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[inthatstateofgrace]

How to Get Over a Bad Mood by Cultivating Breath Awareness

Yoga is the dance of every cell with the music of every breath that creates inner serenity and harmony.”  – Debashish Mirdha, MD., neurosurgeon & philosopher 

So you’re in a mood. 

What do you do? 

What are your go-to ways to get over it? 

Whatever way you choose to work through your moods, here’s one thing to know: 

Moodiness isn’t “good” or “bad.” 

It’s neutral. 

It provides us with clues about what’s going on underneath the surface of our awareness. 

They’re like the tip of the iceberg of our inner world – the world of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, perceptions, fears, etc.

A particularly bad mood can be like a tape caught on loop and overdrive. 

Except the tape is our mind and we tend to loop hard when we’re bothered/ pissed/ annoyed/ disappointed/ overwhelmed/ irritated… you get the idea. 

So what do we do? 

We start breathing. 

We tune into the breath and use it to help us navigate the waters of mind and emotions.

Yogic sages have known for thousands of years that the breath is the portal through which we can transform stress and anxiety while accessing a state of inner calm and grounded balance.

Our breathing patterns are intimately tied to our emotions.

Influence one, and you also impact the other. 

 They form what’s called the Breath-Emotion Loop:

1- Our emotions, thoughts, and moods influence our breathing patterns. 

Next time you’re in a mood pay attention to your breathing pattern. You’ll probably notice it’s short, shallow, erratic and/or quick. 

Then notice your breathing next time you feel calm, safe, deep in concentration, or at ease. Notice it’ll probably be slower, longer, even-paced, and/or deeper. 

2- Our breathing patterns can influence our mood. 

If you were to start breathing rapidly taking short and shallow breaths you’ll likely start feeling either awake and alert, or anxious and on guard. 

And so, if you begin breathing slowly and deeply you will most probably begin to feel less uneasy and more relaxed.

Paying attention to our breathing patterns can tell us a lot about our mood. 

Often times we’re not even aware we’re in a mood until something or someone on the outside reflects it back to us and it’s only then that we realize. 

We can become more still and present by consciously controlling our inhales and exhales, and that’s how awareness is born. 

And this is also yoga. 

You don’t need to use your body or a mat to practice yoga.

You can use only your breath and this is yogic practice (sadhana) too. 

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a 500-year-old authoritative yogic text states that: 

When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life.” 

Cultivating the habit of daily breath awareness is so effective at stilling the ripples of the mind that even Buddha himself taught this practice to monks.

In particular, the Buddhist Anapanasati Sutta, also known as the “Discourse on the Full Awareness of Breathing,” details Buddha’s instructions on how to use the breath to cultivate calm focus and mindfulness (aka Anapana breathing):

“Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. 

Breathing out, I know I am breathing out. 

Breathing in, I am aware of my whole body. 

Breathing out, I am aware of my whole body. 

Breathing in, I calm my whole body. 

Breathing out, I calm my whole body” 

Mindfully paying attention to our breath means noticing and observing it without judging it and without having the need to change it in any way. 

Just noticing the inhales and exhales.

Becoming so awake, aware, and present that we can actually start to feel the inner waves our breath creates.

Bringing full awareness to the sensation and feeling of the breath coming into the nostrils and coming out of the nostrils. 

If a thought comes, (which it will, especially if you’re in a mood!) simply bring your attention back to the breath. 

Each time the mind wanders, just bring it back to the present moment – the moment where you’re breathing just as you are. Right here, right now. 

By cultivating this simple daily habit, we can start to shift the way we feel right now, so we can eventually also shift the way we perceive our reality and our experiences. 

This inevitably creates empowering changes in our mood and temperament. 

This is how we use our breath and our awareness to get over emotional humps and hurdles more quickly, more efficiently, and more productively. 

Want to give it a try? 

Join in on this guided meditation:

Remember:

“When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still.”

You can calm your breath by just starting to pay attention to it. 

This simple practice can have powerful exponential effects if it becomes a daily habit. 

May you find peace and refuge in your breath. 

Sat nam. 

——————-

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Osmara Aryal, MBA, the founder of CalmWithYoga.com, a site dedicated to using yogic philosophy, mindfulness, and meditation to increase inner calm, mental focus, vital energy, and quality rest. She’s a Certified Functional Nutrition Practitioner and a Certified Yoga Teacher, specializing in Yoga Nidra, Yin Yoga, and Meditation. Her work has been featured multiple times on CNN and the Miami Herald.  When she’s not exploring corners of the world with her husband, or when her eyes aren’t glued to the computer researching, you’ll find her concocting gut-healing dishes in her kitchen, or cuddling with fur-babies Yodha and Molly. 

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Practicing Gratifood: Five Steps to Eating Mindfully

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” -Denis Waitley

What people usually mean when they say “gratifood” is the process of applying gratitude to food. Infusing appreciation into what we eat, being mindful every step of the way, and practicing awareness that food is something to be thankful for.

Step 1: Get connected to each step of the process.

Gratifood begins before you start cooking. It begins before you decide what’s for dinner. It begins in your mind as a mental checklist of all the things that have to happen for you to be able to eat.

If you think for a moment about all the steps food takes before it ends up on your plate, you will instantly feel more connected to the process. Taking it a step further, if you specifically think about each step your food has taken to get to you, the more and more and more you will feelappreciation.

AJ Jacobs, author of “Thanks a Thousand,” realized how much he took for granted his morning cup of coffee. So, he set out on a journey to thank all the people that make his morning ritual possible. What he quickly realized is that the amount of people to thank is infinite: every person he thanked would not have been able to do what they do without the help of countless other people. Everyone from the cashier that rings him up at the grocery store, to the roaster, to the farmer, to the truck driver, to the workers who maintain the roads. He thanks a thousand people in the book, and the ultimate moral of the story is that there are far more people to thank than he possibly could in one lifetime. And that’s just for one small daily ritual–coffee.

Getting connected to the process starts by asking, “If I trace this food—say it’s peanut butter—back to where it began, where does that take me?” As AJ found out, there is an infinite number of components to thank, and there’s no need to do this process of thankfulness ad-nauseum. At some point during the process of cooking, remember to bring to mind the fact that it’s a series of small miracles that you have the variety and quality of food that you do.

When you become aware of the infinite level of thanks you can give for any given food item, and you begin to apply that level of gratitude to the many ingredients you use in any given meal, you can begin to feel an appropriate level of appreciation for the food you’re about to eat.

Step 2: Pour your heart’s loving energy into the food.

Even if it means taking longer to cook, allowing your day’s pent-up positive energy to overflow into the process of cooking can transform the way you make food. Cooking can be a structured outlet into which you can process those positive emotions. And yes, positive emotions need to be processed too! By creating a meal this way, you can transfer your positive emotions into a new form–food–and experience them all over again! One of the most powerful positive emotions you can use to enhance this effect is gratitude. It’s not necessarily about what you eat as much as it is about how you eat. Eating starts before you take the first bite. We all know this and if we need proof, all we have to do is conjure up the image of a brimming mug of hot chocolate and imagine touching it to our lips for the first foamy sip, tasting the sweet cocoa powder and cinnamon.

Step 3: Curate your dining environment.

At this point we’ve learned to put appreciation, love and thanks into the different steps of cooking in order to create a meal that’s infused with gratifood. Now it’s time to set the stage. It’s encouraged to create a space in which you feel comfortable eating. A place where you can complete the act of eating with full presence and little distraction. It’s important to consider everything from ambiance, lighting and decor to the types of utensils you eat with.

Did you ever consider you might appreciate your meal more simply by changing the dishware you’re using? It makes sense that you would enjoy your morning beverage more if you are drinking it from a mug that you bought specifically because looking at it brings you joy! You should be able to tell the story of everything you own, and especially the items you use to eat with. Because unlike a baseball glove or pair of pants, you are ingesting the energy of that plate or bowl every time you eat.

And just because the word energy is used, that doesn’t it make it woo-woo. Extending your mindfulness about eating to what you cook with and eat off of can have measurable health benefits. Did you know that changing the type of pan you cook with can help oxygenate your blood? Every time you cook with a cast iron pan you’re boosting your iron intake. Since iron is an essential nutrient that every cell in the body needs to transport oxygen in the blood and myoglobin in muscles, it’s safe to say that the type of pan you cook with has the power to make you a healthier person.

Step 4: Eat with others and if you are eating alone, eat alone.

Now that the meal is ready and the stage is set, it’s a good time to customize the gratifood experience based around who you are eating with.

If you are eating alone, make sure to commit fully to eating alone. Understand that you can experience gratifood just as much alone as you can at a communal meal. Make sure to eliminate distractions. There’s some gray area here and use your good judgment. If you are going to consume content while eating, make sure whatever music you are playing or podcast you are listening to contributes to the feelings of gratitude and appreciation you’ve cultivated thus far.

Remember, digestion starts before taking the first bite. Having content playing in the background, especially video can change your focus in way that inhibits proper digestion. Think about it. Ever watched a suspenseful movie and actually felt it in your body? You’re hanging on the edge of your seat with a pit in your stomach and breathing shallowly. You’ve experienced how the type of content you’re consuming can have real effects on your physiology. And if the content puts you in a fight or flight physiological response, you can see how it would disrupt digestion, which occurs optimally when the body is in a rest and relaxation state.

If you have nothing to distract yourself with, your food becomes your company. You will chew your food well, enjoy every bite to the maximum, and significantly slow the rate at which you eat. You will get to know your food like a close friend.

Did you know it can take up to twenty minutes for the body to send signals of satiety? Most people’s meals don’t even last that long! If you eat slowly, you will probably end up eating less, which in most cases is a good thing. Mindful eating allows you to more appropriately gauge when you should stop eating based off the body’s satiety versus the default gauge people usually use, which is stomach fullness.

Step 5: Dedicate the first 10 bites you take.

I’m going to step in to the first person here for a moment and tell you a little story. It takes place in a rural county in Virginia, at an off-the-beaten-path retreat center called Yogaville. I stayed there for one month during the summer of 2015. Everyone living at the facility and doing the work trade program ate communal meals together. The big meals would be served in a dining hall, and prior to taking the first bite, we would usually go around in a circle and everyone would dedicate the first bite of their meal. This was our version of gratifood. Sometimes we would go around in the circle and we’d do several of these very slow, grateful bites before we started eating at a normal pace. This allowed us to thoroughly infuse each bite with appreciation.

Know that if you take nothing else from this article, if you remember the 10 bites rule, you will be practicing gratitude. Before beginning to eat at your normal pace, eat ten bites mindfully and slowly. Between each bite, bring to mind someone or something you are grateful for and dedicate that bite accordingly.

The five steps to practicing gratifood are your friend. Start small, but make sure to start somewhere. A great place to start is by choosing one of the five steps that resonate most with you and apply it to one of your meals this week. When done on a regular basis, mindful eating has the power to change your thoughts, emotional state, and physical health.

