Self care flow

WHAT IS SELF CARE?
What does self care mean to you and can you allow time for yourself without self judgement? Self care crosses into many different areas of life – it can be about how you talk to yourself, learning to slow down and honouring your time, adding meditation into your day, or as simple as your morning cuppa ritual of quiet ‘me time’. Andrea Ferretti, host of the Yogaland Podcast defines self care as “the conscious act of taking care of your needs so that you can best serve your purpose, or dharma, in the world’. With this definition in mind self care is not just an inward journey, it is also about being of service to the world around us – this is why self care should never be considered self indulgent. Another way of looking at it is putting your gas mask on first before you tend to others. Speak kindly to yourself and you paved the way for kindness to others.

START YOUR YEAR WITH SELF CARE
I’m currently doing a ‘Start your year with Self Care’ online course with Andrea and I’m absolutely loving it. This three week meditation and self reflection programme makes this sometimes tricky subject for some incredibly accessible and doable - in terms of the ability to accept the importance of self care and seeing that the time required to embed this in your everyday life is not overwhelming. Each week four meditations and a podcast with Andrea and Jason Crandell are unlocked for you to work through in your own time. There is the option to journal after each meditation and a Self Care Workbook to help you work out what self care means to you. As I finish off week three I’m contemplating how I can apply the principles I have learnt beyond the comfort and guidance of the programme. Naturally for me the best place to start is on my mat.

EXPLORING SELF CARE IN YOUR PRACTICE
The self care of yoga and meditation helps you stay present and tune in to self awareness – making conscious choices easier to tap into throughout your day. This sequence gives lots of opportunities to ask yourself ‘which asana nourishes me?’. Hips will be opened; spines will be flexed, extended and twisted; and the strong muscles of your legs will be charged. As you flow through this sequence notice which poses you enjoy and which challenge you physically and mentally. Build a picture of what is your unique self care through yoga is. After your practice ask yourself ‘what will I do differently today to take care of myself?’

ALIGNMENT CUES
Move slowly and pause in each of the poses long enough to register how they sit with you. The peak pose of this sequence is Camatkarasana/Wild Thing, which is a pose with nowhere to hide! Love it or hate it, it brings up emotions. It is a full body backbend, a strong arm balance and an inversion as the heart is higher than the head. Read through these alignment cues to get the most out of your pose and feel it ripple through your whole body.

• From Vasisthasana/Side Plank, step your left foot behind your right leg with a bent knee, inhale here.

• Exhale, ground into your right foot to lift your hips up and arch your upper back.

• Rotate your left palm to face the front of the mat, sweep your arm up and over your ear.

• Arch through your whole back, lengthen your neck and softly reach your head back, expand through the collarbones and open through your heart centre, gaze up.

I highly recommend Andrea Ferretti’s wonderful online self care meditation course. The course is a real time three week session with interaction with Andrea and an optional Facebook group, which is the type of online course I find I get so much more out of. Pop yourself on her waiting list to be notified of the next session.

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Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

The organ body

OPTIMUM ORGANS
The organ body is housed in the main trunk of the body and consist of the lungs, heart, liver, kidneys and digestive system. Each organ has a specific job with one thing in common – removal of waste products from the body. The body is cleverer than we give it credit for. We don’t need a strict regime of green smoothies and colonic irrigations for the body to detox. It is constantly working on moving unwanted byproduct out of the systems. What yoga can do is works from the inside to optimise conditions for the organs to do this important job. Contrary to what you might hear in class yoga doesn’t wring out the organs (apart from the gut which enjoys a good twist). Twists and backbends stimulate cellular activity and circulation in the organs, this helps the organs work more efficiently to remove waste. In our practice we twist to the right first to press the ascending colon, and then to the left to the descending colon. Gently moving things along in the right direction for optimum elimination. You might remember, if you ever did baby massage, there was a very specific direction you had to massage the babies stomach to help with wind. Yoga follows the same principles.

MOVING FROM THE INSIDE
The organs work in symbiosis with the skeletal and muscular systems – both supporting and protecting each other. The heart and lungs fill and support the ribcage, and the ribcage protect these organs – the stomach and liver work with the mid torso; the gut with the spine; and the kidneys with the lower back body. Feeling into these spaces in your practice can be easier for some organs than others. We can feel the oscillation of the breath and the constant pulse of the heart, but the liver, kidneys and gut can be harder to sense. Moving from the inside and visualising where these area are will help you feel into the spaces that these organs occupy.

EXPLORING THE ORGAN BODY IN YOUR PRACTICE
We often blame our muscles or our anatomy for restrictions in poses, but often it can the organs restricting movement. Think of taking a twist with a full stomach, apart from being quite uncomfortable, you will notice you can’t take a very deep twist. We forget sometimes we are more than just our bones and muscles and that our organs occupy and the core of what we are trying to move.

