A simple Christmas flow

CHRISTMAS MINDFULNESS
I have to admit I love Christmas with all its bell and whistles. But last year stopped me in my festive tracks when we faced a family challenging, and Christmas passed by in a bit of a blur. It made me more mindful and understanding of people who, for one reason or another, don’t particularly like Christmas.

Whether you are a Christmas fan or not, your home practice can be your best friend over the festive period. Taking a bit of time to yourself everyday, will help you to take on all that comes with this busy time of year. The only thing you need to practice yoga is intention. Intention for self care, a curiosity to explore and the ability to listen carefully to what you need.

PAUSE & RECENTRE
Try the above sequence over the Christmas period. It will give you a bit of everything to support you over the coming weeks. Flow through the whole sequence or pick one of the Sun Salutation flow options and one of the standing flow options. Mix it up and try something new each day, or for a meditative flow, practice the same sequence each day. Remember getting on your mat for a simple 10 minute practice is better than not getting on your mat at all.

Along with your home practice you might like to try one of the Christmas retreat workshops that lots of the yoga studios offer for the week between Christmas and New Years. I will definitely be treating myself to a morning workshop with Aisling Conn in The Yoga Room.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

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Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Strong back body

THE FORGOTTEN BACK BODY
With the winter nip in the air you start to notice how much the body closes in to protect itself against the colder weather. The muscles of the spine were created to keep us upright. They become weakened from sitting for long periods of time, and as a result, don’t have the strength to do the important job of stabilising against gravity as we move. Strengthening the back body in yoga helps to keep an upright posture, counteracting curled in shoulders, a hunched back, and helps prepare the lower body for safer forward folds. Following on from my upper back strength sequence I started to explore down the full length of the back body – adding the lower back, glutes, outer hips, hamstrings and calf muscles. When we visualise our bodies we think of our front body, and the poor back body often gets ignored. If we gave our back body a bit more love and attention we might be better equipped to avoid back pain, hip instability, and pulled hamstrings.

STRENGTHEN TO STRETCH
For a long time I thought that to stretch the back body you need to do lots of forward folds. Not necessarily so! Before you stretch out a muscle you need to strengthen it first to warm it up, wake up the connective tissues, and bring fresh blood to the muscles. Strengthening is not to be confused with tightening a muscle. Tightness comes from repeated strengthening with no stretching. There is so many variations of posture in yoga that every muscle is being stretched and strengthened during your time on the mat. Taking a poses like Salabhasana/Locust will strengthen the whole back body before going into deeper forward folds. Utkatasana/Chair will wakes up the strong muscles of the legs, outer glutes and the outer hips. With the arms raised you are also working the muscles of the back and shoulders. Hold the poses till you feel the muscles working to create stability and strength. You will find the whole back body more receptive to opening up to forward folds when you have warmed it up, and switched it on first.

DOWNWARD DOG
After warming up the back body with Salabhasana/Locust and Utkatasana/Chair, spend plenty of time in Downward Dog to ease into any deeper forward folds. It will start to gently lengthen out the back of the legs and stretches out the upper back and shoulders. Work on tipping the pelvis forward towards your upper thighs and reaching your sit bones up high. There are three rounds of the downward dog flow in the above sequence. Place your feet mat width for your first round, hip width for the second, and all going well, together for the third round. You’ll notice the closer the legs are together the more of a stretch is required in the backs of the legs. Taking chair pose with the legs at different widths will also work slightly different hip muscles and continue to strengthen the back body between forward folds.

Try the sequence above and bring all your attention to your back body as you move through the practice.

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Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

The benefits of epsom salts

THE HEAL ALL GO TO
I’m a big fan of the epsom bath. Playground cuts, bruises, tummy aches, and growing pains all get sent upstairs for an epsom bath in our house. As mentioned in my Finding Balance article, I had a somewhat humbling trip and fall walking back from school drops a month or two ago. Once I got over the annoyance of the injury, I took it on as a project to learn new ways to find natural healing methods. I decided to follow my own advice and have an epsom bath, everyday for a week, and use myself as a guinea pig to see how fast I could speed up the healing process of a decent sized cut knee, with a matching very impressive bruise on the other knee!

RAINBOW KNEES
With each day I could visibly see the progress of the recovery. The cut very quickly sealed over, and the bruise came to the surface and started changing from deep purple, to blue, to green within a matter of days. After one week the improvement was huge and my poor little knees were well on their road to recovery. Over the course of the week I started to notice lots of additional benefits to having a daily epsom bath. I knew they were very calming but there are so many more benefits that I didn’t know about till I tried it. Here are some of the benefits I notice:

• Speed up healing of bruises

• Speeds up healing of cuts

• Speeds up muscle strain and injury recovery

• Relieves muscle pain, tension and inflammation

• Softer and more even toned skin

• Relieves stress and promotes the production of serotonin (rest & restore hormone)

• Regular bowel movement

• Eliminates pre menstrual bloating and cramping

• Promotes a better night sleep

• Regulates blood sugar levels and reduces food cravings

MISSING MINERALS
Epsom salts are made of magnesium sulphate – an important mineral which is becoming harder get adequate required daily amounts. We usually get it in our diet from fresh fruit and veg, but with the high turn over in agriculture, the soils are becoming increasingly depleted in their minerals – magnesium sulphate being one of these many minerals along with a long list of others. High consumption of caffeine also strips our systems of the essential minerals.

It’s now almost two months later and I’m still loving my epsom baths. I’m still seeing the benefits and definitely feel more balanced on the days where I carve out a bit of time for even just a 10 minute soak. Like meditation, sometimes you might not be in the mood, or you feel you don't have time, but a little self push in the right direction is needed when you know the results are guaranteed!

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru