Gaining a New Perspective 🤩
Back in 2018, when I was in my 200 hour yoga teacher training I got a new perspective on yoga asana. As a class we were looking at the book Yoga Mind, Body and Spirit by Donna Fahri. On the cover Donna is in camel pose. My teacher told us to turn the book and watch the image rotate into a new pose. As I rotated the book
Donna went from Camel, into Wheel, then Full Locust and finally Bridge.
Same body shape, different perspective on the body orientation.
Yoga poses from different perspectives
It was an eye opening realization that the yoga poses are not separate, like we might think. Instead, it’s just looking at the pose from different perspectives. The word Yoga comes from the root word yuj in Sanskrit. Yuj translates to union, yoke, to join. We see that connection everywhere when practicing yoga. Connection of breath and movement, mind and body, and when we ground, etc. It is important that we honor that connection to the capital S - self. It creates awareness of the whole.
Lately, when I chat with friends, read the news or newsletters that I subscribe to, I keep seeing and hearing the sentence “the current state of the world”. When I read or hear that sentence, I get discouraged and I feel a little deflated. There seems to be a collective disconnection and hopelessness. We get bombarded with the news headlines of what is going on in the world and that feels heavy. It causes our nervous systems to deregulate.
Though it is important to stay informed with what is going on in the world. It’s also important that when we feel our nervous system start to go haywire, we come back and connect to a regulated nervous system.
Here are some of my go-to ways of regulating a nervous system,
Put the screen down or leaving it in the other room
Going outside
Sit or lay in the grass and look up at the clouds
Take a nap
Take a walk in the park
Ground myself and remember to breathe
Yell into the ether
Listen to music such as: Rage Against the Machine and sing along
Move the body (dance, walk, stretching, etc. )
Call a friend
Journal
This list is by no means set in stone, if you feel called to add or subtract please feel free to do so. This week, if you feel the weight of the world, I challenge you to do one of the activities listed above. Try one or two that resonate with you and see how you feel afterwards.
Remember, if you have a nervous system that is regulated, you’re unstoppable. The world is a hard place to be right now and reality is stranger than fiction. Creating a new perspective on how we connect with people, places and things is how we evolve.