ALIGNMENT CUES
Throughout this sequence see can you initiate the movement from the inside and try to soften your attachment to how your pose looks from the outside.

• Start in a comfortable cross legged position. Take five deep breaths and feel for the space where the heart (hand over top left chest region), lungs (both hands over chest region), liver and stomach (both hands just under your bottom rib), intestines (both hands over belly) and kidneys (both hands either side of lower back) are.

• When you come into Warrior II expand and dilate the lungs and heart centre. Let your arms extend from this boyante area. Now allow your chest to collapse and and notice what effect this has. The expanded heart and open lungs supports the extended arms.

• Before you take a twist ot backbend lengthen up through the whole spine to get space between the vertebrae to move into.

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Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Breathing out self judgement

INTRODUCING MOONS YOGA LOFT
December was an incredible month for Yogaru. After many years of designing and building my 108 ASANA sequencing cards, it was a tough job keeping up with demands in retail and online. Thank you to all who have chosen to explore their home practice, you are part of a growing tribe! January brings with it a welcome return to teaching regular public classes in a beautiful new studio right on my doorstep in Blackrock – Moons Yoga Loft. This sequence is based on the class theme for the month of January with I am honoured to be starting from tomorrow morning!

THE POWER OF THE BREATH
No matter how hard you try to hide from it January is a month where we are besieged with pressure to set New Year’s Resolutions and change the way we are. Even if you’re quite happy with where you are, you can’t help digging deep to find some area for self criticism and conform to the mass hysteria. Last year I made a conscious effort to buck the trend by ‘Stepping gently into the New Year’. This year the same challenges face me and I’m looking to my breath to calm the mind and not get caught up on the merry go round.

CHANGE THE RECORD
Set yourself an intention for changing the internal chatter of self judgement to self care. The world would be a monotonous and one dimensional place to live in we were all perfectly formed and perfectly balanced. Variety is the spice of life in all its shapes and forms. Next time you catch yourself going down the route of ‘I’m not good enough’ change the conversation to ‘I am perfectly imperfect’! Say it in your mind, write it down, set a reminder on your phone. Remind yourself you are exactly who you need to be right now, and not in a months time after a gruelling New Years Resolution.

EXPLORING BREATHING OUT SELF JUDGEMENT IN YOUR PRACTICE
This sequence is an evolution of the ‘Step gently into the New Year’ sequence. It adds exploration of Viloma breath in movement and challenges you to look for the breath in your back body in Child’s Pose. Back body breathing stimulates the rest restore and digest nervous system response. As you inhale think ‘I am’ and on your exhale release self judgement and think ‘perfectly imperfect’.

Start your practice on your back with your knees bent, feet mat distance apart. Place your hands on your belly and feel the breath move through you. Take three to five rounds of Viloma breath – inhale for a long breath, and then exhale pause, exhale pause, exhale pause – dividing your exhale into three sections. Pause after your rounds and notice any change to you body and mind.

ALIGNMENT CUES
Think of how we react to stressful situations – we exhale deeply – this is the body trying to find balance again. Stay close to the breath and look to extend your exhale. Let the breath guide your movement in the mini flow sections of the sequence and follow the guide of which pose you inhale and exhale for.

• After you have done three to five rounds of Viloma breath in a resting position move on to the core work section using the same breathing technique. For the first round you will be holding the left leg and lowering the right leg in increments of three as you take your three Viloma exhales, inhale brings the leg back up. In the second round you will keep your hands beside you or in cactus arms and use your core to draw your left knee into your chest as you take your three Viloma breath exhales, inhale brings the leg back up.

• Pause in child pose before the Cat, Cow, Child Pose flow breathe into the back body. When going through this mini flow link each movement with your breath and let the breath dictate when you are ready to move on to the next pose, ‘+’ is an inhale and ‘-’ is an exhale. Pause in child pose again after and breathe into the back body again.

• For half forward fold press your hands into your shins and reach your chest forward to feel the strength in your upper back. Pause here in this mini flow of row three.

• Your final pose is a restorative pose using a bolster. Place the back of your pelvis towards the short end of the bolster. Gently ease yourself back onto the bolster and place your arms by your sides palms facing up. You can stay here for your full Savasana or, after about five minutes of your chest opener restorative, remove the bolster and come down to you mat for Savasana.

To save the images for personal use click and hold down the image until the ‘save image’ option appears; on Mac hold down ‘control’ and click the image to get the option box; on PC right click on the image to get the option box. Scroll down in the ‘option box’ and click ‘save image’.

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru