yoga – Page 3 – Sarah Collin

For Love of Yourself

This is the theme of our classes this term as we embrace the wintertime for going within and practicing some self loving.

Whether you are in a yoga or meditation class this term, use this time to really be present and honour the time you are making for yourself. See if you can let go of the labels, roles, tasks, demands that might be part of your life and come into the class with a sense of inner inquiry.

I’ve been using this winter to reflect upon my own self care and realised that it is something I am not good at! It doesn’t come naturally to me to put myself first. Therefore I am practicing the art of extreme self care as I explore what nourishes me, what makes my heart sing and bringing these things into my life, into my weekly schedule as being the most important for me to prioritise.

As I go further within and listen deeply I discover that I have been pushing aside my intuition, that voice inside that really knows what I need. I’ve now made an agreement with myself to check in, everyday, and ask the question; “What have I done today that honours the highest part of me?”. By asking the question I am more aware and find that my days are taking on more balance, and that even on days that may be a little busy, I am taking time to breathe and be more present to the magic of the moment. To really appreciate what nature gives us each and everyday if we take the time to notice.

When I was planning this terms classes I discovered this poem by Charlie Chaplin and I’m sharing a verse each week at the end of the class. Here is the poem for you to enjoy, embrace and discover where you may be able to improve on your self love.

It is said that on the day he turned 70, Charlie Chaplin wrote a wonderful poem. As he looked back on his life, he discovered that self-love puts everything in a different perspective, and makes life lighter and more beautiful.

For love of yourself

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “Authenticity”.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody if I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “Respect”.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it “Maturity”.

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at the exact right moment. So I could be calm. Today I call it Self-Confidence”.

As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it “Simplicity”.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it as “Love of Oneself”.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since, I was wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “Modesty”.

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worrying about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where everything is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “Fulfillment”.

As I began to love myself I recognised that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection “Wisdom of the Heart”.

As we begin to love ourselves we no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing, new worlds are born. Today I know that is “LIFE”!

With love and blessings for you to explore some extreme self care this winter.

Namaste

Sarah

Finding strength in letting go

The season of autumn is a time to surrender so this term we will be focusing on the wisdom of release, letting go and making space.

The wisdom of release is letting go of “what was” so that “what could be” is free to unfold with ease and grace. It is the season of transformation as you will notice nature reflects this to us with the falling leaves and coolness in the air.

It is vital for us to stay grounded in this season of change so our postures will reflect this and allow us to release and transform gently.

You will be invited to:

focus on your practice taking on a slow smooth pace
breathing deeply and calmly extending the out breath
explore fluidity in your movement
really ground and connect in with the earth to bring in stability
settle deeply into the relaxation process as we lengthen our time there a little

Summer can often leave us feeling rather tired and worn out as it is a busy time of long days with lots of activity, holidays, visitors, back to work and school, new projects and often the pressure of all the things we have declared we are going to achieve this year!

Now we can reflect on what we have achieved so far this year and begin to let the busyness settle as we assimilate and digest. Let your practice help you in this process as you check in with all the layers of your being:

Your physical body – how does it feel right now?
Your pranic layer – that layer where you feel energy moving, tingling, warmth, coolness. Your energy levels are reflected here relevant to how much prana you have taken in. How is your breathing? Are you bringing in fresh prana/air and feeding your cells?
Your emotional state of being, how is your heart feeling?
Your mind – what state of mind are you aware of right now?
Your connection to your higher self – have you honoured the highest part of you lately?

If you are attending regular yoga classes then take these reflections with you and enter the yoga room with a sense of going within for the time you are there. It is your time to nourish and nurture yourself. Always remember to honour how you feel each time you come to your mat. Some days you will be energised and eager to move, other days you may feel like not doing much at all. Go with the flow with a sense of self inquiry as there is nothing to prove and no one to compare yourself with. We are all there for our own journey.

Finally, if you feel you need to get away to immerse yourself in nature, to find balance and reconnect, then I have five places left in the autumn retreat starting on May 20th. Call me for details if that appeals to you.

Surrender

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” Lau Tzu

Namaste

Sarah

The Seat of Compassion & wisdom of honouring your uniqueness in every posture you do.

This term in my classes we have been working on the beautiful sequence known as “The Seat of Compassion”. It consists of a number of postures that we have spent time working with including, lotus chair, charity pose, crane and seat of compassion pose.

It is really important to work with each individual component of a sequence and make sure that everyone is comfortable with how they can do that to suit themselves. Then when you put the sequence together everyone can take part in a way that suits their unique way of being so they can get the most benefit from it.

