You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust.
You were born with ideals and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don’t.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.
The season of summer is here. In summer the sun is at the highest point in the sky. This is the most yang time of year. In “the summer” of our own lives or the fire time of our life cycle we are at our highest time of our life. It is when we arrive at our own maturity. These are the years we are out working with other people by doing the work we are meant to do.
The season of summer supports the fire in all of us. The Fire element holds our capacity for relationship. Relationship has two aspects to be considered. There is the aspect of the relationship we have with ourselves and the aspect of relationship that we have with others. It boils down to love. The health of our internal fire stokes the love we have for ourselves and our ability to extend that love to others.
In Chinese philosophy the Heart is seen as the sovereign of the kingdom – of the body/mind/spirit. We show the condition of our heart through the light shining in our eyes
For seasonal balance, summer eating requires one to eat and cook lightly, with dashes of spicy, pungent, or even fiery flavors. Be creative! Brightly colored summer fruits and vegetables assist in designing healthy as well as visually pleasing meals. Continue the practice, begun in the spring, of sautéing, steaming, or simmering foods using high heat for a short period of time. While it is counter-intuitive, Chinese medicine holds that drinking hot liquids, such as spiced teas can be beneficial in the summer because they bring body heat to the surface where it can both induce sweating and be released. This “heat-on-the-surface” reflects the summertime climate and thus harmonizes the body with the environment. Spices such as fresh ginger, horseradish, cayenne and black pepper are useful for this purpose.
Create a temperate environment, drink more water, and introduce cooling foods. These can include salads, sprouts, cucumbers, and tofu. Limes, apples, watermelons, and lemons are fruits that are excellent for cooling summer heat. Heavy foods, such as meats, eggs, and root vegetables, can lead to sluggishness and should be avoided on the hottest days.
A Traditional Heart Exercise: Smiling from Your Heart
According to TCM, your face—particularly your eyes—is the mirror of your Heart. The Heart is home to the Shen, or spirit, so your face reflects this aspect of your soul. When your spirit changes, your face changes as well.
True smiling from the heart, not just a fake smile, actually has a profound physiological effect. It promotes the flow of Qi and blood throughout your entire body. Both smiling and laughter can create emotional Qi and drive it through your body, helping it—and your heart—to heal.
Summer activities are perfect for promoting this smile from the heart:
family reunions, social gatherings, dances, parties, camping, races, sporting events, staying up late with friends and family.
From Leslie: With some ideas and inspiration from Barbara Handclow. I’ve decide to not celebrate New Year’s in January anymore. It’s going to be springtime from now on. Here’s why:
The New Year is not January 1st! The new year-the Spring Equinox-occurs this year around March 20, For Earth, this is when the Sun is directly over the equator. It is the perfect balance between day and night. The modern calendar abuses our consciousness! The Spring Equinox – not the dead of winter is the time to identify the intentions we wish to fulfill during the four seasons. If you rearrange your life so that your new creativity comes in with the Spring Equinox every year, you will be amazed by how much more successful you are; you will love this powerful and easy flow with nature.
Think about when you have made great New Year’s resolutions. You start strong and then they just seem to peeter out as the month goes by. Then maybe you feel depressed because you didn’t succeed again and thus miss the great potential of the Spring Equinox, when we naturally feel the tug of change and new life and new ideas.
Spring is when we should bring forth new intentions, new directions and new possibilities for the year. During the Summer the time has arrived to birth these ideas into recognizable form. It can be a time of wild growth with the new idea. The Fall Equinox is the time to flesh out, balance, and assess these creations and to weed things out that just are not working or not necessary. The Winter months are the time to enter into deep contemplation to decide how our personal creations work for us and evaluate if those creations have blessed or been detrimental to others. It should be internal work that we do during winter rather than the frenzied spending and partying that Christmas and New Year’s brings each year.
If you made New Year’s resolutions, renew them and ponder them again and see if you still feel inspired by them this spring. If so, work with this spring energy that we feel from nature. Take some time and meditate and visualize these new directions coming easily into reality. One way to do this is watch the movie in your head of this goal being accomplished and generate the feelings you have when it comes to pass.
If you did not set any New Year’s resolutions, think about 1 new thing, or 1 new attitude or 1 new goal or event you would enjoy bringing into existence during this year and meditate on and visualize that.
After seeing clearly in your head what you want, write it down in a journal and forget it. We will revisit these ideas later in the year.
I don’t know if this is Shelly’s favorite site, but Donna Fahri is one of her favorite yoga teachers and authors. Visit the site to find out more. There is a lovely video of Donna’s flowing version of a sun salute.That is on the link under Donna
I ran across the wonderful explanation of the difference between updog and cobra. Enjoy!
When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Truth is within ourselves, it takes no rise from outward things, whate’re you may believe. There is an inmost center in us all, where turh abides in fullness. Robert Browning
What we feel as stress, is the product of the sympathetic nervous system or the “fight or flight” response: an almost instantaneous surge in heart rate, cardiac output, blood pressure, sweating, shallow breathing, combined with a tensing of muscles. Internally, the “fight or flight” response shuts down digestion and elimination and reduces blood flow to the internal organs. Short term, this stress reaction is a good thing. The “fight or flight” response prepares us to respond to any environmental threat by fighting against it or fleeing from it. But long term, continuous exposure to stress is harmful, placing excess wear and tear on the body’s systems and severely limiting the body’s natural maintenance and healing abilities.
With chronic stress this can cause adrenal exhaustion since you never allow the body to restore and relax. This could be felt as a fatigue that is not helped by a good night’s sleep, and a lowered immune system which then leaves you open to all sorts of diseases including the winter colds, flues and blues.
Too vigorous exercise is part of this chronic stress.
The opposite of that fight or flight response is the relaxation response, or the para sympathetic nervous system.
When activated, the parasympathetic nervous system lowers blood pressure, heart rate and respiration (the pace of the breath). Digestion and elimination are allowed to be stimulated, and blood is free to travel to the digestive, reproductive, glandular, and immune systems — systems necessary for the promotion of long-term health. The “relaxation response” is also known as the “rest and renew” stage, when the body has the time and resources to heal the body and to respond to illness. Obviously, by increasing the frequency, time and depth of the “relaxation response” we not only allow our body to recover from illness and disease, but we also practice preventive medicine by allowing the body to perform all of its essential maintenance tasks. Yoga practice teaches you to activate this relaxation response. It is the balance needed in an exercise plan that includes cardio, and weights. Both of these have potential to be overly stimulating to the nervous system.
75% of our nerve fibers form the sympathetic system and only 25% form the parasympathetic system which is the relaxing branch of our nervous system. That means that our body is designed for fast and efficient stress arousal through the sympathetic nervous system. But it also means it is more difficult and takes longer to bring the body away from the emergency and back to rest and restore. Yoga practice teaches the methods to restore balance and lets you be in charge of the health of your nervous system.
Seated Shins in Thighs out Inquiry
Sit with left knee bent. Take left hand and press into outer left shin and right hand into inner thigh. Press firmly as you slide heel down into an extended position. Pull knee back up the same way. Repeat 3X both knees.
Here’s a photo example of the basic poses for the moon salutation.
If you enjoy this routine and want to change it every now and then, I recommend replacing standing head to knee with triangle then moving into half moon and then into side angle. If you want to add a twist into the routine, a good spot is while in the crescent moon on the legs, or doing threading the needle twist at the end before standing up.
Here’s a question I hope I never hear in our class, even if you wear pink! This was in the Sunday comics from www.comics.com on Sunday September 9, 2007
email: leslie @ rexburgyoga.com
208-569-7437
email: shellyspratling @ gmail.com
208-206-8390
