The Irish Balance Flow

When you embark on a yoga home practice it naturally evolves from guided online classes to learning how to go with the flow and moving instinctively in a way that feels nourishing to you each time you step on your mat. Guest writer Ciara Kelly is an Irish Medical Doctor working in the field of public health and creator of The Irish Balance where she shows us ways to live a happy, healthy, balanced life. Here she shares with us how her practice evolved over the last few years and has become an essential component of life balance for her.

CIARA’S YOGA JOURNEY
I am so excited to be bringing you guys my very own yoga flow – created by me and beautifully brought to life by my good friend Ruth Delahunty. Over the last 6 months, I have been slowly learning to trust myself on my yoga mat – flying solo if you will, without YouTube, which is how I started out! I have been using Ruth’s Asana cards and her website for quite a while now to flow at home. I asked her to help me bring to life a yoga flow I’ve been doing at home for the past few weeks. It’s a short little sequence that I’ve personally found really nourishing and comforting, whether that’s in the morning, before bed, or in the middle of a day off. I wanted to share it with you guys and hopefully inspire you to give yoga a try.

NAVIGATING THE SEQUENCE
This sequence is built to soothe and move you through this difficult period. Start by spending some time simply following your breath and notice the calming effect this has on your body and mind. Move slowly through the sequence and bring your full attention to what you are doing on your mat. The slower you allow yourself to move the more calming it will feel. Be led by how you feel energetically and emotionally when you step on your mat. If you are feeling tired and overwhelmed, concentrate on just the warm up poses and consider skipping the Vinyasas or one of the standing sequences. Spend plenty of time in childs pose between mini flows. If you are feeling a bit of cabin fever add more Vinyasas into the sequence and repeat one or two of the standing mini flows. Press strongly into your foundation and feel the strength of your whole body as you reach through the tip of your crown. Done with intention even Tadasana/Mountain Pose is an incredibly strong pose.

The arrowed lines in the sequence indicate a mini flow. Start with your right side first then repeat the poses between the arrows on the left side e.g right foot forward, then left foot forward. The ‘+’ and ‘-’ symbols will help you move with your breath, take long deep breaths to expand and nourish your lungs. For the linked poses with a ‘x3’ or ‘x5’, do 3 or 5 rounds of these two poses linking them with the breath. On row three there are five poses linked together with a dotted line, this is called a ‘Vinyasa’. These five poses are repeated before the two standing sequences on row four. You will find most of the poses at Yogaru for alignment cues of the poses you are unsure of.

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CIARA KELLY
Ciara is an Irish qualified medical doctor and creator of The Irish Balance. She is passionate about preventive medicine. Particularly how our lifestyles affect our health – the food we eat, physical activity, stress management and sleep. She show us how we can empower ourselves to live happy, healthy lifestyles full of balance.

You can find Ciara at The Irish Balance, her down to earth podcast that debunks many health myths and her popular Instagram for staying up to date in the health and wellness space.

Your supportive space

YOUR ULTIMATE COMFORT BLANKET
Home is our safe haven. It is somewhere where we feel a soothing familiarity the minute we walk through the door. A home practice taps into this safe, supportive space and the comfort of knowing it is at arm's length whenever you need it. Your home practice will give you a method to deal with emotions and help you navigate life's ups and downs. We are currently going through very challenging times where our emotions are changing by the day. Our emotions are part of life, there is no benefit to being afraid of fear or stressed about stress. Sitting with them and identifying them - I feel anxious, I am afraid, I worry about uncertainty, I am stressed - helps you process them instead of letting them build up and intensify. Having a safe space, where you have no expectations of yourself, or of what will come up during your time on the mat, is essential to see you through this difficult period of time. Cultivating a safe space at home and building a calm environment will not only benefit you, it will also benefit worried kids, family or whoever you may be sharing a space with.

Going to classes and life as we know it is interrupted for the time being. You may not have an established daily yoga practice but getting onto your mat every day and letting your practice support you through this period of time will benefit you physically and mentally. Be kind to yourself and ask yourself ‘how do I feel today?’ each time you step on your mat. You may not feel like a strong practice everyday, and this is completely normal. You may feel energetic one day, tired and frustrated the next. Be led by this and tailor your energy levels to what turns up for you. A lovely benefit of a regular practice is that you will start to notice the minute you roll your mat out you will feel your anxiety start to dissipate as your body and mind recognises the calming effect of yoga.

EXPLORING YOUR SUPPORTIVE SPACE IN YOUR PRACTICE
This sequence is a hip opener sequence. Hip openers are known for having a feel good factor. They release physical and emotional tension, relieve stress and anxiety, aid digestion, and enable freer mobility to everyday life. Which is why you feel a lovely freedom of movement along with a sense of calm after incorporating some hip openers into your practice. When you encounter a stretching sensation keep some integrity to the containment of this stretch and try not to get carried away with going to the end range of motion. Muscles will over stretch and eventually mend, but ligaments will over stretch and lose their ability to support the joint. Your hips will thank you in the long run. Drop self judgement and practice from the inside rather than looking for external shapes and progress. It's just you and your mat.

