Vata Balancing

With fall right around the corner which starts on September 22 with the Autumn equinox followed by the winter solstice and the commencement of winter.  It is a very transitional time, bringing cooler, dryer, windy elements into our environment which also enhances the wind factor in our own bodies. Vata is the wind dosha in Ayurveda that very often gets unbalanced during this time of change.

Ayurveda’s mantra is: ‘Like increases like,’ while ‘opposites balance each other out.’ So if Vata is in abundance in the climate, we are reflecting it as well by feeling an excess of air and ether in our bodies, And if your constitution tends to have Vata in it anyway, like me, chances are you will get extra ungrounded and thrown off balance.

However we can stay centered during the climate transition by practicing the opposites to balance. We can stay warm, moist, steady, rooted and engaged. This can be accomplished with:
*nutrition: think warm soups with root vegetables, warm tea with spices, cooked veggies. Two of my favorites is squash soup and roasted veggies.
*meditation: to let your physical body rest and slow down. As well as steady and slow your mind.
*pranayama: breath exercises to slow down you mind, body, and nervous system. The paranayama technique I have been using most frequently is spinal breathing. I image an elevator or light starting at the base of my spine as I inhale and travel all the way up to the center of my forehead and slightly forward by the end of my inhale. As I exhale I breath and follow the light or elevator back down to the base of my spine and pause before staring my next inhale. Repeating this for 5-30 minutes is awesome. If you want to go a little deeper into this technique as you exhale and follow the light or elevator back down, at the same time engage your pelvic floor muscles to press the breath out of your lifted spine. It is challenging to follow one thing down from your third eye to your pelvis (which is grounding) while pressing your breath and lengthening up in the opposite direction.  But once you get it going it is so centering and stabilizing.
Yoga: use your practice to stay grounded during this vata season with longer help poses, use your muscles to stay steady, work on rooting into your foundation and with that connection to foundation expand up to the sky (only as much as you can stay rooted) and focus on your breath. Forward folds and hip openers are great to cultivate grounded-ness. But backbends, arm balances and twists done intelligently  are also awesome but require more intention and work to cultivate grounded-ness.
Other lifestyle: warm baths, lots of sleep, oil messages, slow deep massages, sitting by a fire

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My Tuesday anusara public class:

Theme: stay grounded during the change of the season with timed longer held poses
Principles of emphasis: 1st, 2nd, 5th root to rise

Surya Namaskar 3x

1 min timing:
AMS
Lunge
Anjaneyasana
Hrl- tree- Standing quad stretch- standing pigeon
Active pigeon
L.L quad W2- rev
Hrl twist- mod. Parsvak
1/2 moon - standing pigeon- W1
1/2 moon- standing pigeon - W1
W1

Tarasana uprights - fold
Baddha konasana upright- fold
Malasana
Bakasana
Pincha
Sirsasana
Sirsasana - bakasana

Camel block
Pigeon Mermaid

Matsendrasana twist
Supta passive femur root

Cool as a Cucumber Recipes

 It is hot outside! My pita is more fiery then normal so I have been eating lots of cucumbers to help me cool down and come back into balance. Here are some recipes I have been playing with.

Cucumber Tomato Mint Salad

• cucumbers, peeled and diced
• vine-ripe tomatoes
• 1/2 an onion, diced
• crushed garlic (optional)
• sea salt and pepper, to taste
• organic extra virgin olive oil, to taste
• fresh lemon juice, to taste (or raw apple cider vinegar, coconut vinegar, or Kombucha)
• dried mint, a few generous pinches (more if fresh)

Toss all ingredients together in a salad bowl.

Cucumber Yogurt Salad

• 1/2 cup fresh yogurt
• 1/2 cup grated cucumber
• black pepper, to taste
• rock salt, to taste
• 1 tbsp. finely chopped cilantro

Whisk all ingredients together enjoy at cool or room temperature.