—————-

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Tim Brogan. Tim is currently an Ithaca-based yogi and traveler whose motto is “step into your purpose and share it with clarity.”

Subscribe to his Living is Learning Podcast and YouTube channel: @timbrogan. Website: topselfdevelopment.com

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[inthatstateofgrace]

3 Ways to Be Happy Now

Happiness is a continuous state of quiet joy that exists in the moment from the inside out. Happiness is what love looks like. It is the manifestation of what it means to love ourselves, love our day, love our lives. The timing of happiness is right now.

As seekers of happiness it is important to understand how much of it depends on internal versus external factors. Based on her research, in her 2007 book The How of Happiness, positive psychology researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky concluded that roughly 50 percent of happiness is determined by our genes and 10 percent by our life circumstance, but 40 percent depends on our daily activities.

This 50% is what is commonly known as our Happiness Set Point. The great news is that we have the power to influence 40% of our happiness. The yogic philosophy of Santosha, often translated to mean contentment, is about living into your choices and  loving what life is offering us moment to moment.

Happiness depends on ourselves.”  – Aristotle.

Here are 3 Ways to Be Happy Now

Take Responsibility

Happiness Now starts with taking immediate responsibility for the quality of your life.When we are willing to accept accountability, it gets easier to authentically describe what we want our happiest life to feel like. From there, the experience of the now expands the joy that was waiting for us to realize is already happening.

Happy people avoid blame in all its incarnations. They don’t blame other people, they don’t blame circumstances, and they don’t blame themselves. To happy people, blame serves no purpose. It doesn’t ever get us what we truly desire. In fact happy people not only avoid blame but they also avoid its family members envy, greed and jealousy – which are among the key indicators of unhappiness.” -The Choices Happy People Make

Choose Now

The act of waiting for happiness to be happy, or “happiness procrastination” as I refer to it, can be paralyzing. If we have a prerequisite of a certain condition taking place to facilitate happiness then we’ll always be waiting as opposed to being happy in the moment. If we fool ourselves into believing that we have to understand the reasons why we’re unhappy, the result will be getting stuck in that state of unhappiness. Instead choose those activities that spark joy, stop over intellectualizing your choices, and live in the present.

What’s so important about being in the moment? Spiritual practice teaches us that the present moment is the source of healing, love, inspiration, and happiness. In fact, the purest form of happiness is found in the present moment. The yogis call this power of presence shakti. But to reap these benefits, we can’t just have fleeting moments of presence. We have to stay long enough in the present moment to really soak in the happiness.

Apply this Happiness Prescription:

Each week take a day off of social media for a digital detox. Instead of being caught up in looking at what other people have done in the past, focus your attention on your present moment.

Each month plan a nature trip, whether it’s hiking in the mountains or walking the beach or enjoying the local forest preserve. Notice how nature only knows how to be in the now.

Take a long weekend each year to attend a personal development workshop for a happiness reset. Get back in touch with the Now of your happiness.

Each year go on retreat where you can unplug from your business life for a week.

At the end of the year, take a business “savasana” where you celebrate all that you attempted and accomplished and find pleasure in resting in that knowledge. Be present in the Now instead of trying to achieve more.

Stoke Your Passion!

Happiness is a direct experience of enthusiasm. Remember, it is not how or when we accomplish something that matters most, it is the sense of enthusiasm during the process that demonstrates our quality of life. Enthusiasm gives us the chance to go beyond our happiness set point. The foundational teachings of yoga tell us that joy is our birthright. That doesn’t mean it comes easy: It takes real effort. However, this exertion is well worth it and we should never let a day go by without putting forth our best effort to live with passion.

Seek daily activities that inspire enthusiasm. Do something that keeps you engaged in the joy of the present moment.

Apply these three ways to be happy now and watch your happiness set point rise up. Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia

—————–

Editor’s note:  This is a guest post by Silvia Mordini, CEO, Transformation Leader, and Author. With contagious enthusiasm Silvia encourages everyone she meets to love their life! Her expert passion connects people to their own joyful potential. She has been teaching happiness, global awareness, & mindfulness for 20 years. Silvia, born in Ecuador, proud of her Italian heritage and raised as a world traveler, is a well-loved internationally recognized Motivational Speaker, Love Alchemist, and Mindfulness Teacher at conferences worldwide. Her classes holistically integrate various styles of yoga, primarily Vinyasa, Kundalini, and Anusara. You can’t help but leave her workshops, RYT200 Alchemy of Yoga teacher trainings & Alchemy Tours retreats spiritually uplifted!

Before becoming a serial Entrepreneur, Silvia had a thirteen-year Human Resource career including as Director for an international Fortune 100 professional services company. She founded and owned Total Body Yoga Studio with over 9,000 clients for ten years. In young adulthood she was run over by a car—a life changing accident that led her to discover the “Alchemy” of Yoga and Meditation to heal and transcend. She is the Founder of the fifteen year old world renowned Alchemy of Yoga Teacher Training School with over 29 graduating classes of Alchemist Alumni. In 2009 she founded Alchemy Tours, an International Retreat company specializing in Personal Development. With over 12,000 hours of yoga teaching experience she makes yoga approachable, fun, and inspiring for everyone. She has been inspiring happiness, global awareness, and joyful living in students for more than fifteen years.

Tune into her motivational “Loving Your Day” Podcast. Read her popular blog “Happiness Prescriptions”, and learn to love yourself, love your day, love your life along with enjoying her “Loving Your Day” YouTube channel.

She has written hundreds of lifestyle, travel & wellness articles for publications such as MindBodyGreen (USA), Elephant Journal, DOYOU (Hong Kong), Wanderlust (USA), Mantra Wellness Magazine, Gaia, Yogi Times, Daily Cup of Yoga (USA), and is a wellness expert as seen in HuffPost and Medium.

Most importantly through personal experience she knows it’s possible to transform your trauma to dharma and transmute your drama to dreams.

You can reach her by email at [email protected]

Inspired Yoga, Love, and Travel for a LIFE Inspired Personal: https://www.silviamordini.com/  Twitter/Instagram @inspiredyogagal Yoga: https://alchemyofyoga.com              Twitter/Instagram @alchemyofyoga Travel  https://alchemytours.com               Twitter/Instagram @alchemytours Love: http://lovingyourday.com              Twitter/Instagram  @lovingyourday

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Spiritual Adulting (Means Taking Time Out for Spiritual Maintenance)

Do you invest more time and money taking care of your car than you do for yourself?

Every year your car minimally requires:

Oil change every 5,000-7,000 miles

Rotate your tires every 7,500 miles

Break pads changed every 25,000 miles

These are just a few things responsible adults do to keep their car running smoothly. Can you imagine if you made even half this investment into your personal well-being?

Honestly, is it time for some spiritual maintenance? Here are some ideas for stepping up to the challenge of spiritual adulting.

Maintenance means upkeep, preservation, and care. The opposite of this means neglect. We’ve all ignored the warning signs until we reach that point where we don’t sleep well, feel out of sorts, live with physical aches and pains and get impatient with those around us. Just like the system of warning lights in our cars, advising us to pay attention, our spiritual warning system can send out alarms as well.

Remember, just like we don’t want to run out of gas on the road or blow a head gasket, we shouldn’t let our bodies wear down or our minds wear out either.

All we have to do is notice. Pay attention. Or better yet, before something happens, schedule time for yourself to recharge so you don’t slip backwards, which is one of the nine kinds of obstacles encountered on the Spiritual path of happiness according to Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutra Chapter 1 Verse 30.

Slipping Backwards is known as “anavasthitatva.”

Often after we have worked hard to attain a goal, like losing 10 pounds, getting stronger, sleeping longer, working less, being less distracted, eating healthy, it is often our inability to maintain the progress we’ve achieved that becomes our bigger obstacle. When we stop making time for regular maintenance we can slip backwards into unhealthy patterns like not getting enough sleep, eating unhealthy, or working all weekend.

Other ways to describe this include: Slipping down, backsliding, regressing, relapsing.

It is not enough to achieve our intentions through diligent self-work. Spiritual adulting means to continue to remain focused and maintain progress once achieved. In other words, to keep it going because it is important to our personal development and core integrity. No excuses.

No one can do this for us. It’s up to us to keep our commitment to living our best lives. Even at times when we might “slip backwards” we can renew our commitment and again promise to stay the course to keep going for our good and the good of our contributions to the world.

Game on. Today is an opportunity to make deposits into your health and happiness. What are you going to do to destress, unplug, get strong, quiet your mind, and get your emotions, thoughts, and body back in alignment? What does your ultimate tune-up look like? Am you ready for spiritual adulting?  You bet you are.

Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

—————–

Editor’s note:  This is a guest post by Silvia Mordini, CEO, Transformation Leader, and Author. With contagious enthusiasm Silvia encourages everyone she meets to love their life! Her expert passion connects people to their own joyful potential. She has been teaching happiness, global awareness, & mindfulness for 20 years. Silvia, born in Ecuador, proud of her Italian heritage and raised as a world traveler, is a well-loved internationally recognized Motivational Speaker, Love Alchemist, and Mindfulness Teacher at conferences worldwide. Her classes holistically integrate various styles of yoga, primarily Vinyasa, Kundalini, and Anusara. You can’t help but leave her workshops, RYT200 Alchemy of Yoga teacher trainings & Alchemy Tours retreats spiritually uplifted!

Before becoming a serial Entrepreneur, Silvia had a thirteen-year Human Resource career including as Director for an international Fortune 100 professional services company. She founded and owned Total Body Yoga Studio with over 9,000 clients for ten years. In young adulthood she was run over by a car—a life changing accident that led her to discover the “Alchemy” of Yoga and Meditation to heal and transcend. She is the Founder of the fifteen year old world renowned Alchemy of Yoga Teacher Training School with over 29 graduating classes of Alchemist Alumni. In 2009 she founded Alchemy Tours, an International Retreat company specializing in Personal Development. With over 12,000 hours of yoga teaching experience she makes yoga approachable, fun, and inspiring for everyone. She has been inspiring happiness, global awareness, and joyful living in students for more than fifteen years.

Tune into her motivational “Loving Your Day” Podcast. Read her popular blog “Happiness Prescriptions”, and learn to love yourself, love your day, love your life along with enjoying her “Loving Your Day” YouTube channel.

She has written hundreds of lifestyle, travel & wellness articles for publications such as MindBodyGreen (USA), Elephant Journal, DOYOU (Hong Kong), Wanderlust (USA), Mantra Wellness Magazine, Gaia, Yogi Times, Daily Cup of Yoga (USA), and is a wellness expert as seen in HuffPost and Medium.

Most importantly through personal experience she knows it’s possible to transform your trauma to dharma and transmute your drama to dreams.

You can reach her by email at [email protected]

Inspired Yoga, Love, and Travel for a LIFE Inspired Personal: https://www.silviamordini.com/  Twitter/Instagram @inspiredyogagal Yoga: https://alchemyofyoga.com              Twitter/Instagram @alchemyofyoga Travel  https://alchemytours.com               Twitter/Instagram @alchemytours Love: http://lovingyourday.com              Twitter/Instagram  @lovingyourday

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[inthatstateofgrace]

3 Ways to Overcome Self-Sabotage

Don’t you just love all the positive “SELF” compound words: Self-Love, Self-Confidence, Self-Awareness, Self-Esteem, Self-Acceptance, Self-Worth, Self-Care and so on. I appreciate these because of the experience I’ve had with that other self-word. Self-Sabotage.

New York Times #1 best selling author Debbie Ford writes,“Overcoming self-sabotage…is one of the most important conversations you’ll ever have with yourself. Honor it and know that it will change your life.”  The question is, are you ready to overcome self-sabotage once and for all?

Doing this one thing will change your life and grow your happy.

Living as the best person you can be means understanding that in spite of your highest intentions, each of us will sometimes sabotage ourselves. When this happens, it is important to remember that growth is not always orderly and even: Sometimes you take a couple steps back before taking three forward.

Do you have an upper limit problem? This phrase created by Gay Hendricks, author of the book, The Big Leap, discusses how we each have a lifetime of stories, habits, and fears based in self-limiting belief that hold us back in subtle and not so subtle ways.

We have a familiar internal success setting that feels comfortable. This self-regulated meter measures how we are doing towards our goals. When we are living into our highest potential there may come a point where we get uncomfortable, outside of the normal zone. This can trigger us to hold back from the fullest expression of our abilities, thereby causing us to self-sabotage.

Time in self-inquiry through meditation and yoga opens our eyes to see the mental, emotional and physical ways that hold us back. Here are 3 Ways to overcome self-sabotage:

1.  Know Your Unhealthy Habits

Only once you acknowledge the old pattern can you change that paradigm and create something more life affirming. Yoga is cognitive behavioral therapy. You get immediate feedback on where you hold tension in your body and how you speak to yourself. These patterns (samskaras) become ingrained into our psyche. The first step is awareness. Then you can do something about it. You can release unhealthy habits that no longer serve your spiritual happiness. That’s part one. Believe it or not Part 2 is harder. That’s where you know what you want for your life and you have to stand up for what your intentions are. You’ve recognized you do have an upper limit problem and can do something about it.

Gaining mastery over our destructive propensities, through the exercise of awareness and self-discipline with regard to our body, speech, and mind, frees us from the inner turmoil that naturally arises when our behavior is at odds with our ideals. In place of this turmoil come confidence, integrity, and dignity – heroic qualities all human beings naturally aspire to.” ~ The Dalai Lama

2.  Are you living as a Victim?

Letting go of the mind’s identity as victim clears the space necessary to see that we are accountable for our own happiness.

In yoga we know this as sadhana, and it means we work daily as a practice on our own inner evolution. This anti-victim evolution is where we take responsibility moment by moment for what we say, how we act, how we breath, what we think. Being accountable for one’s life takes work. Yoga’s strength lies in its ability to empower you from the inside out to accept the challenge.

Time on the mat allows you to stop identifying as a victim. You stop blaming others. You no longer require constant validation and attention, but instead take responsibility for your own happiness. Today, break the blame cycle. Stop being a victim and stop self-sabotage.

3.  Change Your Self-Talk

If you change the way you talk to yourself, your perspective will change, and you will transform your life.

Allowing critical talk to sabotage you is a deadly pattern. In the Yoga Sutras 1.30, Pantanjali outlines self-doubt (samsaya) as one of nine obstacles to our happiness. It is fed by negative self-talk and thrives on self-sabotage. On the mat—pose by pose—we get stronger and begin to believe we are capable in new ways. This confidence travels with us off the mat. We drop negative reactions and respond to life’s challenges with more positivity. It takes practice to achieve this, which is why we come back to the mat—and also why we call it yoga practice.

Today, embrace the positive self-words in your life. Say to yourself for five minutes of breathing or for the duration of an entire yoga class the positive self-word you need the most in your life right now. Repeating the mantra strengthens its energy and that conversation with yourself gets louder until you are living your best life ever, no holding back.

Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

—————–

Editor’s note:  This is a guest post by Silvia Mordini, CEO, Transformation Leader, and Author. With contagious enthusiasm Silvia encourages everyone she meets to love their life! Her expert passion connects people to their own joyful potential. She has been teaching happiness, global awareness, & mindfulness for 20 years. Silvia, born in Ecuador, proud of her Italian heritage and raised as a world traveler, is a well-loved internationally recognized Motivational Speaker, Love Alchemist, and Mindfulness Teacher at conferences worldwide. Her classes holistically integrate various styles of yoga, primarily Vinyasa, Kundalini, and Anusara. You can’t help but leave her workshops, RYT200 Alchemy of Yoga teacher trainings & Alchemy Tours retreats spiritually uplifted!

Before becoming a serial Entrepreneur, Silvia had a thirteen-year Human Resource career including as Director for an international Fortune 100 professional services company. She founded and owned Total Body Yoga Studio with over 9,000 clients for ten years. In young adulthood she was run over by a car—a life changing accident that led her to discover the “Alchemy” of Yoga and Meditation to heal and transcend. She is the Founder of the fifteen year old world renowned Alchemy of Yoga Teacher Training School with over 29 graduating classes of Alchemist Alumni. In 2009 she founded Alchemy Tours, an International Retreat company specializing in Personal Development. With over 12,000 hours of yoga teaching experience she makes yoga approachable, fun, and inspiring for everyone. She has been inspiring happiness, global awareness, and joyful living in students for more than fifteen years.

Tune into her motivational “Loving Your Day” Podcast. Read her popular blog “Happiness Prescriptions”, and learn to love yourself, love your day, love your life along with enjoying her “Loving Your Day” YouTube channel.

She has written hundreds of lifestyle, travel & wellness articles for publications such as MindBodyGreen (USA), Elephant Journal, DOYOU (Hong Kong), Wanderlust (USA), Mantra Wellness Magazine, Gaia, Yogi Times, Daily Cup of Yoga (USA), and is a wellness expert as seen in HuffPost and Medium.

Most importantly through personal experience she knows it’s possible to transform your trauma to dharma and transmute your drama to dreams.

You can reach her by email at [email protected]

Inspired Yoga, Love, and Travel for a LIFE Inspired Personal: https://www.silviamordini.com/  Twitter/Instagram @inspiredyogagal Yoga: https://alchemyofyoga.com              Twitter/Instagram @alchemyofyoga Travel  https://alchemytours.com               Twitter/Instagram @alchemytours Love: http://lovingyourday.com              Twitter/Instagram  @lovingyourday

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Why You Should Remember Your Fascia Next Time You Practice Yoga

In recent years you may have noticed that “fascia” has become a big trend on the yoga scene. There are many theories around this connective tissue in our bodies which still poses a great mystery for scientists. However, this is what research found out so far:

From the day humans are conceived, we consist of fascia. It is a sticky and fluid network of fabric that holds us together and which constantly adapts to all our movements.

Fascia lies deep within our muscular tissue but also connects them to each other. In addition, it is also present in more superficial parts of our body, where it holds our tendons, blood vessels and nerves together.

With time, injuries can cause this fabric to become thick and inflexible, thus causing restrictions and pain within this tissue. The results are little knots and tensions within our fascia and muscles which need to be released.

What Is Fascial Release?

When we talk about fascial release, it is important to make a distinction between myofascial release, which is the practice of applying pressure to the connective fascial tissue and fascial release, which you can basically do yourself at home. Myofascial release therapy is usually executed by trained practitioners. Alternatively, it can be done at home by using foam rollers or your own hands, which we then would call “self-myofascial release.”

If the sound of foam rollers or visiting a practitioner does not sound too appealing to you, then I have great news for you: Yoga, and especially Yin Yoga, is a great way to release your fascia!

How Yoga and Fascia Work Together

It has been proven that as little as 5 minutes of fascia releasing yoga a day can greatly improve stiffness, ease pain, and lead to greater flexibility. While most forms of yoga are a great way to release this inner tissue, there is also a different form of yoga which is even more effective: Yin Yoga.

Yin Yoga is an especially slow-paced form of yoga, where asanas are held over a longer period of time than most typical yoga styles. These prolonged yoga poses apply pressure on your muscles and thus on your fascia, helping to untie all those knots and tensions that have built up over time. The important thing to know about Yin Yoga is that even though Yin Yoga poses are very similar to Hatha Yoga, their respective names are different and should not be confused. Moreover, due to its more relaxed pace, it is an approach that also focuses much more on meditation.

Earlier I mentioned that fascia is a network that can be found throughout our body. This means that if you practice poses that stretch a particular part of your body, it is important to concentrate not just on this one part, but rather on your whole body. The reason being that a release in one stretched part of your body can lead to a fascial release in another part as well. Even just positioning your hand or foot differently can lead to a release elsewhere.

Which Yoga Poses Provide Fascial Release?

If you still feel left in the dark about fascia and how it can provide relief, try for example the evergreen classic: the downward facing dog. The stretches in your calves are the perfect example of fascia-focused yoga. While you are holding this pose, try to focus your attention on your whole body: What does the stretching of your calves do to the soles of your feet? How does my neck feel when I also try to relax my tongue? Remember, it is all intertwined and connected to each other.

Otherwise, I would recommend that you hold your yoga poses longer than usual (approximately 45 seconds at the beginning) in order to really feel your fascia release its tension. Especially floor-based asanas can be held easier and provide extra relief in your fascial tissue.

A Slow and Steady Pace Is the Key

While yoga is a great way to release your fascia, it is also important to remember to be aware of this connective tissue in your daily life. Although yoga certainly contributes to the flexibility of your muscles, fascial tensions can still result from surprisingly high levels of stress as well as bad posture. You can imagine how unhappy our fascia must be after a long day at work where we barely move!

This is why you should remember to try to take little breaks throughout the day to stretch those areas of your body that feel stiffest. Try to straighten your upper body whenever you feel like you are slouching – even such a little improvement in posture can help your fascial system to stay in constant flow and prevent blockages.

Just remember: Slow and steady is the key…enjoy!

—————-

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Natasa Brasik, a yoga teacher based in Austria with an emphasis on Therapeutic and Hatha Yoga. With a background in medicine, she offers individual (online) yoga classes, where she designs specific programs for her clients with a focus on pain relief as well as back and joint health. Moreover, during the summer she organizes multiple yoga and sailing retreats across Croatia’s islands. For more information on individual sessions as well as her retreats, head over to Carpe Diem Yoga.

  from Daily Cup of Yoga http://bit.ly/2GzUgtW

[inthatstateofgrace]

4 Simple Ways to Meditate More

To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Many of us find meditation incredibly difficult. Sitting, breathing… waiting? What is it all for, anyway? We read articles and watch documentaries on the powerful effects of meditation, however, the commitment to sit and meditate can be daunting. I have found some really simple practices that bring me to a meditative state that can be integrated at any moment in time. Whether you are eating dinner, talking with your family, or driving in your car, here are some simple practices to bring you back into the present moment:

1. Take A Walk

My favorite thing to clear my mind is to take a walk. Whether I am traveling in a new city or walking the streets of my hometown that I have seen a thousand times before, walking gives the experience of feeling fully integrated into the environment. Going for a walk increases endorphins, and most importantly, offers an opportunity to become more aware of your surroundings.

