Shoulder High

It's June 21st and today marks the first day of SUMMER! In honour of that, I would like to share this youtube clip of Martha and the Vandellas: Dancing in the Street.  'Cause summer's here and the time is right for dancin' in the street!!  It's one of my favourite summertime songs and always brings a smile to my face so I thought it might do the same for you.

Tonight I did Shoulder High for the second time.  It's really brief, 34 minutes, and mostly just works on stretching out your shoulders.  Very important for surfers who spend a lot of their time paddling through heavy waters.  Maybe not so important for Meighan, who has not an ounce of definition in her shoulders.  :D

As I mentioned in a past post, I have a hard time working out if I'm not going to be sweating buckets and working really hard.  Stretching shoulders and no sun salutation series does not make for a sweaty yoga practice.  Not for me anyway.  So it was a challenge for me to stay focused in my practice and it got me to thinking...

Since I've started practicing yoga, I've learned that a couple of things are crucial:

First off is Intention.  Without it, I have found you just don't reap the same benefits.  Yesterday my intention was very clear.  I was giving every posture my absolute all.  Today, absolutely all of me hurts.  It works!

Breathing is another one.  I mean obviously you need to breathe.  If you don't, you die.  So this one's a biggie.  But seriously, learning to breathe deeply and by using your diaphragm and gut instead of breathing shallow and from the chest, only brings forth positive things.  For one, it increases oxygen in your blood stream.  It also decreases stress instantaneously and calms the mind: something I'm sure we could all use a little more of!

Attitude.  Got a negative one?  Check it at the door.  You don't need any negativity in your life anyway, and certainly not while practicing yoga.  If it's there and won't go away, then don't forget your breathing!  I promise, the power of deep breathing is greater than we realize sometimes!

How would you like to improve your mental function?  Your emotional health?  How about your nervous system, musculoskeletal system, digestive, immune, circulatory, respiratory, and endocrine systems?  Yoga will do all of these things especially if you pay attention to your Posture.  Check yourself while in the poses.  Are you aligning yourself like your teacher says?  If not, are you just "I can't-ing"?  A lot of people say "I can't.  I can't!" When more than half the time... you most certainly CAN!  The better way of phrasing it is "I can't right now."  So give it your best effort, and in a few more tries, you'll be "I CAN-ing" all over the place!

There is much more to yoga than these four things though and this yoga challenge has certainly sparked my interest to find out what else there is.

 For one, I'm deeply interested in the chakras.  It is said that different yoga poses stimulate energy flow to the various energy centres (chakras) in varying and powerful ways.  This can explain why some people begin to weep in certain poses, and want to strangle someone or something in others.  The stagnation of energy flow in Ayurvedic Medicine and in Asian Medicine too, often leads to disease states.  So if all we are are bundles of energy, and yoga has the ability to unblock stagnant energy in our bodies, then that is something I'm tremendously interested in as a student of Naturopathic Medicine and want to learn more about!

The other aspect of Yoga that I am interested in lies behind the fact that it's freaking ANCIENT!  These sequences of poses were developed so long ago and each one has a story behind it... a reason for doing it in the first place and specific benefits that come with each posture.  By knowing what these qualities are, you can apply more focused intention in your practice and work towards healing every aspect of yourself: mind.body.spirit.

This my dears is why I'm so passionate about holistic medicine.  You just can't achieve the same end from a bottle of pills can you?