You can spend hours researching and reading articles about yoga online or you can read it right here in this blog post or any of my numerous posts about yoga!
Learn things like how to deepen your practice, ways to practice non-judgment, and how to use yoga mudras. Here are some more yoga tips!
Enhance Your Yoga Mudras With the Act of Stillness
Finding stillness throughout your day can provide several powerful benefits. While it’s easy to find stillness during your practice, doing so off the mat can be more challenging.
Below are a few benefits you can gain by creating more time for stillness.
- Less stress. When you make time for stillness, your stress levels go down. Even when we aren’t in a stressful situation, our bodies can remain in a state of stress. Intentional relaxation will soften the muscles of the body and face.
- Anchors you to the present. Much of our stress is due to worry and anxiety about the future. When our thoughts are consumed with the past or the future, we can’t live in the present moment. Finding stillness allows us to acknowledge where we are and how we are feeling.
- Enhances clarity. Regularly practicing stillness can bring clarity to a situation that has been troubling you. When we give ourselves a moment to step away from a problem, we can see the solutions in a different light.
- Improves overall health. Positive impacts on your health include better sleep, lower blood pressure, improved immune function, and increased serotonin levels.
- Increased self-awareness. Practicing stillness allows you to take ownership of your role in the things happening in your life.
These are just a few of the many benefits offered by incorporating stillness into your day.
Action Step- Just Breathe
The easiest way to incorporate stillness through your day is through breath. The simple act of intentional breathing helps to reset your brain and enhance calmness.
Try setting an alarm as a reminder to stop what you’re doing throughout the day and take several deep breaths. Think about how you felt before taking these breaths and after.
Over time you will find you are calmer and better able to react to situations and adapt to what life throws your way.
What Are You Holding On To?
In ancient yoga teachings, there are five ethical principles called Yamas. The fifth Yama is aparigraha or non-attachment. The practice of non-attachment is a significant aspect of your yoga practice.
When on the mat, your focus and concentration on the pose are essential to balance. When your thoughts wander, that’s when you fall out of a posture.
This same principle applies to everyday life. Our attachment to thoughts, emotions, and even physical belongings can hold us back from the present. The saying “what we try to possess, possesses us” speaks volumes about attachment.
Unhealthy attachments can develop in many areas of our lives. To determine which of your attachments are unhealthy, try to consider needs vs. desires. Desire is natural, but when it supersedes a need, it can eventually drive you to be dishonest, abusive, manipulative, and selfish just to satisfy that desire.
Action Step- Learn How To Live in the Now
Learning how to live in the now can be a lifelong pursuit. There are many avenues of practice you can embrace in your daily life, here are three examples that I like to share with my clients:
1) Learn to forgive. Whether it is you needing forgiveness, a past hurt, or someone else in your life who you feel has wronged you, forgiveness allows for healing to begin. Attachment to negative emotions prevents us from living in the present moment.
2) Let go of unnecessary possessions. Possessions take up valuable space and energy, both in your home and in your head. Take a look around, are you holding on to things that no longer bring you joy?
3) Embrace imperfection. Perfection is merely an illusion. The pursuit of perfection leaves us always striving for an unattainable goal. Instead, find acceptance in what is rather than working for what could be.