2. Notice Your Five Senses

No matter what you are doing right now, you can stop, and take note of your five senses. What are you seeing? Do you notice colors, shapes, or something else? What do you smell? What are you touching? How does it feel? Are you tasting anything? What can you hear? Can you stop what you are thinking, and simply relax into the experience of the five senses?

By putting our awareness on the world around us, it instantly becomes no longer about “me,” and more about our surroundings. By bringing our awareness to our present experience through the body, we can instantly become grounded in the present moment. As we become more focused we are on our own experience, the less space there is for judgment, comparison, or anything of the like.

3. Listen

I find listening to be the most profound of the five senses. When my thoughts are going haywire, when I listen to the world around me, they instantly become silenced. Where we put our attention, energy follows. By putting our attention on the world outside of our minds, our energy follows.

4. Beware of Your Words

How words hold our creative power. When we learn to be impeccable with our word, we can experience how powerful they really are. When what we say, feel, and do are in alignment, we are in great mental health. When I slow down, and really listen to what I am about to say, I am able to speak my truth freely.

Life can be a living meditation, but it takes consistent awareness to return to the present moment. These are simple practices I have personally discovered which help me regain my grounding. In this space of presence, we have access to our greater intelligence and connection in our lives. We are all already what we are looking for if we could only stop to experience it, right here, and right now. For more tips and tools on yoga, meditation, healing and the arts, head over to The Inside World.

—————

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Lexi Faith. Lexi teaches Sattva Yoga and Yoga Therapy, meditation, reiki and is an artist based in Bali, Indonesia. She is passionate about guiding women to reconnect to their creative, intuitive nature through coaching, yoga, meditation and the arts, and she offers daily drop in classes and retreats around the world. For more information, one on one sessions, and info on her upcoming retreats, head over to The Inside World.

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Yoga Wisdom: Warrior Tales Inspiring You On And Off Your Mat

Excerpt from Yoga Wisdom: Warrior Tales Inspiring You On And Off Your Mat by Stephanie Spence (Skyhorse Publishing)

Introduction

The setting: a luxurious villa on the Caribbean island of St. Barts. A wife and husband, along with several of his clients, are partying on a terrace overlook­ing the glittering ocean and sun-kissed beach. They flew in from Pittsburgh aboard his private jet that morning. The woman seems to have it all—she’s a self-made success story, wife, and mother. But beneath her mask of contentment and complicity, she hides a terrible secret: the price she’s paying for this glamor­ous life is that she is living a lie. Their friends and acquaintances would say that she and her rich, powerful husband of twenty-five years never argue. Well, she doesn’t argue. Why? She is terrified of being bullied, verbally dismissed, and belittled.

As usual, she is expected to entertain her husband’s guests, which means fulfilling their every desire—no matter how illegal. Submissive and compliant, her everyday mantra. Soon, the revelers want to kick things up a notch with Thai Stick, some of the best opium-laced marijuana money can buy. And they expect her to join in.

She takes the Stick, feels her stomach rebel. Her mind screams in protest. She brings the smoldering joint to her lips . . . and hesitates. Her husband, waiting his turn, nods for her to take a hit.

She parts her lips, ready to obey. Wait. What am I doing? she thinks. Selling her soul. Giving herself away.

Putting toxic substances into her body because her husband expects her to be the life of the party. She drops the Stick in a most deliberate way, oblivious to the gasps and protests. No. No more.

She is done with drugs, drinking, and ass-kissing. Ignoring one man’s dash to grab the Stick, now rolling across the patio, she turns to the man who had once vowed to honor and love her. His mouth moves, trying to form words in his shocked outrage.

Before his drug-hazed mind can produce the vitriol he so clearly wants to spew, she blurts out, “I want a divorce.”

A startled hush falls over everyone as they wait for his reaction. She’s pre­pared for the worst of his explosive temper. Instead of denigrating her, threatening her, or pretending that he cares, he simply walks out of the villa. Minutes later, she hears him drive away.

She excuses herself and holes up in one of the guest rooms to await his re­turn. The waiting is its own torture, and it’s for nothing. She finds out that he boarded his jet and left her behind.

But he wasn’t done. The following day, he sends her an email with only one sentence: “Your life as you know it will never be the same.”

My name is Stephanie Spence, a.k.a. Yoga Road Trip Girl, and that wife was me. That brave, bold declaration was only the beginning. As any survivor of abuse, whether physical, emotional, or mental, knows, you can’t go from living as a shell of your former self to empowered in a day, a week, a month. For me, it’s an ongoing journey of triumphs and failures, of heartbreak and joy.

I set off on my new life with nothing but a rental car and the clothes on my back and slowly rebuilt my life with the only lifeline I knew: yoga.

My daily yoga practice grew into so much more than perfecting a pose. Yoga became transformative, teaching me to live a fearless, authentic life of purpose and potential.

When I felt alone, it reminded me that I was part of a world-wide community. When I was hard on myself for falling out of a pose, it reminded me that this is a practice, not an end goal. When I felt powerless to master a pose, it reminded me to surrender to what is. When I hurt, it helped me to heal. And when I did master a pose at last, it applauded my strength—and showed me that I am a warrior at heart who can save myself.

When we are ready to grow, the Universe puts “coincidences” on our path to help us or send us in the right direction. These can be people, places, or events that your soul attracts into your life to help you evolve to higher consciousness or place emphasis on something going on in your life. Synchronistically, I met spiritual teacher Gahl Sasson through my yoga studio. My session with Gahl was infused with Kabbalah, the ancient Jewish mystical interpretation of the Bible. Gahl’s depth of wisdom and devotion inspired me to deepen my spiritual prac­tice, along with my yoga practice. I devoured the exercises in his book, A Wish Can Change Your Life. Starting from the first chapter, I had visual, emotional, and physical confirmation that the book was working. This was unlike any other self-help book I had read. I immediately saw results. For the first time in my life, I had a clear direction for my future.

By the time I finished the book, I knew that my dharma, my soul purpose, was to educate and inspire as many people as I could to try yoga and embrace it as a way of life. I loaded up a rented RV and headed on a month-long journey I dubbed the “Yoga Road Trip.” Waking up daily in my moving cocoon of yoga, I felt powerful and free. My morning ritual of writing and playing house in my adopted home electrified my soul. It dawned on me that this was the first house I had ever picked out and lived in that was truly my own.

Whether my morning meditation was in a shabby trailer park, busy parking lot, or overlooking the ocean, I had a space that was all mine. I embodied the new freedom and adventure I had always longed for but had never been able to manifest on my own.

As I made my 4,000-mile pilgrimage from Southern California all the way up the West Coast and into Canada, I had a simple mission: video-interview and practice with a different yoga teacher every day. Instead of solely words and pictures on my blog, I hoped the moving images would resonate on a more in­timate level with the viewers, bringing them closer to these wise souls, my ex­perience, and me. Hungry for emotional connection, I believed the world of online sharing would resonate with the yearning for kinship that I believe is at the root of all social media. I pictured the blog more as a vlog (video log) from a vision I had while in Savasana. I also wanted to capture their wisdom and en­lightenment to help me discover a part of myself I had never known. The me that I was before life taught me destructive love. I had never learned to listen to and trust my spiritual self, the wise and loving voice of my intuition.

WARRIOR WISDOM

I reclaimed my lost self on the road. I understood for the first time how to thrive instead of merely survive. I regained my unique power and my voice. And most important, I had a road map for physical, mental, and spiritual health to give others. The impressive souls I met on my Yoga Road Trip, and those I have en­gaged with as I continue my journey, are at the heart of this book.

I became a Warrior when I embraced the understanding that I had to crash so I could transform my life. I scoured the globe to find top yoga teachers, truly authentic givers, who make yoga a way of life just as I do. They have huge hearts and simple wisdom driven by compassion, experience, and kindness. We all hope Yoga Wisdom inspires the whole world to embrace yoga as a way of life, one person at a time.

Yoga Wisdom takes you on the road of life with people who are full of self-love and radiating balance, so you can create that for yourself. Once you meet these life instructors, you can manifest everything you need to make a differ­ence in your life and the lives of those around you.

Physically showing up on your yoga mat is just the beginning. With determi­nation and patience, the real secrets and power of yoga come with time. We’re here to inspire you to not only show up for class, but to become a yogi, too—a yoga devotee full of love and light.

It’s time to unleash the Warrior inside you.

——————

Editor’s note: With an eye towards the future, but steeped in wisdom from 38 years of practicing yoga, Stephanie Spence is a Yoga Educator, Author, Inspirational Speaker, Activist, and Creative Leader. Based in Coronado, California, Stephanie is a trail blazer with an inspiring and empowering approach to self-inquiry and personal development. Stephanie is committed to helping ignite the desire for others to create a life of health and joy for themselves through a sustainable practice of yoga for a lifetime of transformation. Connect with her via her award-winning yoga blog, one-with-life.com or @Stephanieyogini. Her book “Yoga Wisdom: Warrior Tales Inspiring You On And Off Your Mat” is now available wherever books are sold. 

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Why Yoga is a Growing Part of Global Healthcare

When yoga was developed as a spiritual discipline in ancient India, it’s unlikely that its originators ever imagined how their practice would look thousands of years into the future. Intensely spiritual in its inception and throughout much of its history, yoga has evolved into something with a global scope and endless iterations – from the strictly traditional to modern inventions like beer and goat yoga.

But it’s perhaps yoga’s latest significant development–from a spiritually-centered pursuit to an increasingly regular feature of the scrupulously evidence-based, secular and scientific world of modern medicine–that is most striking. Evidence is growing to suggest that yoga has real value in a formal healthcare setting, and that this complementary therapy could become a part of both prevention and treatment of a variety of illnesses.

A (Very) Short History of Yoga

Historians theorize that yoga could be between 5,000 and 10,000 years old, but the first written mentions of the word “yoga” appeared in sacred texts known as the Vedas during India’s Vedic period, which began in 1500 BCE. Perhaps the most famous of the yoga scriptures is the Bhagavad-Gîtâ, thought to date back to 500 BCE. In the 2nd century, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra collated various past scripts to create an 8-limb path to enlightenment, beginning the “classical” era where the roots of yoga became structured, and easier to teach and practice.

After this came the development of Tantra and Hatha yoga (which are recognisable to us today), and until the early 1900s yoga was practiced nearly exclusively in the East. The worldwide growth of yoga began with Swami Vivekananda delivering a presentation about yoga in Chicago in 1893, with the first yoga centre opening in Hollywood around 50 years later.

From this point yoga has become fully integrated into the Western world, and the idea that yoga therapy can have a positive effect on the outcomes of a variety of health problems has been growing for decades. In the 1920s, Swami Kuvalayananda first introduced the idea that it would be possible to measure the physical and physiological changes that occurred through yoga practice, and since then a wealth of scientific research has been conducted on yoga’s impact on everything from heart disease to psychosis.

Yoga in Healthcare

The long fight against illness has bought us to a point that’s completely unique in human history. With the odd exception, we no longer need to worry about the ravages of infectious disease; knowing that widespread inoculation programs, good public hygiene and treatment options including antibiotics and antivirals tend to keep a lid on anything really nasty getting out of hand.

This is an extraordinary phenomenon, and one that has been hundreds of years in the making, formed from the hard work of many generations of scientists and doctors making slow steps forward to a better future. But despite the fact we can celebrate that we are no longer dogged by plague, cholera, smallpox or any number of life-threatening illnesses, a new health crisis has arisen. A result both of our longer lifespans and widespread lifestyle change, chronic and non-communicable disease is set to be the biggest health challenge of the coming century.

A diet of processed, sugar-laden food, a working environment that allows little time for relaxation or creative expression, lack of exercise, loneliness, intense financial pressure – these are all features of many people’s lives in the modern world, and they are having a profound impact on their health. Whether it’s the rise in depression and anxiety, or the fact that in 2015 84.1 million Americans aged 18 and older had prediabetes, it’s becoming clear that traditional medicine is struggling to tackle this modern health crisis.

This is where yoga can (and does) have a positive impact. Looking after people’s health is a very expensive endeavour, with significant amounts of a country’s GDP often dedicated to this one goal. Yoga is an inexpensive way to help people both manage symptoms of illness and to also stop illness from developing in the first place, and it can be practiced at any age, and at all stages of health.

Yoga is accessible, improves wellbeing, and those who practice yoga regularly are less likely to exhibit chronic mental and physical health problems. It is also associated with other positive lifestyle habits, suggesting that when people are encouraged to look after their health using yoga, they start to make healthier choices in other areas of life. Stubborn issues such as low back pain and insomnia can be alleviated with the implementation of a yoga therapy regime, and as general wellbeing improves, so does people’s experience of life.

Health is often determined by a complex range of social, economic and environmental factors, and the grinding nature of long-term illness, as well the relentlessness of modern pressures, can make people feel utterly overwhelmed. Yoga can empower the individual and help them make the best choices for themselves, as well as being something that can be practiced in a supportive community setting.

We are living longer lives than ever before, but this progress is threatened by preventable (if complex) issues such as obesity, and the quality of our lives is being undermined by poor mental health and unhappiness. The ongoing integration of yoga into traditional healthcare ultimately represents a shift in thinking. Instead of facing a disease by treating symptoms when they arise, healthcare is increasingly embracing the idea of considering the root cause of illness, and working to prevent it from appearing in the first place.

————–

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Heather Mason, a yoga teacher and founder of The Minded Institute, a center of yoga therapy in London exploring the intersection between yoga and healthcare around the world. Heather became interested in the use of mind-body therapies after her own experience of depression and anxiety, training over many years and across the globe in yoga and yoga therapy. Follow Heather on Twitter and Facebook.

Read more on Daily Cup of Yoga

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[inthatstateofgrace]

How to Use the 7 Chakras to Get in Touch with Personal Vitality

  We can use chakra meditation to help understand the nuances of our body, pinpoint our areas of weakness or overuse, and bring healing to those specific energetic centers.

Each of the chakras has traditional meanings that help us focus on tendencies that characterize the specific energy center.  If we meditate upon each center in a progressive fashion from bottom to top, we become acquainted with a more nuanced understanding of our deepest self.  By accessing each center or wheel, we activate its innate dynamism which propels us to a new level of vibrancy.

The first chakra, Muladhara or Root Chakra, originates from the base of our spine and governs down through the bottom of our feet.  Muladhara, which means “root-support,” is traditionally pictured as red.  By breathing deeply into this chakra with love and healing light, we both wash away any impurities and also strengthen our sense of stability and groundedness in our lives.  By focusing on the root chakra, we gain confidence and serenity and a foundation of security.

The second chakra, Svadhisthana or Sacral Chakra, is situated just below the navel and the small of the back.  Svadhistana is translated as “one’s home,” “loveliness,” or “sweetness.”  It is conceived as an orange energy.  By nurturing the “sweetness” in our sacral chakra, we can heal sexual woundedness and cultivate our natural sensuality, creativity, and enthusiasm for life itself.  This home of “sweetness” is the wellspring of vitality.

The third chakra, Manipura or Stomach Chakra, oversees our will and is lit by the color yellow, like the sun.  Manipura is often translated as the “place of jewels.” Instead of overusing our will and willpower by pushing ourselves or others around, we can learn to breath in the yellow light of the sun to remind ourselves to release the will and willfulness.  When we relinquish our pushiness, we activate a subtle—more gracious and yet more effective—source of power.  Manipura is the cache of our life’s purpose and that is why it is called the “place of jewels.”  When we breath into this chakra, we allow our destiny to manifest easily instead of rushing around chaotically.

The fourth chakra, the Heart Chakra or Anahata, is visualized with the color green.  Green is the color of nature—its peacefulness, growth, and verdancy.  The word Anahata means “whole” or “unbroken.”  By breathing into our heart center, we can heal all brokenness, bitterness, and loneliness.  The heart chakra’s intrinsic “unbrokenness” promises us that whatever happens in this life, we can always return to the heart chakra to become whole again.  We can even regrow our innocence here.

The fifth chakra, Vishuddha or Throat Chakra, directs the voice and the breath with its sky-blue light.  Vishuddha means “pure,” so as we breath into this chakra, we purify our lives.  The throat chakra is the passageway from the central body to the head; therefore, when we heal the throat chakra, we become more cognizant of our bodies and the wisdom that is housed there—an embodied form of integrity.  Sending healing and loving breath to our throat chakra brings us into honesty as well as authenticity.  Through the breath, we clarify ourselves, which is why many meditation practices focus on the breath.  Vishuddha is the hall of purified communication.

Depicted as the blue violet of the night sky, the sixth chakra, Ajna, often called the Third Eye, is located on the forehead and between the eyebrows.  Ajna means “knowing” or “perception.”  Here is the seat of our imagistic eye.  By opening our third eye, we begin to see and know deeply into the lives of others and into the nature of reality itself.  Imagination and empathy are married in this chakra, showing us the real meaning of insight.  Our intuition and wisdom emerge when we allow our third eye to open.  By breathing light and love into Ajna, we activate an ability to perceive the inner workings of other humans, nonhuman animals, plants, and the material world.

On the crown of the head or slightly above the crown, the seventh chakra is called the Crown Chakra or Sahasrara.  Sahasrara means “thousand-petalled,” “thousand-spoked,” or “thousand.”  Thousand traditionally is the number of infinity: in other words, this chakra refers to our Infinite Nature.  The Crown Chakra is often experienced as infused with lavender or white light.  As we move up into our highest chakra, bringing lucidity and openness through our breath, we can clear our sense of confusion and awaken our awareness of what is sometimes called “cosmic consciousness,” “enlightenment,” or “knowledge of God.”  Regardless, the cleansing of our crown chakra brings a profound experience of serenity and even bliss.

As we practice chakra meditation, we will notice areas that we overuse or that feel weak.  By breathing gently into the particular chakra, we can ease the burden of that chakra and learn to balance our personalities.  Through balance and purification of the chakra energy centers, we access and increase our internal strength and health.

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Dr. Kaiya Ansorge.  Dr. Ansorge is academically trained in psychology, philosophical theology, and religion. She began practicing chakra meditation while living in India and found the practice transformative. She now leads chakra meditations regularly for groups and individuals in addition to other workshops, classes, and life coaching. You can find her and her free videos and audio pieces at www.kaiyaansorge.com. You can connect with her through Facebook or Twitter.

  Read more on Daily Cup of Yoga

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Three Signs That You Would Benefit From Meditation

There aren’t many of us who wouldn’t benefit from meditation. In our hectic modern world, simply dedicating 20 minutes a day to peace, quiet and reflection is an act of self-care, giving us the space we need to slow down and switch off. However, there are times in life when the need for meditation can feel particularly keen, and if you recognize these signs, it may be time to start, ramp up or recommit to your meditation habit. 

1. You are tired more often than not

Feeling exhausted all the time is a common issue for us modern humans. So many of us drag ourselves out of bed, power ourselves through the day with caffeine and then – despite feeling tired all day – find it difficult to sleep at night. Every month in the USA, people type “tired all the time” 18,100 times into Google, a small hint of just how many of us feel dogged by fatigue. 

This kind of weariness seems to be a symptom of our increasingly demanding lives, and many of us wish for more motivation and energy. With more energy, we wouldn’t spend our work days in a waking doze, banking up unfinished tasks and creating stress. It would also be easier to achieve our goals in other areas of life – it’s not unusual to find ourselves crashed out on the sofa when we do have any spare time, rather than doing any of the stuff we aimed to do. 

Meditation gives us some of the rest we need in life. By focusing our mind on a mantra, practicing yoga or embracing mindfulness, we soothe our mind and body into a state of deep relaxation, allowing ourselves to switch off in a way that’s otherwise hard to achieve. This, in turn, gives us the energy boost we need, and generally makes us feel that little bit more awesome throughout the day. 

2. It feels like you have no time 

Time is something of a preoccupation in today’s culture. Our whole lives are defined by the almost arbitrary whims of the clock, in a way it would probably be difficult for our distant ancestors to imagine. Instead of following the cyclical, seasonal and celestial-based timekeeping of early humans, whose major concern was keeping the tribe fed and safe, we sacrifice much of our time to earning money and squeeze everything else in whatever time we have left. 

The result is a feeling that we simply don’t have enough time to pursue our own hobbies, build our relationships, or to just laze about if we fancy it. The speed at which the world zips by imbues us all with a false sense of urgency, where any delays or mishaps feel like an absolute disaster. Amongst the rush, we can forget about what’s actually important. 

While meditation can’t stop the clock, it can slow the pace of life a little through a change in our perception. Meditating every day provides us with a sense of calm, increasing our focus so we can appreciate the small things in life. Furthermore, because meditation can make us more productive, we tend to work through tasks with more speed and accuracy, giving us more time to simply enjoy ourselves.  

3. ‘Stressed’ is your default state 

It’s pretty normal to get stressed out every now and then, but being stressed all the time is a completely different matter. Unfortunately, like tiredness, the feeling of being constantly under pressure is something an awful lot of us can relate to. Chronic stress can make life feel far less enjoyable, as we are rarely “in the moment” but always thinking about whatever’s nagging away at us. Too much of this, and life begins to feel like it’s nothing but a meaningless list of chores and worries.  

One of meditation’s most famous and well-research benefits is reduced stress. With stress causing havoc for our health, sleep and mental wellbeing, it’s this benefit which is perhaps the most far-reaching of all. 

