Winter is coming
This week's focus:
moving into winter
If you have any comments, questions or requests, please email Karin.
Energising: Simple Seated Stretches
Get your spine moving and stretch the back of the body with stick pose and the seated forward bend. You can do this more or less vigorously by deepening the breath and speeding up, or slowing down and lengthening the breath. As it’s seated it doesn’t take much energy so if you are conserving yours this is a lovely simple practice. If it's hard to sit on the floor, grab a chair.
(4 mins.)
Restorative: Grounding the back
Release tension in the back of your body and your limbs so that your back can relax into the ground.
(15 mins.)
Breathwork: Resilience breathing
Deep "belly breathing" practice to encourage the diaphragm to move freely and fully. Great if you’ve gotten into tense breathing habits (and many of us have). This practice can also help you to connect to your core which can promote a sense of inner strength and resilience.
(8 mins.)
Meditation: Self-compassion
A practice to encourage kindness to self. This type of practice can bring up a lot for some people, so go gently and if it is the first time you do a self-compassion practice, choose a time and place you can practice in private and be undisturbed, with time afterwards to process anything that came up.
(17 mins.)
Relaxation: Giving in to gravity
This guided practice includes elements of restorative yoga and encourages you to let go.
(9 mins.)
Daily life practice
Kindness to self
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Any time of year is a good time to be kind to ourselves, at least as kind as we would be to others! And this time of year, on the cusp of winter, we may need it even more. A lot of people struggle with less daylight, more illness around, the festive season looming which some people love but can also bring up a lot of issues around family, love and loss.
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And practising kindness is pretty useful, whether life is great right now or not.
Once you have done the self-compassion meditation, or instead of, you could do a daily short “self-compassionate check-in”. A five-minute version is included below. It can also be helpful to write down a phrase, or a few phrases, and repeat those to yourself when you first wake up, in difficult moments, and before you go to sleep. You may also want to write down words or phrases and put them up in your house where you will see them regularly, so that you are reminded.
Inspiration
Positive imagery
Find an image (or images) that you find helpful to look at. It could be of something or someone you find calming, soothing, uplifting, joyful. A photograph of a loved one, a spiritual role model, human or not human. A deity, cute kittens, nature images. You might even like to make a collage.
Display these where-ever you can easily see them. They could be used as a computer, tablet or smartphone desktop background, be placed on your desk, by your bed, wherever you like.
Look at them regularly and pause to notice how the image(s) make you feel. Absorb any positive feelings by noticing them for at least 10 seconds (this way they have a bit more time to positively affect your nervous system).