First Class Free

Now is the time to clear out the past and get ready for the year to come. During this practice we will start by nurturing self-reflection: learning the lessons of the past and then letting it go. The the second half of the practice will plant seeds for the future. Join me on the mat for this special time dedicated to focusing on setting positive intentions for the New Year.

May 4, 2009:  It’s easy to buy a sandwich and start to complain it’s not what we want exactly (that they could have put more mayo or less lettuce), and that if they did so then it could have been more nourishing.  But the thing is we are the one’s that by blessing our food (and making it what we need the sandwich to be) make it nourishing.  We are responsible for putting intention into things making life what we need it to be for us.  We could go to yoga class and say that it was too easy, too hard, not something enough but again here we have the opportunity to get from the practice what we need.  The class itself is offering a whole meal with different courses and we can choose based on the nourishment we need on a given day what is going to nurture our spirits and bodies the most.  This is how the practice is made unique to each and every person.  This is how life is offering itself to you at your feet…waiting for you to stop blaming or judging the offering and instead turning it into a nourishing experience each and every moment.

 

Donald Walters says, “There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.”

 

We all need to be nurtured. If you look up Nurture in Webster’s dictionary it defines it as a “form of nourishment” and to “educate”.  These are both spot on with the philosophies of yoga.  In class teacher to student we are educating you on techniques you might use how to self-comfort yourself.  The flow of this self comforting is love.  Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. “In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice.” [Shambhala Sun March 2006]

 

We all deserve to love and be loved. 

Love is a form of nourishment. It requires action in thought in words and movement. 

So we meditated together on how we might nourish our spirits through our inner dialogue, how to speak words of kindness to nurture others, how to take actions in honoring our bodies as sacred, nourishing their health.  For a healthy heart lives in a healthy body.  We spoke of the junk food of life things like gossip or complaining and that these do not nourish us but leave us empty and drained.

 

I so want you to appreciate the forms of nourishment: Breath, Thoughts, Words, Actions, Sleep all of which make for a sweeter life!  Please let your time on the mat be that opportunity where you learn how to nourish yourself with bigger breaths, poses and self-observation. All of this leading to greater and greater self-growth!  Happy National Sleep Better Month!  Love you all, Silvia