In many respects, meditation (in all its forms and throughout the ages) has been developed to direct the mind away from the mundane and everyday, in order to experience glimpses of the deeper truths in life. It may well be this which helps us rise above persistent worries and daily frustrations, making stress something we can manage without becoming overwhelmed. 

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Holly Ashby. Holly is a wellness writer who works with Will Williams Meditation, a meditation center offering an alternative to mindfulness in London, and holds meditation events such as the music-based Shavasana Disco. 

Read more on Daily Cup of Yoga

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Nourishing the Way: Feeding the Birds

Excerpt from The Magic Ten and Beyond by Sharon Gannon

The secret to wealth is to give generously to others. Whatever we give will come back to us many times over. 

Remembering God and being kind to others is the most important job that any of us has in this life. Being kind to others is the essential ingredient to being able to remember God— to be able to see ultimate reality. Developing kindness and compassion toward others is the sure way to happiness. But how does that work?, you might ask: Doesn’t being kind to others in a charitable way only benefit the others? No. Kindness benefits both the other and yourself. Others do not exist independently; they have come from your past karmas. They only exist in your life because you see them as existing. The Hindu sage Patanjali explains this in the Yoga Sutras: vastu- samye chitta-bhedat tayor vibhaktah panthah PYS IV. 15. This can be translated to mean: each individual person perceives the same object in a different way, according to their own state of mind and projections. Everything is empty from its own side and appears to you according to how you see it. 

When you are unkind to someone, you plant a seed to see unkindness. For example, you judge someone as a greedy person. As soon as you think or say that, you plant a seed that will ensure that greedy people will appear in your life. 

When you see yourself as poor, as not having enough to be able to share and be generous to others, you plant seeds for seeing yourself as a victim of poverty, and that will become your reality as you continue to nourish that perception of yourself. You have a choice: you can see yourself as an enlightened being or as a victim, but you can’t have both. If you eventually want to see yourself as an enlightened being, then begin that process by seeing others as holy beings. How you treat others will determine how others treat you; how others treat you will determine how you see yourself; how you see yourself will determine who you are. 

If you want to rid the world of greed, you must destroy the seeds in your own mind that cause greed to appear in the world. In other words, you must do your best to be kind to others— to take care of others as if they were your own self. Other- centeredness is the secret to overcoming the disease of self-centeredness. Put others before yourself. Be more concerned for the happiness of others than for your own happiness. This will dissolve otherness and reveal the oneness of being.

Kindness is the key to Yoga. 

Without the development of kindness toward others, you cannot make progress in yoga. Taking care of others is a sure way to increase your own happiness. When we do things with the intention, first and foremost, of making ourselves happy, we only increase our identification with our small self— our body, mind, and personality. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali cites this identification as the major obstacle to Yoga, calling it avidya, which means ignorance or mistaken identity. The yoga practices are designed to help you drop your self-centered concerns and become more other- centered. Being more other-centered expands your sense of self and increases true self-confidence. If you observe unhappy and depressed people you will find that they usually are self-obsessed. The key to uplifting yourself is to do what you can to uplift the lives of others. 

Why birds? When you feed the wild birds, you karmically assure that you will always have enough to eat and that wildness will not die inside you. Birds as well as other wild animals are having a hard time surviving in a world dominated by self-centered human beings. When you nourish wildness in another you keep it alive within yourself. Most people assume that birds, being wild, know how to take care of themselves, and feel that taking care of them should not be our responsibility. But the fact is, we have polluted with pesticides or destroyed most of the wild forests and fields where they might have been able to find an abundance of nourishing food. Birds require so little to live— a few good organic seeds and a couple of drops of fresh water— and while it may not be much, it can mean the difference between life and death for a feathered person. 

THE PRACTICE Before you feed yourself— even before you drink a cup of coffee or tea in the morning— feed the birds. Fill up a bird feeder outside your window or at least put some organic seeds or bread crumbs on a windowsill. If wild birds aren’t nearby, feed your cat, dog, or other family member.

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Editor’s note: Published by permission of the author.

Read more on Daily Cup of Yoga

Blessing the Way: Giving Blessings Excerpt from The Magic Ten and Beyond by Sharon Gannon When we are at peace with the other people in our lives, we can be at peace with ourselv...

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Blessing the Way: Giving Blessings

Excerpt from The Magic Ten and Beyond by Sharon Gannon

When we are at peace with the other people in our lives, we can be at peace with ourselves.

The other people in our lives exert a tremendous amount of power over us. Thoughts of them fill our waking and our dreaming life. We become sad, angry, jealous, or depressed by focusing on the faults and shortcomings of others. We dwell on the insensitive way they are treating us or have treated us in the past. We often blame others for why we aren’t succeeding or why we can’t achieve the happiness we deserve. We feel treated unfairly by others, unloved or not loved enough. We think that we deserve better. We often feel sorry for ourselves and long to be surrounded by loving and supportive people who think we are amazing. Right? And our excuse is always, “If only he would stop . . .” or, “If only she didn’t do . . .” We too often feel that other people are in our way— in the way of our happiness. The others in our lives are actually providing us with the way. But we must be willing to see them in that light.

To be free of all the nasty people in your world is possible.

Have faith in the knowledge that all the nasty people in your world can change. But don’t wait for them to change on their own, or you’ll be waiting forever! You must change them yourself. If you want someone to be a holy being, you must see him or her as a holy being. They actually only exist in your own mind anyway. They have come from your own past karmas and appear according to how you see them.

How you see anyone or any situation in your present life is due to your past karmas— how you have treated others, in your past. When the great saint Ramana Maharshi was asked, “How should we treat others?” he replied, in yogic fashion, “There are no others.”

We cannot escape our past karmas— the actions we have already done— but we can start now and do our best to plant the kinds of seeds we want to see grow in the future. Cultivating forgiveness, kindness, and friendliness toward others results in spiritual strength. So much suffering comes from seeing ourselves as a victim of others— as a repository for their selfishness, cruelty, greed, insensitivity, and so forth. We see the world as “out there,” coming at us, instead of taking responsibility and realizing that the world we see outside of us has come from inside us, from how we have treated others in our past. Others provide us with a karmic projection— a mirror in which to see ourselves.

The way of the yogi is to dive deeper. The nature of the eternal soul is joy, and this is the only true reality; everything else is temporary. When one realizes the nature of his or her own soul they discover the true Self— that which can never be harmed by anyone. Through the practice of giving blessings to others you come closer to the experience of the power of your own soul— the power of goodness.

When we hug someone we pull them toward us and hold them against our heart. We communicate that we want to be at peace with them, and that we wish them well. To hug someone is to bestow a blessing from the goodness of one’s heart.

It is a well-known fact that only saints give blessings. Well, how do you think a saint becomes a saint? Yes, it is through the practice of giving blessings. As the blessing comes through you, it changes you. By giving blessings to someone else you change the negative perception of that person in your own mind and you also change the perception of yourself as someone who sees negativity. Giving blessings is an anonymous way of changing your world— it can turn devils into angels. And it can all happen in the privacy of your own mind— you don’t have to “meet them for coffee” and talk it out. If you aren’t willing to see someone as a good person, how can you expect him or her to be one? The power is in your hands— well, actually, your mind. The question is, how willing are you to forgive, to let go, and to allow love to lead the way?

Compassion is infinite; you won’t run out, so don’t be stingy with your blessings— give your blessings to everyone— to the people you don’t like as well as the ones you do like. Blessing the ones you love and seeing them as holy beings ensures that they will remain holy, blessed beings in your life.

THE PRACTICE

Allow the image of someone you know to arise in your mind. As you inhale, silently say, “Blessings and love to—” and as you exhale, silently say the name of that person. Continue focusing on that same person or allow other people to float into your consciousness. As you give the blessing try to visualize the person filled with joy and surrounded by light.

—————-

Editor’s note: Published by permission of the author.

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Can Meditation Make Us Less Angry?

It can sometimes seem like the world is getting angrier. Whether it is Trumpian politics, keyboard warriors or the deluge of bad news we’re presented with on a daily basis, so much of our modern discourse seems to be fueled by animosity.

While anger is sometimes a valid and necessary response to injustice, and a driver of change, the majority of the time it fosters division and hampers our empathy. This raises an important question: are there ways we can lessen this often destructive and limiting emotion?

Anger in the Everyday

It’s in the larger themes of life – from politics to religion – that anger and annoyance are at their most obvious. Anger is deliberately fueled to entrench certain worldviews, stop people from discussing issues from a point of understanding, and obfuscate our common humanity. The people who try to stymie the freedoms of others (whether through terrorism, violence, or more subtle rhetoric and government reform) rely on their own anger at the way things are – and stoking the anger of others – to force their ideas through.

It is anger that allows immigrants to be treated badly, inspires people to picket gay rights marches, and reduces intelligent debate to shouting matches. But it isn’t only here that we see the problems resentment and outrage cause.

In our day-to-day lives and personal relationships, anger can be a significant barrier to happiness and good will. When we become irritable with our partners, children or family, we find it harder to appreciate them as a full human being – with flaws and motivations of their own – and instead accredit them with attributes and intentions that can be quite far from the truth.

When we’re irritable, a thoughtless action can suddenly be misconstrued as a deliberately provocative one. The person in question may be cast in our minds as inherently “lazy” or “annoying” or “selfish,” instead of a good person that we love who happens to have done a lazy, annoying or selfish thing. It throws up a wall which stops us from truly relating to others, and is an impediment to us actually solving the problem or communicating our point of view.

Angry emotions can also feel like something we have little conscious control over. Everyone has experienced a time where they’ve become more incensed than they need to be, snapping or shouting at someone and feeling instantly guilty afterwards – especially if we’ve managed to really hurt their feelings. If this happens too often, our loved ones can even become wary of us, walking on eggshells when really, we’re the one who is being unfair, which is a deeply problematic situation to find ourselves in.

We can find ourselves in the grips of wasted anger over things we can’t control. The deep frustration of being stuck in a long queue, filling out pointless finicky forms, the car in front driving very, very slowly when we need to be somewhere. It can all make us want to scream and cast a cloud over the rest of our day. But ultimately, these feelings get us nowhere, because we can’t change the situation even if we wanted to.

Meditation and a Sense of Calm

Anger and stress are closely related emotions that both complement and feed off each other. We are far more likely to become wound up when we feel under pressure, and much more inclined to let little things go when we feel relaxed. Similar to stress, anger is a physiological response to a perceived threat to you, your loved ones, your property, your self-image, your emotional safety or some part of your identity.

When a cat swipes at another feline intruder in their territory, they are experiencing a similar thing we do when we raise our voice at someone who has just overstepped some sort of personal boundary. Of course the major difference is that we can intellectualize and mull over our anger, even becoming angry at imagined scenarios. But the ancient “flight or fight” mechanism we share with so many other forms of life is essentially the same.

It’s this hair-trigger, lizard-brain response that practices like yoga and meditation can help to regulate. We may be influenced by similar instinctive drivers as other animals, but as humans we have the capacity to think and make steps to change our behavior, and even change the way our mind works.

