There are many moments in parenting when I wonder if I’m doing it right. I question how my choices will turn out in the long term, and whether each decision I’ve made will have minor or major implications on the lives of our kids. And then there are times when I can take a pause, breathe into the moment at hand, and feel content that things are going okay.
I was a little behind on my new year’s prep for 2014. A little thing called an ice storm and being displaced over the holiday season will do that every time. (More on that in another post.) I’m not really one for new year's resolutions anyway.
At the end of a yoga class, you’ll likely hear the instructions, “Come into corpse pose.” Corpse pose — or savasana as it is called in Sanskrit — is arguably the most important pose in any yoga class. It is the final posture, and is a chance for our bodies and minds to integrate the benefits of all the poses we’ve done in our practice. It’s a time for the body to completely relax, and come into a meditative state.
Summer. The word conjures up images of sunshine, water, heat, the outdoors. Most of us spend the better part of our year looking forward to summertime and all that goes along with it.
One of my favourite things about summer is my outdoor yoga practice. Feeling the fresh air on my skin, listening to the sounds of nature, and feeling the ground beneath my feet. I practice in my backyard, on a dock, in a park, by a lake, wherever I can. Sometimes my kids will join me, sometimes they’ll just climb all over me, and sometimes I enjoy the peacefulness of a solo practice.
This is an important discussion. As with any other physical activity, yoga has varying degrees of difficulty and not every body is suited for all challenges. Sometimes our bodies (or our minds) are simply not ready for a posture.
With Christmas bearing down on us like an express train, I’m looking towards the holiday festivities with excitement and trepidation. As sure as the sky is blue, there will be moments over the next two weeks when I feel like I’m going to lose my mind. And since the lessons I learn on the yoga mat are a continual source of inspiration for my life off the mat, I thought I’d turn to my yoga practice for some tips on getting through the holidays with as much joy and peace I can muster.
Here are three elements of my yoga practice that I intend to put to good use:
As you can probably glean from the “Meditating Mummy” moniker, I meditate. I find it a grounding practice, an effective way to get rid of all the mental junk that fills my mind on a daily basis. I marvel at how quickly my mind refills with clutter, and meditation is something I imagine I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.
Last weekend I was at the Yoga Conference in Toronto. In one of the workshops, the instructor spent a long time discussing the importance of cultivating awareness of the space and time in between the poses in our yoga practice. It’s quite easy to focus on your breathing, your muscles, and your body when you’re actually holding a yoga pose on the mat - when you’re still - but the challenge lies in keeping that awareness, that presence of mind and body as you shift your body from one pose to another. This concept is not a new one to me.
Despite having practiced yoga for many years, I’m constantly surprised at the revelations I have on the mat – both the smaller "a-ha!" moments to the greater "scream-it-from–the-rooftop!" realizations.
Well, I had a revelation today.
I’m not sure where on the spectrum today’s revelation falls. The realization felt like a rediscovery of something I have always known - like a moment of déjà vu or the experience of an unfolding dream in which you seem to know what will happen a split second before it does.
