When we live this way, it can lead to a degradation in our health and the natural environment.

Even in the world of yoga and spirituality, a similar dynamic is at play. Our practices easily become too forceful, competitive and regimented. Much of the asana we practice was originally designed for 15-year-old male bodies! Masculine practices focus on transcending the body to attain a state of enlightenment. These practices are powerful in the right context, but must be balanced by the feminine. When we only feed masculine practices, we are getting just half of the story. These practices focus on aesthetics, purification, strict and regimented movement and big, heady philosophy organised in linear charts and formulas.

Where the masculine focuses on transcendence, the feminine brings us into embodiment. Bliss is something we experience right here and right now, in the midst of imperfection. Feminine movement happens organically, intuitively and in spirals. Feminine meditation cultivates body awareness, acceptance, emotional expression and pleasure. The feminine brings us into our feeling, sensing and ever-changing bodies. We are drawn to experience the world with presence, joy and heart.

OUR TOP TIPS FOR BALANCING THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE

• Ask yourself throughout the day, “Am I in a state of doing (trying to get somewhere) or being (accepting myself as I am)?”

• Add more intuitive, circular movements to your yoga practice. Close your eyes and let your body lead the way.

• Use your hands to feel your body. This nourishes our desire for touch and intimacy.

• Breathe into the pelvic floor and womb space. This is a plexus where feminine power resides.

• Get outside and connect to Mother Earth.

• Practice gratitude. When we do this, we can connect to the spirit of generosity in the world and in nature.If you found this article beneficial, please spread the love and share it with your friends!

Moving with the seasons: Our guide to Autumn yoga

Autumn is the season of transformation. We can see this all around us in nature: the leaves are falling, the air is changing and we welcome our new season’s fruit and vegetables.

It is important that we change with the seasons — just as nature does — by adapting our daily habits, yoga practice and food choices.

Ironically, it is only through change that was can stay grounded during this shifting season.

AN AYURVEDIC APPROACH TO AUTUMN

According to Ayurveda, there are three primary doshas, or energies. Just as each person has a dosha that predominates, each season is also dominated by one of the three doshas.

The vata dosha is most prevalent during autumn. Vata governs movement in the body, as well as activating the nervous system and the processes of elimination. The qualities of vata are cold, dry, rough, light, changeable, irregular, and moving. Vata is composed of the elements of air and space. Because of vata’s association with the nervous system, its state is often reflected in our mental health.

With the abundance of vata energy circulating during the autumn season, our bodies and minds can become overwhelmed and out of balance. During this time of year, you may feel unsettled, ungrounded and unstable. But while we cannot change the seasonal weather shifts, we can maintain internal balance by adjusting our lifestyles to counter the predominant vata energy in nature. We do this by incorporating yoga poses, food, and lifestyle choices that naturally hold the opposite qualities of the vata dosha.

5 Autumn YOGA POSES

During autumn, try to schedule your yoga practice at the same time every day and for the same length of time. This will help to build a routine and calm the chaotic vata energy. Do yoga poses that focus on the lungs and large intestines, as these are the two organs associated with the autumn season.

1. Twists: Half Lord of the Fishes Pose, Noose Pose, Revolved Triangle Pose

2. Side Stretches: Revolved Head-to-Knee Pose

3. Backbends: Bow Pose, Bridge Pose, Camel Pose

4. Warrior I Pose and Warrior II Pose

5. Sun Salutations will also warm the body during the chill of autumn

After your practice, enjoy a long Savasana (Corpse Pose) to stabilise the moving energy of vata.

Autumn FOODS AND HERBS

It is important to eat three meals a day, preferably at the same time each day. Try to avoid skipping meals and sporadic grazing, and be sure to sit down while enjoying your food. Like all other lifestyle choices around this time, set a routine around eating.  Here are some insights to help guide your autumn meal plan.

• Eat lots of warm soups.

• Choose foods that are warm, cooked, and moist. Avoid raw veggies and salads, as these are vata provoking.

• Eat two apples a day to aid with elimination.

• Drink warm tea of fresh ginger, cardamom, and cinnamon. This will warm the body and enhance circulation and digestion. If not this tea, aim to drink some kind of warm beverage.