Brain scans have demonstrated that regular meditation can physically reduce the size of our amygdala, which is the part of our brains which governs our flight or fight response. It also has been shown to calm our autonomic nervous system, the bodily structure through which our stress hormones – such as cortisol and adrenaline – are flooded into the body. It’s through these processes that we feel tense and unable to think clearly, but meditation appears to significantly reduce their hold over us.

Meditation also makes us more aware of our feelings and more empathetic to the feelings of others, building up the emotional bandwidth to deal with the rising tension in any given moment and put a lid on any hostility we feel towards the world. We experience the world from a far less pressured and stressed place, being able to feel anger when it arises without falling into the habitual irritations of an angry person.

With less anger and more understanding in our worldview, it becomes easier to respond appropriately to any annoyances we encounter in life, becoming calmer and (perhaps most importantly) kinder people.

——————

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Holly Ashby.  Holly is a wellness writer who works with Will Williams Meditation, a meditation center in London, and has written extensively on the benefits of meditation, including less stress, increased focus, and greater corporate well-being in workplaces.

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[inthatstateofgrace]

5 Steps to Unleashing Joy, Opening Up, & Being More Yourself

    There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

How much of the time is the authentic YOU showing up in the world?

Do you have a different persona for your work, home life, friends, strangers, and the check-in person at the airport?

Stress, grief, past or current pain or trauma, illness, or anxiety can cause us to retreat inward.

Just like preparing a house to survive the impact of a hurricane, we can close the shutters, protect fragile points of entry, conserve resources, stock up on necessities, and retreat inside.

If you have found yourself hiding the real you from the world, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Unless you are age four or under, crafting an ever-shifting-persona is a natural protection mechanism.

We learn as we grow-up that opening up and being authentic can lead to a slug of pain and a slap of heartache. Intuitively we find out what psychologists have tested to be true: people like those who mimic or mirror their body language. People also find it easier to like those who are similar or share the same interests and passions.

So is it any wonder that all at once everyone is wearing the same color of teal or using the same slang? Is it a surprise that individuals in a group can converge in dress, tastes, interests, and values?

The question is: do you want to open up and be more yourself at the risk of getting hurt and losing friends?

Step 1: Find Your Joy

Can you name five concrete experiences that bring you joy?

Joy is delight fused with serenity and evokes a sense of connection to others, nature, or the divine. Joy is playful and generous.

The first step towards opening up and being authentically you is to uncover what brings you joy. List at least five experiences which bring joy into your life on a daily basis.

Next, you can explore and remember what caused a flash of unexpected joy in the past few months. Recall moments of bliss from your life and write them down too.

List at least five surprises which bring joy into your life sporadically.

Be warned against ascribing to your cultural or familial imprinted definitions of delight. Whereas joy for everyone around you could be a rainbow sprinkled ice-cream cone, for you, it could be a cup of tea and dramatic rain clouds shifting across the sky.

Looking for some daily joy-list inspiration? Here’s my daily joy-list:

1. The first sip of espresso in the morning. 2. Strolling barefoot through the dew-covered grass and examining my garden. 3. Laughter or delight (anyone’s around me, or mine). 4. An unexpected bright dash of color and white space. 5. A smile from a someone I don’t know. 6. Hugs. 7. Listening to the rhythmic breath of my sleeping children. 8. Writing. 9. Chocolate and a captivating book. 10. The last ten minutes of yoga.

Looking for some irregular joy-list inspiration? Here’s my sporadic joy-list:

1. Breathing fresh air and taking a break from the digital while hiking up a mountain, or skiing down one. 2. A day spent swimming in the lake and then picnicking on the shore. 3. Seeing someone I love who lives far away again. 4. Dressing up to celebrate someone. 5. Mastering a new skill. 6. Connecting with someone new, or someone dear, in a deeper way. 7. Going dancing. 8. Cutting and arranging fresh-cut flowers or greenery from my garden. 9. Giving the perfect gift or crafting the perfect experience for someone. 10. Spending a day walking and playing in the woods.

Ready to make your own personalized joy-lists?

Step 2: Schedule in More Joy Moments

It turns out, you can actually add more joy to your life at little cost. Who knew?

By scheduling more of what brings YOU joy into your life, you will be illuminating the authentic you; you’ll begin to be more of you with everyone, everywhere you go.

The truth is that joy is contagious. The positive energy bounces off you and out into the world. People around you will feel your ‘good vibrations’ and respond with a smile.

Unless they are grumpy sour-faces. Then they will resent you like hell until of course, they ask you why you are so dang happy.

In which case, you can tell them. You can even show them your list, and ask them for their Joy Top Five.

Step 3: Relate in a New Way

When you meet someone new, which YOU do you present? What is the first question you ask?

The first question a lot of people ask is, ‘so, what do you do?’ or ‘what do you study?’ or ‘where are you from?’

It is natural for all of us to be comparing. The ego likes to rank where we stand. We can have the very best intentions, but when we ask about someone’s job, it will be challenging to resist ascribing judgment based on their profession. The same is true for where they come from.

Try it. If I say that I’m an award-winning artist living in New York City, what happens? If I shift to telling you I’m studying astrophysics in Russia, what is your reaction? What about if I answer I am a housekeeper in England?

Now try asking someone about their sources of joy in their daily life. What will happen?

They will most likely answer honestly.

People don’t tend to lie about what brings them delight. You can sense a genuine answer by the way their eyes light up when they talk about their source of joy.

Then you will either find out that you:

1. Share a common source of joy 2. Discover something new and authentic about the person 3. Could try the idea on for yourself

Step 4: Be Brave. Control the Conversation.

Perhaps it’s time to shift the conversation.

The pressure of kicking-butt at work and adding being a source of support and joy to those we love can get intense.

Most of the time, we have a feeling that we are letting someone, or something important in our lives, down. We just know we could or should be a better parent, partner, friend, daughter, son, sibling, employee, entrepreneur, artist, cook, or [insert what matters to you most].

The problem is that the world today is so loud and so busy, that it can all feel overwhelming.

It can feel overwhelmingly negative.

Sure, we’ve all read that optimists live longer, enjoy better health, and attract more friends and success. The problem is that when stress, anxiety, illness, or just pure bad-luck kick in, that extra dose of negative news or interaction with your boss can pitch you into negativity.

Just like joy vibrates outward and is contagious, so too is a dark mood and outlook. Get one person complaining bitterly and watch the conversation take a turn for the worst.

The next time those around you are in a stressed out funk, try shaking them up a bit. Ask them about their favorite time of day, or the last time delight flooded out the noise of pressure and expectation.

Step 5: Yoga Yourself

Why does yoga boost your self-esteem? You start to build an inner fire when you show up every day on your yoga mat. You will feel proud that you commit to practice and follow through, even if this commitment is just ten minutes per day.

With time you will master poses you never thought possible, achieve flexibility you only dreamed of, and gradually slim to a healthy weight. There will be a surge of confidence the first time you kick up into a handstand, or your heels touch the floor in downward dog.

When you start a regular yoga practice you begin to show up for yourself by taking responsibility for your physical, mental, and perhaps spiritual wellness too. By engaging in self-respect, if not self-love, you will raise your self-esteem.

Step 6: Give Dark Emotions Space to Be.

Yes, you read that correctly. First I told you to write out a joy-list, to add more of those experiences into your life, and to talk more about joy with everyone you meet.

Now I’m telling you to sit on the ground and do nothing.

Yes, I mean literally.

Meditation is a way to open yourself up and to be more of yourself by feeling connected to everyone and everything.

Meditation will unleash your joy in a way nothing else can.

Sitting and watching your thoughts glide past as you focus on your breath will unleash some negative emotions.

The noise and business of life can block out the anger, sadness, shame, and fear. All of those emotions can bubble up while you sit still, in silence. You may have been unaware they were just below the surface.

Do you know what is gorgeous about giving dark emotions space to surface? It may take weeks, or months, or years, but the fear will seep away.

With time, the negative emotions will roll through you without invoking a knee-jerk reaction to smother them with food, entertainment, noise, achievement, work, or positive experiences.

You will be able to allow anger, sadness, pain, and fear to flow in without losing your balance.

You will be able to stop running and to stop grasping, knowing all things pass, and this, whatever it is, will move too.

TAKE ACTION:

Step 1: Write your daily, monthly, and year JOY-LISTS.

Step 2: Schedule JOY into your daily life, as well as mini-month joy-cations.

 Step 3: Relate to people in a new way by asking and sharing sources of joy.

Step 4: Turn the conversation to sources of happiness instead of negativity, gossiping, or complaining.

Step 5: Yoga Time: Find a YouTube video or head to your local yoga studio.

Step 6: Meditate. You can start with just five minutes a day to make a difference. 

——————

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Heather Lenz, a writer, yoga instructor, wellness coach, and CEO of the wellness company Delicious Glow. She wishes you to feel empowered to live your definition of a healthy, happy, and more purpose-filled life.

from Daily Cup of Yoga https://ift.tt/2l8h0oO

[inthatstateofgrace]

The 8 Limbs of Yoga and How They Help With Addiction Recovery

If my friends and family members met me for the first time around a decade ago, they wouldn’t recognize me. In fact, some of them are still awestruck at the changes I have gone through these past 10 years. You see, I used to be an addict.

The term is thrown around loosely nowadays, yet people forget about the seriousness of addiction as a mental health issue. That’s what it is, in reality. Addiction is an uncontrollable urge which was recognized as a disease by The American Medical Association in 1956.

If you manage to pull yourself out of your addiction abyss (some people never do), you’re confronted with a whole new set of challenges. For me, I had a difficult drug detox period while in prison. Then, one relapse after I got out, and endless moments when the cravings were so bad I was ready to say screw it and give in. Although I’m better at suppressing those cravings now, they never seem to go away in the end.

People deal with recovery in different ways. Some seek comfort in their friends and family, others go to therapy, a long-term residency at rehab, outpatient programs, and so on. Rehab centers have been immensely successful. Yet, there are people who have a difficult time coping with their new lives after they are released and sober. This has led to the development of holistic approaches to post-rehab.

While none of these methods should be considered as your one and only solution in recovery, they can be effective when combined with a proper program. Methods include acupuncture, meditation, massage, reiki and yoga among others.

When I set my eyes on yoga as a holistic method, I was drawn tothe fact that it’s a way to exercise. Working out was highly recommended post-rehab. After doing research, I put it into practice and was fully satisfied with the results. Yoga can help you control your emotions, which in turn helps you control your cravings. It allowed me to build self-control, which was very important in the recovery process. I used yoga to replace the artificial high from drugs and alcohol with the natural one from breathing and meditation.

Yoga is split into 8 different paths, also known as limbs. When people think of yoga they think of breathing and stretching, when in reality those are only a small part of it. In this article, we will look at how these limbs benefit your recovery. Let’s get started:

1. Yamas

Yamas are the first limb, and they deal with the behavior that one should have when practicing yoga. They consist of 5 different practices that we promise to ourselves when we begin yoga. The idea behind the Yamas is that we treat others the way we would like to be treated:

Ahimsa: the promise of non-violence.

