Happy April,
Spring is well and truly arrived and I am really enjoying arriving at classes in the light and finally without my heavy black coat and hood up!
I wanted to talk about ‘letting go’ this month as this is a really essential part of our yoga practice.
Classes do not always allow enough time to talk in depth about the concept in relation to our postures and more importantly our minds. I often mention about ‘leaving our ego’ at the door and letting go of pre-conceptions and self judgement as we journey into various postures (asanas) and breathwork (pranayama). However I wanted to use this space to emphasise the point in more depth.
We are all too often trying to stay in control of many things in life at home, with family, in relationships, at work and especially in the last couple of years controlling our interactions and risks in relation to Covid. The additional emotional and mental stress that is placed upon us as we seek control finds areas in the body to hide and take root e.g. challenging our balance or creating tightness in the shoulders/hips.
Recently I have been focussing on noticing my own patterns of holding and gripping to emotional areas of my life and as I let go of them I have definitely noticed positive changes in my physical body.
You may like to try these tips and tricks:
– Notice when you are holding your breath and try and let go and deepen your breath instead.
– Check in with your body during the day and release tension that you may find in the jaw, the shoulders, the tummy. Rather than judge yourself just observe, soften and let go.
– Create a small ritual that may be helpful for letting go of frustrations; writing them down and then shredding the page or putting on your favourite music and ‘shaking off’ the emotion to a dance.
– Thich Nhat Hahn suggests taking a child’s posture with your hands uplifted in a receptive pose. Feeling the earth ground you and then immerse yourself in your slow deep breathing and letting everything into the earth. Alternatively you can adopt this posture and send your frustrations up in your prayers giving them to God for His will to be done.
Feeling grounded and trusting is such an important part of letting go especially when we are trying to hard to control outcomes ourselves. I loved this image of the many tree roots grounding to stabilise the trunk and branches of this tree below. The more that we focus on the basics of our postures with grounding, trusting the journey and letting go of our egos and desires to predict or control things then the easier our asanas become almost without us noticing the journey
Sometimes we do not want to let go of a thought because we are convinced we are right and we cling to beliefs and then we limit our perspective and potential e.g. I have no sense of balance or I will never be able to touch my toes.
Practising letting go of limiting thoughts is one of the most important things that I have learned in yoga and I try to keep improving at it as I am certainly not there completely yet!
Remember the harder it is to let go of your thoughts – the more harm that thought will be doing. Letting go emotionally will help you to make immense progress in you postures.
“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.” Ajahn Chah
Bone Health – we have been working on some deep tissue strengthening postures over the last week which are very supportive to bone health. We have connected with our abdominals, our psoas iliacus and the multi-fidus muscles that run alongside the vertebra in the spine – illustrated below:
We will continue this strengthening theme over the coming weeks conditioning this area of the body to support our posture, reduce the risk of back pain and maintain supple and strong spines.
Being able to let go of our expectations and just focussing on our breath and movement in the moment will always bring magical benefits – who knew this strong twisting posture would get easier week by week?
Please do always feel free to reach out to me with any questions by email or in class about our asanas or specific advice that you may want.
Until next time, Namaste!