Cucumber Beet Salad

• 1 roasted beet
• 1 cucumber
• 1/2 a handfull of finely chopped fresh mint and fresh parsley
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp lime juice
• Pinch of Salt
• Pinch of black pepper

Roast the beet (Wash the beet – leaving the skin on, rub with olive oil and wrap in paper foil. Place in the oven, and bake for about 30 to 50 minutes at 425 F until tender.) Peel/ chop beet and cucumber, mix them in bowl with other ingredients. Serve chilled or at room temp.

Abhyanga

I love practicing this Ayurvedic self massage technique. Especially during the fall and the winter to help balance my vata dosha and keep my skin nice and moisturized. When I feel my mind getting really flightly and full of clutter it is a sign that I need to bust out my oil and practice abhyanga.

Abhyanga is an Ayurvedic treatment you can do for yourself. Like food for your skin, warm oil (sesame, sunflower or coconut) massaged into your body relieves fatigue and rejuvenates the mind and body while lubricating the joints and making the skin soft and supple. This is traditionally performed in the morning to get your circulation moving and remove the toxins that accumulate during the night. However you can also try it in the evening to promote restful sleep.

In Sanskrit the word sneha means both “oil” and “love”, Abhyanga is like saturating yourself with love! Let the oil soak in for up to 15 minutes to penetrate the subtle channels, then take a hot bath or shower.

The benefits are numerous and include; soft, supple, beautiful skin, tones the muscles, lubricates the joints, slows down aging, nourishes the body, promotes restful sleep, stimulates the systems of the body, enhances circulation, calms the nervous system, increases immunity…

A nice wintertime habit is to massage warm sesame oil into your feet before bedtime. Wear a pair of natural fiber socks so you dont get oil all over your sheets.  In addition, if you find yourself dry from the heater always running, anoint your nostrils and ears with sesame oil.

 Use organic sesame oil, and warm the oil by rubbing it between your hands before applying.      

Here is a good youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEFWVqREgps

10 habits to avoid

I feel very fortunate to work at The Yoga Center in Utah. Wednesday 5:40-7 and Thursday 12-1. The center is owned by Anusara-Inspired teacher Leslie Salmon who is currently going through the certification process. Leslie encourages and helps her teachers to continue to study and grow. She has a lovely library that we can “check out” books from. It is so nice to have support as a student and teacher of yoga…

Anyways on Thursday I arrived early so I could do some light asana before teaching my class and instead I found myself browsing in the library. I came across: Textbook of Ayurveda, Fundamental Principles by Vasarly Lad M.A.Sc. I have been very interested in Ayurveda for the past 3+ yeas. I have taken many workshops from Arun Deva, Shiva, Andrejs Gailis…As I flipped through the textbook I came across a list “10 habits to avoid”. Seeing them all in a list was really interesting, I have heard of most of them before yet I definitely have a habit of doing many of these. This list motivated me to put more effort in creating balance in my life style. I wrote the list down and thought I would share it here.

1. Overeating
2. Eating without real hunger
3. Emotional eating
4. Drinking fruit juice or excess water or no water during a meal
5. Drinking chilled water at anytime (this one is super hard for me I love ice water but I also know the cold water puts out our digestive fire)
6. Eating when constipated or emotionally disturbed
7. Eating before 7am or after early evening
8. Eating too much heavy food or too little light food
9. Snaking on anything except fruit between meals (I hadn’t heard this one before)
10. Eating in compatible food combinations such as fruit with a meal
Very interesting.

I am so excited john friend is coming to The Shop in Park City Utah on Monday to teach immersion 3 which I will be volunteering and hopefully observing and then I am taking his intermediate/advanced workshop next weekend.

Other fun yoga happenings:

• Jen Hechti s teaching The Practice tonight at The Yoga Center 5:40-7:40 by donation
• Jen Hecht and Matt Newman are teaching The Practice tomorrow at Snowbird Cliff Spa 1-3 (could be off on the time) 20$ includes spa and pool.

Have a lovely day.

Aligning with the universe allows us to ride the winds of grace toward the center of our heart.

Practice staying connected to your heart as we introduced challenges into our asana practice! This was the theme of the Level 2 yoga class I taught at Kula on Tuesday night 7:30-9pm last week….

Rumi..."On a day when the wind is perfect the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty. Today is such a day."

I took a Ayurveda lecture from Aaron Leitko at Flow Yoga on sunday. Aaron briefly summarized Ayurveda, which translates to mean the science of life. Ayurveda focuses on the 5 elements including earth (prithvi), water (apas, jala), fire (agni), wind (vayu), and ether (akasha, akash). Through this science we learn how to create harmony between the five elements in our body, our emotions, and our situations…When talking about the 5 elements Aaron briefly used a metaphor about a sail boat that went something like this…when we create balance between these elements, we align with the universe and through this harmonious alignment the universal winds blow our sail boat in the “right” direction. Isn’t that lovely? I am going to expand with this metaphor.

This reminded me of our yoga asana practice and more specifically Anusara yoga. Anusara (a-nu-sar-a), means “flowing with Grace,” “flowing with Nature,” “following your heart”. When we use precise alignment with our physical body in asana poses we are also aligning our mind, our heart and our spirit with the universe, as a result the universal winds blow our sail toward the center of our heart, and the center of our being. It feels like life is working with us instead of against us.

However so much of our life off the matt doesn’t align with the universe. Sometimes our actions, intentions, wants, and needs are in such contrast with each other that instead of not having the help of the universal wind, it’s like we take out the oars in our boat and start rowing away from the center.

How can our actions on and off the matt better align us so may ride the universal winds of grace toward the center of our heart? How can we not pick up the oars and row away from the center, if anything how can we oar toward the center?

Finding this alignment in our asana practice has two stages. The first stage is finding the alignment of our body, mind, heart, and spirit and noticing the harmonious effect it has on our being. The second stage is coming into this alignment and then introducing various challenges and seeing if we can maintain this clam, heart centered and luminous feeling. I love practicing this second stage because life off the matt is full of challenges. When we practice confronting challenges and maintaining a lightness of heart on the matt, when we are faced with an obstacle off the matt it becomes easier and we are more aware of not losing our center.

Suggested asanas… These poses are already challenging, remember you can practice the first stage by just maintaining alignment. Adding the variations creates more of a challenge but so is staying connected to heart. When challenges confront you in life how do you respond? Do you constrict out of the heart? Or do you use the challenge as an opportunity to connect to life more fully while maintaining balance?

•Vrksasana (Tree pose):

1.Ardha Chandrasana variation: bring the sole of the right foot to the left inner thigh with your hands in anjali mudra, experience your inner radiance. Keeping this inner shine reach your left hand toward sky, and spread your right fingers like the sun with the thumb at heart center and palm facing the left, so the right hand resembles your heart budding open like a flower. Now begin to reach your left hand toward the right, contracting the right oblique muscles and puffing the lefts ribs up as you turn the chest toward sky. Maybe switch your drishti past the left arm pit. (picture of this variation the leg is in 1/2 lotus)
2.Twist variation: hands in anjali mudra begin to twist the torso to the right, and take your drishti over your right shoulder, then twist to the left brings the drishti over the left shoulder.
3.Back bend variation: with the inner thighs moving back scoop the tail bone scope the tail bone as you lift the heart and do a bend backward, take your drishti up toward the sky. Smile
4.On a block variation: stand on a yoga block and do the same variations, quite a challenging being 2-3 inches above the ground.

•Pincha Mayurasana (foararm balance):
1.Twisting variation: while balancing on your foararms start to twist your torso to the right and then toward the left.
2.Back bend variation: while balancing on your foararms melt your heart, bring it forward, integrate shoulder loop, lift up your head smile. Then begin to reach your feet toward the front of the room.

•Hanumanasana (splits): doing a pose like hanumanasnas is challenging and we normally run into our ego and self judgment. When in Hanumanasana, no matter how far you are in the pose, can you cultivate an attitude like “where I am is perfect and beautiful!” Find your inner sparkle within this difficult pose.

•Bakasana (crow pose): balancing on your hands is a challenge, but add the extra challenge of a longer hold. Can you stay heart centered and luminous 5, 10, 20 breathes. Keep smiling.

For more information on regular Ayurveda talks visit: http://flowyogaslc.com/classes.html#vedic-lectures