Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘pool’

Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame.

B.K.S. Iyengar

So, given the challenge to yoga-up my life again after a month of incessant day-job that leaves me home late every night and stressed all weekend long I realized that the yoga with a capital “Y” has been missing from my life altogether.  By that I mean the yoga in the essence of how I live my life and bring room to breathe, pause, and reboot.  To be frank–I have had none.  So taking Bindu Wiles 21.5.800 Challenge (21 days, 5 days a week yoga, 800 words written per day) I realized how much I have sucked the yoga joy out of my life since yoga school ended and my new job began.  Yoga back in my life really meant a total overhaul.

So my yoga for yesterday was Savasana on a floatie raft in my grandparents-in-law’s pool.  It was divinity–really.  I have taking the yoga less literal in terms of postures and more to a state of mind–and that I am trying to do 7 days a week.  I am dedicating 40minutes-1 hour a day where I give me a moment to breath and pause and reboot.  I am expanding my Savasana to be more encompassing.  I am thinking the next extension of that is to take up on of my Massage Envy massages (which have been back-logging without use) and Savasana my way into a deep tissue state of the Swedish variety.  Yes, I think so.

That said, today’s yoga will be literal.  I am vacillating between power flow and restorative for my home practice–we will see what the day brings.  The joy of home practice is that I can morph it to whatever I feel the need for.  Although, another aspiration of my next few weeks of the challenge is to add a studio practice one day a week–something I have been missing in the last couple of months.  Communal environment is a great invigorator for a home-study practice that has lapsed.

5 Ways You Can Bring Savasana Into Your Life & Some Room to Breathe:

1. Get a massage.  I love Massage Envy because for a reasonable monthly rate  (about $50-$60 per month; half a usual spa massage rate) it commits you to give yourself a moment to take care of yourself–body and mind.  Also, if you are like me and you lapse for a few months your massages stay in a reserve for you to use when you have the time.

2. Go to the beach or get yourself a floatie and head to your local pool. It’s summer!  So, you can take full advantage of nature’s therapeutic qualities such as vitamin D and head to the beach, pool, or even your backyard and get in a retreat-state-of-mind.  Put on some SPF, sunglasses, and just lounge like (even if it is only for an hour or an afternoon) you are on vacation.

3. Create some sacred space in your home & spend some time there in silence. What we create in our home space says  a lot about our personality and our motivations at home.  If you take just a small corner of a room or room in your house and create a space for meditation, silence, or prayer you give yourself the incentive to spend some time at home in silence, meditation, or prayer.

4.  Follow your bliss. We each have things we love and things that bring us into a state of bliss, peace, and calm.  What is that thing for you?  Art, writing, yoga postures, dance, horseback riding, motorcycle riding–the sky is limit (literally, cause’ it could be airplane flying).  When I ask clients what brings them calm they have named all of the above and more.  Whatever your bliss is can be the yoga in your life.  Do something you love–find your bliss and follow it to a state of calm.

5.  Shut down your devices. Live a day unplugged. Yeah, this is a hard one!  As I write this on a blog I realize the hypocrisy in this moment .  But not indefinitely, not forever, just for an hour or a day log off, sign off, and shut off!  It is so crucial and I do it far to infrequently.  Turn off the phone, shut off the computer, unplug the T.V. and just be in the silence.  It can be very uncomfortable and the more discomfort you feel the more it is a warning sign that you need to do it more often.  The white noise takes us over and we have to remember to get back to ourselves, unplugged.

Have you neglected your own self-care and room to breathe in your life?  Any ways you can think of infusing your summer with some non-literal or literal yoga?  Below are a few I have been salivating over.  If you are interested in investing in some self-care you can also still sign up for my “Room to Breathe: Summer Soulstice Soul Care” Virtual Workshop starting June 20, 2010!  However you do it, summer is a great time to take some time and focus on taking care of you!

 

My lovely grandparents-in-law (is that a possible moniker?) allowed me to come over to their lovely backyard pool today, dogs in tow.  I was in desperate need of a geographic change after a week spent organizing, unboxing, and lugging everything and anything I own around the new house.  I was exhausted and testy; the dogs were spastic and antsy.  We needed a day of rest.  It was lovely.  Truly.

 

My husband’s grandparents are sweet, endearing people; his grandmother made me a plate of cheese, grapes, and crackers and his grandfather gave me dog care advice then they quickly retreated indoors to escape the heat and, I am certain, my over energized pups. 

 

The change of scenery was a starting point, a was finally absorbing some of the rich Florida sun and imbibing vibrant blue skies speckled with tufts of white but what really took me to another realm was the pool.  I have been what my mother lovingly titled “a fish” since I was old enough to walk and paddle through the shallow end of one public pool or another. 

 

I love the water.  I love to swim.  More than anything I adore the feeling of rocketing through deep waters, completely submerged, reaching for the rough cement floor, hearing nothing but the sound of limbs pushing through chlorine aqua and my own heartbeat.  It dives me into a silent internal peace that is akin to what I feel in the practice of yoga.  I feel in tune and rhythm with my body; swimming is like an aquatic dance of the body working in synchronicity with itself to create powerful motion.  Swimming to me is like flying; it makes me feel like I am transformed into something beyond human, something greater than myself. 

 

Yoga gives me a sense similar to that.  I feel in tune and a part of my surroundings in the water; the water and I are part of a large collective organism, working together.  With yoga I feel the fluidity of myself and the air around me, the ground below me; it holds me up and propels me from one pose to the next.  The two practices to me are moving arts and they take me to somewhere beyond me as an independent being. 

 

But I digress.  The day was just what was prescribed for all.  It was a feast for my senses and sun therapy to boot.  I read Julie & Julia (still avoiding reading my required texts for yoga school and beginning to feel the anxiety of a procrastinating delinquent) as I waded in the shallow end, putting it down every so often to swim laps back and forth from shallow to deep water. 

 

My big dog, Guinness, stalked  my every move like he was a hungry lion and I aquatic prey.  He followed every stroke and stared at me intently as I dove under and emerged again half way down the pool, longing to jump in but fearful to dive as he is still learning to swim.  The little one, Gaia, splashed and jumped in, swimming for her toy and then paddling frantically to the pool stairs.  She is definitely the bolder of the two of them, although their appearances deceptively mislead everyone into assuming the reverse. 

 

Completion of the day leaves me sufficiently tanned and satiated by the natural gifts of Florida life; the dogs are sufficiently exhausted and collapsed on their respective doggie beds.  I am also feeling acclimated and rejuvenated enough to brave my first Floridian yoga class tomorrow.  I am going to pick one of the few local studios and just dive in, having no option as of yet for home yoga as my husband, I have discovered, is holding my mat hostage in the great chilly north. 

 

So I revel in the new aquatic opportunities, both oceanic and chlorine-full, of this great warm state.  I am adjusting to the idea of year round warmth, year round sun, and year round access to cool waters to both lose and find myself in, in the best way: mind, body, soul.  Yoga & swimming–I could get used to this place.

 

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

 

e.e. cummings

 

*Found this program Yoga Afloat online that is a certification to become a teacher of water yoga; specifically created by the inventor for her chronic pain illness, something I know well and a lovely concept.  I believe I am going to explore this aquatic yoga hybrid some more.*