SEASONAL SELF-CARE BLOG
Return to Essence this Fall
Posted on October 11th, 2015
Autumn invites us to let go, lighten up, and distill our beings to their essence. Tune up the metal element this Fall with practices that help you clear out the clutter in you mind and define your intention with clarity.
Uttarabodhi Mudra (Mudra of the highest enlightenment)
Crystal clear light, vast blue skies, and crisp, cold, clear air—ahhh Fall, my favorite season is here! According to Chinese Medicine, Fall is the Season of the metal element. The stage in our yearly cycle, when all of nature is in a process of contraction, decay, and decomposition-returning all matter to source to fertilize the seeds of Spring’s rebirth.
Through a process of releasing and refining, the metal element transforms matter to pure essence. The Autumn leaves, brilliantly ablaze, offer their last bursts of vitality before drying up and dropping back to the earth. In the end, the essence of the tree remains, a sculpture carving a line drawing in the vast sky and the unseen roots below, stabilizing, grounding and nourishing. The sap of the tree draws into the interior of the tree and sinks back to the roots. In Fall, we also pull inwards, slow down, and become more internal to refine our being as we move towards the stillness and rest of Winter.
Fall is the time to cleanse and organize the clutter in your home, release the agitation in your mind, and clear out the chaos in your life. It’s time to shed the non-essential, resolve and release unhelpful habitual thoughts and emotions, and let go of unhealthy relationships and patterns. By releasing the non-beneficial, we create space for recognizing the essence of who we are and clarity for our intentions.
But letting go is not easy, we resist it. Often we don’t want to change. We want to hang onto Summer, our youthful yang energy, the fullness of the day. We get fearful of the dark, the time and space needed to nourish the new. The stillness and quietness is unsettling and a sort of anxiety sets in as we head towards the fallow Yin time of Winter. We are used to constant stimulus, distraction, and busyness. But this nonstop activity and productivity with little rest, leaves us depleted, stressed out, and burnt out. In the Fall we often need supportive practices to help us as we undergo these elemental processes of letting go, releasing, and surrender. Seasonal yoga, food, and lifestyle practices can help us attune our internal rhythm more with the natural cycles and deepen our connection to ourselves and our environment.
Fall is a good time to nourish the internal practices of meditation, mantra, and mudra to quiet the agitation in the mind, deepen concentration and open insight. Try practicing Uttarabodhi Mudra this Fall to nourish the metal element and the lungs and large intestines, our Fall organs. Place your index fingers together facing upwards and thumbs together facing downwards. Interlace the rest of your fingers together. Breathe and enjoy! This mudra helps open the lungs to expand the inhalation as well as stimulates elimination through the large intenstines. As conductor of electrical and energetic impulses, the metal element enhances our ability to draw in prana (vital energy) from our environment, connect with cosmic energy, as well as recharge our inner source of wellbeing.
Joyous heart!
Leigh
Bhudi Mudra
Posted on October 8th, 2015
Try Bhudi Mudra (fluid mudra) to help nourish the water element, balance your second chakra, and restore fluidity and easeful emotional flow in your being.
According to Ayurveda, Vata dosha, the air element, gets aggravated in the Fall. As the winds start to pick up, we begin to dry out. Our lips get chapped, our skin feels dry and we reach more often for the lotion. As the leaves start to turn their beautiful colors, dry up, and fall off, we also start to feel parched and depleted. We experience the same effects as nature because we are made up of the same elements. Ayurveda suggests nourishing the water element inside us to bring vata dosha back into balance. The grounding, stabilizing, water element offers fluidity and lubrication for the internal dryness.
Bhudi Mudra can help revitalize and maintain fluid balance in our bodies which are 50-70% water. This simple sacred gesture, helps when you have dry and burning eyes, or dryness in the mouth, kidney and bladder issues. It is said to improve the sense of taste, which is the sense organ for the second chakra.
enjoy!
Leigh
Sacred Sounds of Sanskrit
Posted on September 8th, 2015
Through my deep explorations of my body as a yogini and dancer, I have found that actually the delicate intricacies of the subtle body are most eloquently unveiled through sound.
As my yoga practice deepened, I was drawn to study Sanskrit. I had the great fortune of attending a Sanskrit workshop with Jo Brill. I loved exploring how to create the sounds of Sanskrit and thrilled to be able to actually begin to decipher the squiggly script of devanagari in just one weekend! I felt like I was cracking the code and entering a new level in my yoga studies and awareness!
At the time I was also working on a new performance piece, “Traces”, which explored memory, origin, and roots. Since Sanskrit is the mother of all Indo-European languages, it seemed to me to be a perfect way to explore the root of language in my performance piece. I took the Sanskrit alphabet with me into the rehearsal studio and played with the sounds and how they emerged from different places in my mouth. I created a sound score which became a very powerful part of the piece and my favorite part to perform. I loved the sounds and felt intrigued by how they affected me.
As I studied deeper, I learned that there is a vibrational correspondence with each of the sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet and the chakras. There are 50 letters in the Sanskrit alphabet and in total 50 petals on the chakras. Each of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet is said to open one of the 50 petals of the chakras. Chanting the entire Sanskrit alphabet reverberates through all the petal of the chakras and their related areas in the body! Additionally the sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet offers healing and cleansing in the body by sonic stimulation of particular areas and marma points. Marmas are energy points in the body which connect with your underlying organ systems and energetic channels.
“The subtle body of sound vibration relates to the mental body and to the subtle or astral body in general, the site of the seven chakras. It creates and sustains the physical body, supporting health and well-being within it. Through changing the frequencies of the subtle body of sound, we can bring healing into the physical body and remove negativities from the mind.” David Frawley
The powerful healing offered through sound vibration is an area of deep interest to me. I am excited to share the explorations through our Yoga Sukhavati: ART OF SOUND weekend workshops. Join us Sept 12, 13 for a Sanskrit immersion with Jo Brill, and Oct 2-4 for the Healing Power of Sound.
joyous heart!
Leigh
