Hello well-being family,
Lovely to be with you.
I've just come out of my little short home yoga practice and while I was practicing I was thinking I want to record an episode of the podcast about home practice because I suppose it's because I have started my home practice in earnest in the last three or four months and I'm really enjoying it and I'm also realizing that it can be so varied.
A home practice of yoga can be such a variety of things,
An incredible variety of things that can support every way that I need to be supported in my well-being.
So I thought I want to talk about this and just explore it a little bit because often with yoga we think about it as just asana and hard asana,
Pun intended,
At that.
So it's you know this sort of intensive hatha classes where we're moving from pose to pose and doing vinyasa after vinyasa.
And that is of course one form of yoga and it can be lovely and power yoga can be absolutely exhilarating.
But there's a million different ways of practicing yoga and a million different,
Not a million,
But there are many types of yoga that you can draw on depending on how you're feeling.
So for example today I needed energizing so I did an energizing practice and you can probably hear it in my voice,
I'm pretty energized.
So it was strong,
There was a lot of asana,
There was upside down,
There was inversion,
It was exciting right and it energizes me when I need energizing.
But there are probably more times when I don't need energizing,
I need relaxing.
And that's when I choose to do yin and restorative yoga.
And just these are slow poses that put my body into a position where,
Which is unusual,
Often a very open position,
Open through the chest,
Open through the neck,
Open through the shoulders or hips.
And I just stay in that position for three to five minutes.
In restorative it's all about bringing the earth up to meet me so that I'm really not making any effort at all.
In yin it's more that there is effort but I'm relaxing into that effort and I'm inviting my body to extend itself into this pose.
And that's not just the muscles but also the fascia,
So the layers of connective tissue that wrap around muscle and are involved in compartmentalizing so much of the body tissue.
And there's a lot interesting that's being written about the fascia and their role in relaxation and how they,
How the release of the fascia can almost be,
Well is as effective I think,
As the release of muscles.
So yin yoga is a beautiful practice that you can,
I mean there is a very good book about yin yoga,
I've forgotten what it's called,
It's by Bernie somebody or other,
I'll put it in the show notes,
It's green.
And it's the Bible of yin yoga and it explains how to do it,
It gives you sequences,
There are pictures,
It's the kind of thing that you can actually access quite easily on your own if you don't have a yin yoga teacher.
And restorative,
Pretty much the same,
You can find easy quick restorative sequences that don't need a huge amount of support so that you can do them at home or improvise.
I always improvise and I do a lot of these poses when I'm on retreat,
Traveling,
And we just improvise with cushions and whatever happens to be at hand.
The other thing that I often do in my practice is a form of bhakti yoga which is chanting.
And I don't know how I know when I need to do that but somehow I always seem to know when I need to chant.
And that can be a really lovely practice that I do sometimes with a lit candle and I ritualize it a little bit by having a Tibetan bowl and banging the bowl and using a mala and repeating a mantra 108 times with the mala which is actually again quite a simple thing to do.
And there's a lot of recordings online of people doing this.
I know Deva Pramal has recorded a couple of albums of mantras for precarious times for example where you can chant along with her.
And that can be a really lovely restful practice particularly after you've done a little bit of asana or even a little bit of yin.
So some of these practices lead into one another.
And chanting it's often something that people are not so comfortable with but it can be incredibly calming to the body and certainly to the mind.
The word mantra means mind protector.
So if we think about our thoughts and you know this is what I a lot of this podcast is about that getting stuck in the mind in our mental process is such an uncomfortable place often because much of our mental process is repetitive and much of it is negative.
And when we get stuck there it can be oh but it could just be extremely uncomfortable and sometimes quite distressing.
So finding a way to come out of the mind and there's many ways of doing this I mean exercise of any kind but the practice of yoga particularly is a great way to come out of the mind.
And that's why I became so interested in it in my kind of well-being journey because it really seeks with psychotherapy so well.
So chanting really invites you to come out of the mind because it gives the mind something to do to repeat the mantra and to count and all these little minor tasks which can stop the mind from running on in its mental processes.
And the calming effect can be really quite remarkable.
I've seen this a lot on retreat with with clients on retreat that they really take to the chanting of mantra.
And if you're interested in doing a mantra practice the the common thing which is done is a 40-day practice where you chant a mantra 108 times morning and evening using a mala.
And that can take between 10 and 20 minutes depending on how long the mantra is but I would suggest that you start with something simple like om shanti om,
I am peace,
Or aham prema,
I am love.
And just see what the effects are on your body and on your mind.
Mantra practice can be really lovely and doing a 40-day practice is one of my great delights.
Interestingly enough I'm not drawn to it at the moment so I'm I think this is where my curiosity is really peaked and why I'm recording this episode.
Because it's good to be able to choose the practice that's required for the time.
And at the moment I'm doing a lot more yin and pranayama as well which I'll talk about in a minute but also just asana,
So hatha,
Vinyasa.
So pranayama is another form of yoga which is where we are working with the breath.
And there are a number of different types of pranayama practices again which can be easily learned but it's good to learn them from a teacher,
A live teacher.
And I'm imagining that online there are probably a lot of YouTube videos but if you have a live yoga teacher it's good to learn how to do the practices with a live teacher.
When I practice pranayama I still hear the voice of my pranayama teacher and it's been years since I practiced with him.
But he had such a steady way of counting and a steady way of introducing the breath practices because he'd been practicing for decades himself.
So I will choose one or two pranayama techniques and I'll even just do five minutes of each one.
And that also is a very good way of calming the nervous system.
In fact I think,
I've said this before on the podcast,
But controlling the breath is one of the most potent ways that we can control the nervous system and calm the nervous system.
And I always notice the effects of this calm,
Like as I'm coming down out of my sympathetic overdrive state and accessing that beautiful parasympathetic rest and relaxed state,
Tears form,
My body starts to tingle.
There are very recognisable signs when I start to relax and I'm sure that you will notice those too.
And the more you offer the body that opportunity to move into the relaxation response,
The quicker it takes it up,
The better it becomes at recognising,
Oh this is this state of parasympathetic rest,
Digest.
And so it's a good thing to practice,
A very good thing to practice.
Have I missed anything?
I think those are the main forms.
Sometimes I will do just standing balances as my practice.
I just feel like balancing and standing and extending the balance,
That can be a really lovely way to practice.
Or I'll do sitting poses.
Sitting poses can be really lovely.
And with the asana,
All the forward bending poses are very nourishing and warming.
If I'm feeling a bit tired or a little bit sore throaty,
I often get a bit sore throaty when I'm tired,
I'll do a seated practice with a lot of forward folds.
And you know,
After 15 minutes my sore throat's gone away,
I feel energised,
I feel so much better.
So I'd love to hear your experience of this.
And I'm planning to put some short yoga sequences on Insight Timer that I can share with you,
And I'll let you know when I'm when I've done that.
So I hope this has been an interesting podcast for you to think about how you might create your own home practice,
Because what I know about yoga is that it can be a very personal thing.
And I know many people go to yoga classes and we're,
You know,
It's we're so lucky that we can access wonderful teachers and a variety of things.
And then I just invite you to bring it home,
To create a space where you can set up your mat and just do what feels good for you.
Because your body will lead you,
Your body actually will lead you in the way.
And I've been enjoying my own home practice so much that I actually haven't been back to the studio,
Which is unusual for me because I was normally at the studio four or five times a week.
And what I'm really enjoying is just listening to my body and creating a practice that is specific to me.
So I hope that that's been interesting to you and I hope that it inspires you to move into your home practice as your own unique way of communicating with your own body and mind.
See you next time.