I really want to take this opportunity to encourage everyone taking part in yoga to honour their unique body, emotional state of being and state of mind and keep these in mind as you go through the class, noticing the changes that take place moment by moment. Yoga is a journey into the deeper layers of your being and this will vary from day to day, week to week depending upon all sorts of life experiences you have had in that time.

It is not about blindly following your teacher and trying to copy the posture but is about feeling into the posture with complete mindfulness and having the space to feel free to do this. Allow yourself to accept that there may be times when you can stretch further and times when you can’t. Times when you feel energised and invigorated and times when you don’t even feel like coming to class!

Yoga is a lifetime journey of self inquiry and I encourage you, as you step into your next yoga class, to go in with an inquiring mind into your state of being on the physical, emotional and mental level. Give yourself permission to ease into the practices with an increased awareness of how this feels for you, not how it looks, but how you feel it and how your body can respond in a way that feels good. When we start to raise our awareness of these layers of our being, our koshas, we take our yoga practice to a whole new level.

The Seat of Compassion sequence will turn the key to open your heart, it is the gateway through which we perceive the wonder and perfection of life.

The combination of postures involved start to open the lower energy centres, gently stimulating your fire and motivation that is moved up through the heart centre and out through your hands. This allows your creative dynamism to be expressed out into the world through the heart qualities of generosity and kindness rather than through emotions such as anger, irritability or low self esteem.

Feel into the effects of this sequence when you do it next and use it to foster the qualities of your heart. Yoga is amazing at working from deep within in the most subtle beautiful way. Take time to notice how your yoga practice supports you in everyday life.

Namaste

Sarah

Managing our emotions

I wanted to start the year talking about how to manage emotions as it feels to me like a lot of people are being affected by the global unrest. The energy of fear, fueled by all the negative media you readily find in our newspapers, news and shared by those who get high on spreading fear through gossip.

I have been going back to basics with my personal yoga practice over the holidays and have to share with you the power of Energy Block Release sequences one and two, EBR 1 and EBR 2. There are truly amazing, let me explain the concept of how and why they work.

As human/energetic beings we operate on many subtle layers moment by moment alternating between the physical, energetic what we feel in sensations, mental and emotional, our thoughts and emotions, intellectual, our belief systems, and our spiritual, our connection to our higher self and beyond.
As we go about our day we move between these layers in our interactions with others, places and situations we find ourselves in and an energy exchange is taking place as we give and receive energy, the good, bad and everything in between.

An example is when we receive an energy of say anger, we just heard something that someone said about us that wasn’t true and it’s annoyed us. This anger not only runs around in our mind and thoughts but also percolates through to the other layers starting with those layers closest to the mind and then spreading outwards. The first reaction is usually an emotional one then we may sense it physically as the energy reaches the body layer. When the energy arrives at the physical layer it will lodge in the joints, causing stiffness and aches. From the joints the energy if it is not discharged, will transfer to the muscles then into the organs. Once this happens the energy block becomes deep seated and over a long period of time causes dis-ease within the body.

It goes without saying that it is unhealthy to allow unresolved emotional energy to work its way inwards to the vital organs so we need tools to release it on a moment by moment basis or at lease once a day! Be real, we live in a world where we are continually exposed to these energies and therefore if we want to feel alive and be vibrant it is vital that we learn to manage our energy and therefore our emotions moment by moment.

That’s why in my classes I will ask you to regularly check in with how you are feeling physically, emotionally, mentally so that you get to know what you are holding onto and then, with raised awareness, you can do something to release it.

That is why in a Dru Yoga or Meditation class you will always go through an Energy Block Release sequence (EBR) and the first two work so well on releasing the stuckness of negative thoughts and attitudes that create rigidity in our actions and the way we interact with people and situations. Negativity can create impenetrable barriers and defenses, which inhibit our ability to feel what we are really feeling, including our capacity to feel love and joy as well as pain and sadness.

The process of Energy Block Releases (EBR’s) over a period of time softens and begins to melt such rigidity around the energetic and emotional layers.

EBR’s reverse the process of absorbing energy into our joints, muscles and organs and allow us to detoxify from the inside out and that’s why you are encouraged to drink water and keep hydrated throughout a class and afterwards.

In a Dru class you will also be encouraged to add affirmations as it is proven that when we add these into another layer of our being the whole process is accelerated and that is why you get that indescribable feeling after a class of being more open, freer, less reactive and so on. Sometimes this is felt after one class and for others, over a period of time, they notice a difference in the way they deal with things that once would have been stressful but now are manageable.

So I invite you to start the year and your yoga practice with a renewed awareness. You will get the same EBR’s each week sometimes and that is because they are so good at what they do. Sometimes we want new things and new sequences as we believe they will bring us more however I challenge you to be fully present and bring an aliveness to the EBR’s that you may know well. See if you can complete a whole EBR 1 or 2 without your mind wandering for one moment! Take the opportunity to really explore within the layers of your being and let the softening and freeing up take place. Allow yourself to expand into a new place, a place of freedom.

I look forward to seeing you in a class or on retreat with me soon. Check out www.highaspirations.com.au for vacancies in Friday morning in Leschenault, afterwork classes in Bunbury, retreats and meditation.

Namaste

Living in a high state of gratitude

This was the theme of our summer retreat which has just happened. Here I would like to share, especially for those that were on the retreat but also to benefit anyone else who is reading this, some of the practices and research.

We contemplated the statement; Your brain takes its shape from what your mind rests upon.

Knowing that where attention goes energy flows we took a few moments to ask the question, where has my mind been resting this week? Perhaps you might like to write this question in your journal and see what spills out onto your page. A good question to ask at the end of each day.

We talked about the fact that we are energetic beings and that everything is energy vibrating at different frequencies. For us to live in a high state of gratitude we need to raise our frequency to match that of the abundant universe we are part of.

How do we cultivate a high state of gratitude?

We must take time to develop our spiritual practice, like any muscle, it needs to be used and exercised to grow.

Gratitude is a state of consciousness and is everywhere all around us in the universe we live in. It it filled with joy, love, peace, harmony and so much more, what it needs are instruments to come through and we are those instruments so we need to up our wattage to be able to take these higher vibrations, then we can become the expression of gratitude.

“The universe corresponds to the nature of your song.” Michael Beckwith

Firstly we need to accept, right here right now there is nothing missing. We don’t need to pray for more love, joy or harmony we need to become it, let it flow through us. Acceptance also that life offers challenges, they keep us grounded! It’s the resilience that we build up to deal with the challenges and how we bounce back that is important.

Knowing also that we have choice, we have free will and therefore it is our choice whether we choose to live this way. What might stop us practising gratitude? usually our emotions will do it, those days when you just don’t feel like it because it is all too hard and really, does it even work?! Feeling into our emotional state of being and choosing if we are going to let our emotions drive us and therefore lose power to them. Emotions usually come and go within a few seconds to minutes so if we can recognise that and feel them, take what we need from them and act accordingly we can keep ourselves much clearer.

The express highway to living in a high state of gratitude is to practice mindfulness and meditation and with a Dru meditation course you will learn energy management techniques in the form of the prana kriyas that do this amazingly. Also knowing the Dru EBR sequences (energy block release) is a fast track process to clearing the emotional blocks we accumulate in everyday living and creating a channel for higher frequencies to come through.

I have a course of Dru meditation for beginners course starting next week, Tuesday evening from 6pm to 7.30pm for eight weeks, see www.highaspirations.com.au for details and to book.

You will also learn how to deeply relax your body and this too is a vital step to creating a clear channel. We need to anchor these positive emotions of love, joy, harmony, peace into uncluttered fields. We need to get out of our heads and into our hearts and wow, you will feel such a difference you will wonder why it took you so long to take time out for yourself. I love this question posed by Rumi;

“Do you make regular visits to yourself?”

I also shared on retreat the work of Dr Barbara Frederickson, distinguished professor at the university of North Carolina who has won many awards for her research work into positive psychology. Check out her website and access resources at www.positivityresonance.com

Her research reveals how micro moments of love and other forms of positivity deeply nourish our health, wisdom and longevity. The more we connect the more we are uplifted in our emotions. So the good news is you don’t have to go and sit in the Himalayas for years to gain the benefits of meditation, you can do it right here and now by connecting to your heart and taking some deep breaths, closing your eyes and being fully present.

The more we practice these moments the more we start to build some resilience and Dr Frederickson’s research shows that:

practising gratitude and loving kindness helps people feel more connected
by building this resilience we bounce back quicker when we have to face challenges
builds cardiac vagal tone – the hearts plasticity is strengthened
cardio vasular function in improved
living tissue of the heart becomes stronger and healthier
boosts the immune system
reduces imflamation
balances glucose levels

So who wouldn’t want more of those benefits? Let’s get out of our heads and more connected to our hearts and one thing you can do right now is to journal and free up some space. Here are some questions to get you started, write about:

What I enjoyed today
What I found nice to hear this week
People who helped me recently
Family members I am glad to have around
The best thing about my festive season was
What did you do “just for you” this week
A surprise for me this week was
This friend sent me a nice message this week
Something that is always there that is comforting
Touching moments this week
I spent a wonderful hour doing ………… this week
Reflect on when you felt really connected to others this week
How could you build on that feeling of connectedness to others?

Well that will keep you going for a while, building some heart connectedness and next post I will give you a process for embodying gratitude.

Have a wonderful week and please pass this post on if you found it useful.

Namaste

Sarah