September Theme: Grounding for Times of Uncertainty

What grounds you in times of uncertainty?  

Are you navigating a terrain of change and uncertainty in your life, too?

Are you feeling pandemic fatigue?

What is your solid ground when you are unsure of the steps ahead?  

How have you been sourcing grounding and joy, comfort and creativity, stability and spaciousness this past year and a half? 

This mantra is giving me so much comfort and creativity on all levels lately: “go as far as you can see, and when you get there you will see farther.”

In uncertain times it is vital to carve out space and time each week to connect to your body and breath and to cultivate space for rest and relaxation. To cultivate devotion and deepen rhythms, rituals, and routines that feel healing to your body and mind. To unhook from the frenetic pace of worry and stress and drop into the rhythm of the body.  To cultivate our capacity to listen, to hold space, to observe. To make space for our grief and sadness, and to allow ourselves to feel into the waves of collective grief and sadness. To feel not force. To detangle our nervous systems and breathing patterns and muscular tensions from the grip of stressors and remember how to stay soft, spacious, stable, and strong even when the ground beneath is quaking. To reconnect to the spirit of play and exploration and reclaim our own joy even if it is as simple as placing attention on simple sensations in the body right now that feel pleasant - the softening of your chest and shoulders on the exhale, the nerve endings on the soles of your feet, the gentle arc of your lumbar spine curving upwards and inwards out of the basin of your pelvis...

The steady breath pattern, the practice of repetition in our sun salutations, the physical effort of a dynamic practice, the softness of setting in down in a longer savasana - all these practices can help us reset and emerge from our practice feeling more capable and calm. I recommend a strong practice to make it through these trying times. Feel your effort, burn through the fears, stay strong, stay hopeful.

This time of year as seasons and schedules shift, create a strong weekly physical routine that you can stick with.  Choose a dynamic, active practice and try to be consistent.  Practice at least two to three times a week and set down distractions, make a sacred space for you practice.  Cultivate tapas, push yourself and try to stay connected to your Ujjayi breath so you can warm up and burn through some of your distractions, mundane monkeymind stuff to occupy greater depths of presence within yourself. 

Each Sunday this month will explore a different context to feel more stable, spacious, grounded, and calm.  The focus the month is not a particular posture category or skill but rather an energetic state of being I hope the alchemy of each practice will invite:  calm, strong, steady, capable.  Expect strong, sweaty, dynamic practices with deep attention to the union of breath and movement.  Each practice will offer a unique set of tools and techniques to help you feel grounded:

September 5 :  Sama Vritti and Pratyahara:  Steady rhythm practice and sensory uncoupling.  Reset your breath. Relax from the push and pull of your senses.  Drain tensions from scalp, eyes, jaw, neck, chest, shoulders.

September 12 :  Wall Flow. Stay with it. Long holds practice into potent forward folds and supported long form inversions.

September 19 :  Open your roots, find your agility. Dial into the conduit of your lower half:  foot and ankle mobility, leg love (including the infamous calf smoosh!), learn to steer the ship from your hips, and create a powerful pedestal for your serpentine spine.

September 26 :  Free your hips and the rest will follow.  Sumptuous slow flow into decadent drool-worthy hip openers.