Asteya: the promise of non-stealing (whether it be objects or the time of others).

Satya: the promise of truthfulness.

Aparigraha: the promise of non-greed or non-possessiveness.

Brahmacharya: the promise of self-control.

The five Yamas lay the groundwork for becoming a person who treats others with respect. Forgiveness and treating others well was a massive part of my recovery program. When I connected Yamas with the concept of acting with kindness, I felt more fulfilled and at ease with myself.

2. Niyamas

Similar to Yamas, Niyamas are the guidelines to our own ritualistic process. The way we nourish our mind, spirit, and body are the core standards for the Niyamas, which work in accordance with Yamas. They are:

Saucha: cleanliness of the inner and outer body. Proper nutrition, elimination of sugar, fats, drugs, and alcohol are part of keeping your body clean. Your mind must also be kept clean, removing feelings of anger or stress.

Santosha: contentment with oneself. Being mindful and appreciating the present moment, finding joy in the everyday instants of life.

Tapas: the fiery desire to improve your life with self-discipline. This relates to the motivation we have to live a better life.

Svadhyaya: to study your own body and mind. Using this you will know yourself inside and out, understand who you are, and accept yourself.

Ishvara Pranidhana: to surrender yourself to God. While this may seem difficult to accept for those who don’t believe in God, it can be interpreted as giving yourself to a higher purpose.

The 5 Yamas in combination with the 5 Niyamas are your ten keys to success in the practice of yoga. You will adopt the traits necessary to complete your journey, while also applying those very same stages to your life in recovery.

3. Asana

Asana is the practice that you will see in any studio. People stretching, doing poses and breathing. The benefits of this limb are that you get to exercise your body while enhancing your spirituality. Your circulation is also improved with Asana, which means that your vital organs get that extra boost of blood they need to recover and detox.

Asana reduces stress and negative feelings. If you didn’t already know, challenging emotions are among the top reasons why people relapse. When you exercise through Asana you lose weight. This boosts self-confidence and provides a general feeling of self-satisfaction.

4. Pranayama

This limb focuses on the control of your breathing. It is an essential step in yoga, where different techniques can improve circulation, heart health, and mental health. A strong mind is vital in addiction recovery. Pranayama allows you to build that strength through breathing.

5. Pratyahara

Recovery can be hectic. You might stress, feel depressed and overwhelmed with the second chance you’ve received at life. Sometimes you want to get away from it all, and in fact, it’s important to withdraw from daily struggles every now and then. Pratyahara does exactly that. It’s a form of meditation which provides a well-needed rest while you restore your energy to continue on the path to recovery. Focus on each of your senses individually from touch to taste, and appreciate the moment. You will replenish your energy.

6. Dharana

The Dharana stage follows Pratyahara, and is translated to “concentration.” You use this stage to proceed with deep meditation after the initial steps of the previous stage. These two limbs combined are especially important when fighting the anxiety that may affect you in recovery

7. Dhyana

As you continue through the limbs of yoga, Dhyana builds upon Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, and Dharana. Dhyana is the step when full concentration is reached. People who manage to reach this level end up introspecting and gaining self-knowledge. Understanding who you are and setting clear goals for your future plans are main key points of a successful recovery.

8. Samadhi

Welcome to the stage of transcendence, where you have arrived at the high point in your practice. People in the Samadhi stage feel themselves ascend into conscious freedom, and the natural high that comes from yoga is unleashed. Recovering addicts often compare this feeling to the one they would have if they were to completely eliminate addiction from their lives.

Those are the 8 limbs of yoga, and the ways they connect to and aid in your recovery. Holistic practices are plenty, with researched benefits. Yoga has been my favorite because I saw amazing results and it pushed me to maintain my sobriety. I am now 10 years sober, and I have reached heights in my life that I never thought previously possible. Hopefully, yoga will have the same effects on you as it did on me.

Has yoga helped you recover? How? Let us know in the comments!

—————–

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Andy Macia, a recovering drug addict/alcoholic with over 10 years sober. He was born in Bogota, Colombia, but raised in Los Angeles California. He is an avid rehab blogger and digital marketing entrepreneur. 

Photo credit: Brian Crawford Photography on Instagram

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[inthatstateofgrace]

Why Are So Many of Us Living With Unmanageable Stress?

It was recently reported in The Guardian that three in four Britons have felt overwhelmed by stress in the past year. Over in the USA, there’s a similar picture. The American Psychological Association’s 2015 ‘Stress in America’ snapshot found that 75% of adults reported experiencing moderate to high levels of stress in the month prior to the survey, and nearly half reported that their stress had increased from 2014. But with constantly-improving technology, healthcare and living standards making our lives more comfortable than they have ever been, where is all this stress coming from?

What is Stress?

When conducting surveys, researchers can find the experience of stress hard to measure because there isn’t a universally accepted definition of what stress actually is. However, as most research relies on the self-assessment of survey respondents – who are reporting simply on their own feelings and their personal definition of stress – it is perhaps most useful to think of stress as “physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension.” This is stress in its negative form – something that makes us feel fearful, under pressure and strung out.

Stress, however, can also be observed in our physical reactions. Rather than an ethereal emotion  (although it certainly involves plenty of them), stress is a quantifiable physiological response, involving the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and adrenaline secretion in the “fight or flight” response. The reaction begins in the amygdala, a part of our brain which triggers the hormonal cascade designed to make us most able to either run away from – or fight – an imminent threat.

It also triggers the lesser known “freeze” response. If you’ve ever been on a climb, looked down, and found yourself completely unable to do anything but cling on in the ensuing fear, that’s the freeze response kicking in – evolutionarily determined to aid our survival (although it may not feel that way). The result of stress in the short term is often an increase in heart rate, heavier breathing, shaking, a loss of appetite, and tunnel vision.

The Positive Side of Stress 

A complicating factor is that the physical reaction of stress isn’t always negative – a phenomenon known as good stress, or “eustress.” For example, a person who’s about to go on a date with someone they really like will be technically “stressed” (with quickened pulse and hormonal change) but finds the experience quite exhilarating, whereas someone waiting outside a dentist will be experiencing something far less enjoyable.

Additionally, stress is sometimes a completely natural and appropriate response to certain situations. Feeling stressed out when faced with the prospect of a tooth being pulled is an unpleasant, but still a temporary and not necessarily inherently harmful part of life. Stress can also improve our performance, such as the rush of adrenaline in a job interview, which sharpens our focus and ensures we think on our feet.

Living with Chronic Stress

The problems associated with stress begin to manifest themselves if we experience it over the long term. If we feel stressed most of time, we can begin to experience chronic digestive problems, loss of libido, stomach ulcers, increased risk of hypertension, exhaustion and many other negative effects. The physiological state of stress was, in our evolutionary history, only ever experienced in the short term, dissipating as threats passed and we had the chance to relax. We were never meant to be constantly in high alert – but for many, this is the reality of modern life.

Considering that we generally don’t worry about the threat of starvation, physically fighting off rivals or being eaten by predators, the question still remains as to what causes our stress in modern society? There are many factors, and it would be difficult to explore them all, but it seems that our evolutionary flight or fight response – only triggered in our evolutionary ancestors in moments of high danger and profound social isolation– is set off by various everyday aspects of our modern lives.

For example, while we may not need to be personally concerned about a vital crop failing like our forebears were, many people struggle financially day to day. More than 43 million Americans – roughly 13.5 percent of the entire population – were living in poverty in 2015, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Poverty is a huge source of stress, while debt (an ever more present partof life in the modern world) is another, with 56% of Americans in debt reporting that it has negatively impacted their lives.

According to UK charity The Trussel Trust, the use of their food banks increased from 41,000 instances to 1.2 million since 2010, which adds food insecurity as a factor of stress in some sections of the population. The American Psychological Association also found that two-thirds of U.S. adults (66 percent) cite the cost of health insurance as a stressor for themselves, their loved ones, or in general when asked about specific health issues that cause them stress. This stress about the cost of health insurance seems to affect Americans at all income levels.

Having one or more long-term health conditions, such as cancer, diabetes or heart issues, is also a big risk factors for stress. Improvements in healthcare mean that many of us can survive – potentially for decades – after being diagnosed with a long-term or chronic conditions. This is a wonderful thing which has transformed many lives, but it is also true that living with these ailments can be stressful, expensive, and essentially gives us a lot to worry about.

For example, it’s often expected that someone who survives cancer should feel nothing but gratitude, but they can often fear the cancer returning and be understandably resentful that they had to experience it at all.

For the three in four Britons who report having been overwhelmed by stress in the past year, work issues, including working outside normal hours and a poor work-life balance, are the second most common cause of stress. The 24-culture of work that’s come with the digital revolution, where we are all just an email away, as well as the proliferation of jobs with insecure hours and contracts, has complicated the working world and gradually eroded the idea of the nine-to-five.

But while these are all quantifiable and clear causes of stress, there are also less tangible stressors which make the modern world an uncomfortable place to live. Social media has made it necessary to maintain a “public face” even in our private moments, gives us endless opportunities to compare our lives to others, and boils our popularity and social success down to an arbitrary number of Likes, Followers, and Friends. We are also, through the Internet, subjected to more advertising than ever, stoking our insecurities and encouraging dissatisfaction with life as it is.

Tackling the Stress Epidemic

Yoga therapists and teachers often encounter the impact of stress amongst their students. Many people turn to yoga because they are feeling the strain of modern living, while yoga therapists specialize in easing the symptoms of disorders like anxiety and depression, which are exacerbated and even triggered by stress. While many of the changes which will make life less stressful for the majority of the population would have to be enacted on a societal level, on an individual level choosing to take up yoga is an effective way to manage our stress.

Stress is a mind-body issue, intimately connected to both our emotions and physiological responses, with both informing the other. We may have a worrying thought which then triggers our body’s stress response, or an outside influence may trigger our body’s stress response and lead to a deluge of worried thoughts. Whatever comes first, when it comes to stress, what goes on in our minds and the physical response of our bodies are tied entirely up in each other.

Yoga is a way to improve our mind-body health and stress resilience, and has a variety of health benefits that are linked to its potential to reduce our stress, even at a molecular level. Factors such as finances, ill health and poor work-life balance may be difficult to tackle, but self-care practices such as yoga are a way to build resilience to stress, and ultimately make our lives as calm and happy as it’s possible for them to be.

—————-

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Heather Mason, a yoga teacher and founder of The Minded Institute, a center of yoga therapy in London exploring the great potential of yoga in healthcare. Heather became interested in the use of mind-body therapies after her own experience of depression and anxiety, training over many years and across the globe in yoga and yoga therapy. Follow Heather on Twitterand Facebook.

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3 Quick Yoga-Based Tools to Deal with Stress Try the first technique to help manifest your positive intentions for change and as an adjunct to meditation.  The second and third techniques are...

Stressed? 10 De-Stress Yoga Tips “Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle. Ju...

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