ALIGNMENT CUES
Explore your whole mat and make the four corners of your mat your safe space during these extended periods at home. Feel the support of the surface beneath you and the connection between the soles of your feet and the grip of your mat. Below is the peak pose of the sequence Eka Pada Rajakapotasana/One Legged King Pigeon which is a deep hip opener. Take your time getting into the pose and as you explore the stretch remember to keep an element of muscle integrity to protect the important connective tissues of the joints.

• From Adho Mukha Svanasana, place your right foot behind your left hand and your right knee behind your right hand.

• Right foot flexed, working towards your right shin being parallel to the top of the mat.

• Place your hands either side of your hips, walk your left leg out behind you in line with your left hip as you lower your hips down.

• Draw your left hip forward and your right hip back, let the weight of your upper body help to gently lower your hips down.

• Stay here, or for a stronger stretch, exhale, fold forward, interlock your hands and place your head on your hands, gaze down.

• Squeeze your outer hip muscles, your glute, to open the hip out.

• Contract your muscles, draw your front knee back and your back knee forward. Lift your pelvic floor, draw navel to spine, hold for 6 seconds.

• Exhale and release for 30 seconds.

When your head is spinning come back to your practice and let it support you physically and mentally. Sit if you are too overwhelmed to move or move and flow with your breath. Let go of attachment to when will it all be better and put your trust in this ancient movement discipline.

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Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

How to build a home practice

PRACTICE ON
Now, more than ever before, your yoga practice is a complete support system for all your physical and mental needs. In all this uncertainty your home practice will give you back a sense of empowerment again. We are all feeling varying degrees of anxiety and fear. Yoga, the breath and a meditation practice will help you get through this unprecedented and challenging period. Cultivating a safe space at home and building a calm environment will not only benefit you, it will also benefit worried kids, family or whoever you may be sharing a space with. To help you get started with these mini flows visit my YouTube where you will find a series of tutorials to accompany these sequences.

THERE TO SUPPORT YOU
We are going through some tough emotional times. Learning to listen to what you need when you step on your mat, and having no expectations of your strength or flexibility, will help to stay calm and well. Be guided by how the practice sits with you, everyday you will feel differently. Some days you might be feeling quite anxious and haven't slept very well. Your practice for that day might be a restorative pose to help you dissolve all your worries away. Other days you might be feeling more energetic and ready to move. Try to get onto your mat each day, even if it is just for a few minutes to mobilise all your joints (ankles, knees, hips, spine & shoulders) to move and sit with more ease for the rest of your day. Home practice will help you to process all that is going on in the world and give you the strength to see this tough period through to the other side.

GETTING STARTED
There are three home sequences to get you started above. The warm ups and cool downs are the same throughout to keep it simple and let you concentrate your energies on the standing sequences. Before you start with the five rounds of cat/cow, lie on your back, place your hands on your belly and take five deep breaths. Then spend a few moments waking up all the joints. Hug your knees to your chest and roll around on your lower back. Keep the left knee hugging and stretch your right leg up and slowly circle the ankle, bend and straighten the leg a few times. Drop your left leg down, hold onto your right knee and circle the knee to warm up the hip joint. Repeat on the left side and you're ready to get started. I have focused on the most common poses in yoga to make sure you can follow the asana illustrations. If there is a pose that you’re not sure of you can find all 108 poses in my asana section. You can narrow down your search by clicking into the asana families in the bar on the right.

When you’re ready to move on you will find lots more in the sequences section. As you become more in tune with what your body needs, delve into the asana section and pick some poses that you’d like to explore. Start with poses that are familiar to you before you get more adventurous. Remember to always take Savasana at the end of your practice to assimilate the time you have invested in your wellness. But most of all, own your practice and enjoy it!

SUN SALUTATIONS
Traditionally practised in the morning as a salute to the rising sun, the Surynamaskaras or Sun Salutations are multifunctional and can be practised at any time of the day. They are the perfect way to start building a home practice. The three versions strengthen and stretch all the main muscle groups, build stamina and prepare you for more challenging poses. They also build heat and increase circulation throughout the whole body.

They include standing poses, forward bends, backbends and inversions. Each asana correlates to either an ‘inhale’ or an ‘exhale’. This makes it a good start to your practice to establish the link between breath and movement. The repetitive quality of the movements relaxes the mind and reduces stress and anxiety.

TRANSITIONS
Bringing your attention to transitions and moving consciously from pose to pose threads the practice together like a string of pearls and cultivates a meditative flow. Slow your practice down and savour the in between moments just as much as the poses themselves.

Sequences are often built of mini flows where you step from one pose straight to the next. You will see these in your four home practice sequences as a selection of 2-5 poses enclosed by two arrowed lines. You flow through these connected poses on the right side first (right foot forward) and then take those poses on the left side (left foot forward). Downward Dog or simply Tadasana are often used as the transitional pose between mini flows.

The breath is one of the most important elements of stress relief in yoga. As you move try not to get caught up too much on whether it should be an inhale or an exhale, just don’t forget to keep breathing!

If you have any questions or are struggling with knowing where to start please feel free to email me at ruth@yogaru.ie. In the face of adversity communities knitting together to help each other is what will see us through this.

Stay safe.

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