• Eat root vegetables to enhance your connection to the Earth.

• Sweet, salty and sour tastes are calming to vata.

LIFESTYLE CHOICES

• Lights out for bed at 10:00 p.m. Try to get a full eight hours of sleep and awake when the sun rises.

• Consistent, moderate exercise regulates vata’s mobile nature, so make sure to schedule time for physical activity.

• Curb your tendency to talk unnecessarily, and settle into the rejuvenation of silence whenever possible.

• Use a neti pot to help keeps the lungs clear of congestion.

• Apply oils to the skin to keep it moist. This practice, called oleation, reduces the vata emotions of anxiety, depression, fear, and nervousness.

• Commit to a regular meditation practice to assist in quieting, centering and grounding the active vata mind.

• Practice right nostril breathing: Close your left nostril using the ring finger on your right hand. Inhale through your right nostril for 6-8 seconds, then exhale through the same nostril for 5-7 seconds. Repeat for 7-10 rounds, a few times a day. This will enhance the sun energy that helps keep the body warm as the temperature drops.

Yoga whatever the weather

Over the past months, I have noticed a direct correlation between the weather & the number of yoga classes attended. When the rain is coming down by the bucket load the footfall drops dramatically.

How can we take better care of ourselves?

Experience has taught me that these practices do not just magically happen. This is where planning & resolve come into play.

At the very minimum, my daily self-care ritual includes two of the following practices. These are the things that help to keep me on an even keel.

• Meditation

• Yoga movement practice

• Walking

A daily walk is the newest addition.  Not having a car meant that I walked to teach, to the supermarket & for pleasure. On returning to Manchester earlier this year, the switch to driving more & walking less happened immediately. It was only when I stopped that I realised how much I enjoy walking. The fresh air. The exercise. The time to think. The time not to think.

“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” – Alfred Wainwright, A Coast to Coast Walk –

As I type, my jeans are damp & my hair is wet. I have just returned from a walk. It was raining when I left & raining when I got back. I can (& have) used weather as an excuse not to go out but I know I will feel better for it. The benefits will be felt long after I have dried out.

Resistance comes in all shapes & forms

Too tired. Too wet. Too hungry. Too busy. Too cold. Needed by a partner/children/friend/dog/cat. Valid reasons perhaps but most likely they are driven by the pressure to be busy & purposeful. Taking time for ourselves is not a priority.

“We hold those who are on the tightest of schedules in reverence; the busier you are, the higher your status as a human being.” – Ruby Wax, Sane New World: Taming the Mind –

Contrary to common belief, busyness is not a virtue. Overwork and the accompanying stress and exhaustion can make us less productive, disorganised, and emotionally depleted. Self-care habits can reduce the toxic effects of stress by improving our mood and boosting our energy and confidence levels. This is what we need to remind ourselves of when the excuse gremlin tries to sabotage our wellbeing plans!

Life has a habit of getting in the way of yoga

I never tire of students telling me how good they feel after a class. This happens most frequently when they return to yoga after a hiatus of a few weeks or months. There is a renewed impetus to attend regular classes, to go on a retreat, or to begin a self-led practice. The buzz is tangible, yet the momentum can be lost when the bar is raised too high.

My advice is to start small and a quick Google search revealed that all the experts say this too! If you want to have a regular yoga practice, begin with one session per week. Sow the seed of intention and find a class at a time & location that works for you. Set the intention in black & white by adding it to your schedule. If possible, book or pay for a class in advance and strengthen your intention. Prepare for the class the evening before so you have everything ready, renew your resolve to go whatever the weather.

5 Ways Meditation Makes Us Better at Yoga

Meditation. Yoga. The two go together like Batman & Robin (though with less capes… usually).

As spiritual health practices that have both found popularity in the West over the past 50 years, we tend to lump yoga and meditation together. Whenever we read of one, the other usually isn’t far behind. And when we’re shopping for yoga pants it’s no surprise to see a meditation mala in the vicinity. 

Yet despite the obvious correlation between yoga and meditation, there are still countless people who do one or the other and not both.

Big mistake. 

Yoga makes you better at meditation because it creates a relaxed body that is conducive to a relaxed mind. Not to mention, it also makes it far easier to get into lotus position without feeling like your legs are going to snap in two. And meditation makes us better at yoga in five key ways. Let’s take a look.

How meditation makes us better at yoga

1. Meditation helps us focus on asanas

When we’re practicing yoga, we are, of course, exercising the body. But we ought to be exercising the mind at the same time.

Every time we place the body in an asana (pose), we should be focusing on that pose. By focusing the mind on the body while in a pose, we experience the asana in full. Yoga asanas offer many mental health benefits, but in order to glean those benefits, we have to actually focus on what we are doing. 

Sadly, many people don’t leave their thoughts and distractions at the yoga studio door. And so they are not able to focus on the yoga.  Meditation is well known to improve focus and concentration. And because of this, it makes it easier to focus the mind on the body when we enter a yoga pose. The result is complete mind-body immersion in the asana.

2. Meditation lowers oxygen consumption

One of the lesser-known benefits of meditation is that it changes the way the body uses oxygen.

Scientific research shows that meditation lowers oxygen consumption rate by 10%. This means that we are more able to control the breath during and after meditation. This is a game-changer for anyone who gets short of breath when practicing yoga. If that’s you, try meditating before doing yoga, and during your yoga session, take a few moments here and there to practice mindful breathing. This will help regulate the breath.

Not only does this help us practice yoga for longer, it also gives us more control of pranayama. 

3. Meditation helps you to discover the philosophical aspects of yoga

While most yoga studios these days are more concerned with physical exercise than philosophy, historically yoga has been about both. If you want to truly embrace the yogic lifestyle, you have to get in touch with the philosophical side. Meditation can help.

The yogic system itself includes many meditations, such as Trataka (Still Gazing), chakra meditations mantras, and sound meditations (Nada Yoga). Not only do these meditation techniques help train the mind, they also prepare the mind-body for more advanced stages of yoga. After all, it’s hard to truly experience Pungu Mayurasana  (Wounded Peacock Posture) while you’re worrying about that business meeting.

4. Get too sweaty doing hot yoga? Meditation will help

Anyone who practices Bikram (hot yoga) knows what it’s like to sweat a little too much. But meditation can change that.

We get sweaty when our body temperature rises. But meditation reduces heart rate and blood pressure, and this cools down the body and thereby reduces sweating.So if you’re worried you might be a little hot, sweaty and, yes, smelly when you’re doing hot yoga, try meditating.

5. Meditation improves balance 

Feel a little wobbly in Warrior III? Meditation will change that, at least according to one scientific study. 

Ying Kee, PhD, and his colleagues at the Nanyang Technological University’s National Institute of Education took 32 men and split them into two groups. Kee made both groups stand on one leg while holding a basin of water.   While they were doing this, Kee asked one group to be mindful of their hands, while the other group were allowed to think of anything they liked. Kee then tested the balance of members of both groups.

The results showed that being mindful of the body increases balance, where thinking about something other than what we’re doing will actually lower our balance.

So, if you want to stay in an asana for longer, be mindful of your body while you’re in the pose.

Anyone who is serious about getting better at yoga should embrace both the physical and the mental exercises. And of the latter, meditation is the most important.

By practicing meditation not only do we embrace more of the yogic lifestyle, we also prepare the mind for success in the yoga studio. The benefits of meditation are significant, and they are invaluable when it comes to improving our yoga practice.

If you’ve been doing the physical side of yoga without practicing meditation, perhaps it’s time for that to change.

How to Build Strength with Your Yoga Practice

When people think about yoga, strength isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind. But this doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be a part of your practice!

Traditional asana practices often feature long holds (which build endurance) and passive stretching (which increases passive flexibility). However, as yoga evolves we’re seeing a shift towards building power and increasing active flexibility through dynamic movement. Perhaps the most distinct shift is the strength that yogis are now cultivating. This is partly spearheaded by yogi’s bringing in lessons and knowledge from other athletic disciplines such as dance, martial arts, and calisthenics. 

The physical practice of yoga is actually quite well-suited for strength building for two reasons. The first is that it utilises repetition  When we repeat a motion, whether it be a Chaturanga or Warrior II, we progressively fatigue our muscles which allows them to grow back stronger. Secondly, each posture in yoga has numerous modifications that allow us to make it easier or more difficult. Therefore, as yogis build strength, it’s easy to find more demanding and difficult progressions that will allow us to continue that growth. By utilising reputation and adaptation, we’re able to achieve the principal of progressive overhead (i.e. increasing demand on the musculoskeletal system to gain strength, size, and endurance) just as we would in any other athletic discipline.

However, gaining strength in yoga requires us to actually incorporate principles from exercise science into our approach to structuring our yoga practice. So let’s discuss how learnings from gymnastics and strength training can help us create yoga flows that build strength (and allow us to master fun new skills). 

The Science

To very quickly summarise (before we get into what it all actually means) –– to gain strength with yoga, we first need to think about how strength is built. Let’s try and simplify this as much as possible. 

Exercise science tells us that strength is equal to neural adaptations –– how our body responds to stimulus, plus cross sectional muscle growth –– the size of our muscles. The former is more influential on our overall strength. When talking about neural adaptations, we can think in terms of motor units (motor neurons sent by the brain to the muscles), and the type of muscle fibers being activated. The two ends of the motor unit spectrum are Low Threshold Motor Units (LTMUs) and High Threshold Motor Units (HTMUs). LTMUs correspond with slow twitch, endurance focused muscle fibers and take a weaker electrochemical brain signal to activate. HTMUs correspond with strength and power. These innervate fast twitch muscle fibers and are activated by a higher-intensity electrical impulse in the brain. Put simply, this means that if we want to gain strength (and nail that press to handstand), we need enough stress to activate HTMUs and fast twitch muscle fibers. Still with me? Great, let’s get started!

Putting this into practice

First, let’s get this out of the way–-building strength will not make you overly muscular or necessarily decrease your flexibility (unless you’re exclusively tossing barbells overhead in the weight room). So get that powerlifter image out of your head, and think more about the lean and muscular physique of a gymnast or circus performer. 

So how do we do it? And how will this be different than how yoga is usually practiced? Here are a few ideas? 

1) Begin with a warm-up.

The idea behind this approach is that part of your strength-based yoga practice is going to be putting a heavier-than-usual stress on the body, which means it’s essential to warm up thoroughly without wasting energy or exhausting yourself.

2) Do some skill-based work first.

Trying to nail Eka Pada Bakasana (one-legged crow) or a freestanding handstand? Do it after your warm-up. This is going to be the time when you have the most energy and focus to work on skill-based movements. In yoga, we often put these challenging positions as peak poses at the end of a practice. While not necessarily harmful, this doesn’t allow us to approach them with our full ability since we’re often already exhausted. 

Please note that there are two exceptions to this approach. Firstly, if you’re working on drills to support difficult postures (i.e. handstand holds against the wall, etc.), do that after your skill work. Secondly, if you’re working on positions that mainly require flexibility (as opposed to strength or balance), place these later in practice once you’ve spent more time opening up.

3) Add some strength-based work early on.

After warming up and working skills, now is the time for your strength work. One of the best ways to do this is with a short but challenging (think very challenging) flow that you can repeat 1-3 times. After each repetition of the flow, take a long rest in Childs pose. Make the difficulty of this mini-flow match your (or your students) level, while throwing in one or two “reach” movements or postures. You/they will eventually adapt to the challenge.

4) Move through the rest of your regular practice AFTER strength work.

After having used your maximum strength in your mini-flow, feel free to move through the rest of your practice as you usually would. This could focus on more dynamic movement, slow endurance-focused postures, breath work, or whatever other priorities you have. 

5) End with additional mobility and flexibility work.

Since you’re putting an extra level of stress on the body during your difficult strength-focused flow, be sure to end by giving those parts of the body a little extra love. If you were hand-balancing, open up the wrist joints. If you were working the core, take some time in Sphinx pose. The extra work means you’ll need a little extra cool down to assure that you’re able to avoid injury and keep up with your practice. 

Yogi’s are able to accomplish some amazing feats. But to do so, we have to be experimental and scientific about our approach to practice. Part of this should be drawing on what we know from other disciplines. Gaining strength in yoga isn’t difficult. However, it does require us to structure our flows so that we explicitly perform strength-focused movement at the right times, while using repetition, and adapting to use progressively harder variations of each posture as we grow.