Release Archives - Strength and Sunshine

Power Monday #65 Yoga Is A Feeling

November 24, 2014 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 68 Comments

I’ve got a little yoga musings for you today. Not sure where this is going to go, but I am just going to write, so it may not make sense, but I’ll try my best to get my feelings and thoughts across. Mondays are always really hard for me, not sure why, but emotionally I am a wreak. The good thing is Mondays are also a yoga day for me. I have so many thoughts during my practice, raw and real. All the turmoil comes out on the mat. So I’ll lead you through something I’ve really felt lately and realized in my practice.

We all know yoga can be an emotional and mental release, as well as a physical one. It allows us time to connect with our inner-selves and be present in the moment. Some of us don’t always get this connection every time we practice. If you fight it or you just ignore it and allow yourself to be distracted, you’ll miss the opportunity. I don’t get to this point every time either. That’s okay. We don’t have to. But in the practices I do allow myself to really feel this connection, I benefit so much more.

Lately, during each of my practices, I have been trying to fully “melt” myself into my movements. To really feel my practice and what my body is doing. As I’ve been doing this, I’ve come to realize that this is the exact reason I love yoga so much. I can feel it. None of my practices are gentle in any sense. I adore the power flows and vinyasa. I need the intensity. I need to be able to feel it. When I’m flowing through chaturangas, down-dogs, warriors, arm balances, and holds, I can feel this power just being released through my veins. It seeps into every part of my body and I feel alive.Read More

Power Monday #64 The Power Of Writing

November 17, 2014 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 48 Comments

I’m bringing back Power Monday this week. I have been reading some great articles on writing and being a writer lately. In my UW (University Writing) class, we have been having some great discussions about writing and revision (obviously) as well. Let’s just say, writing has been on my mind a lot and I really feel like expressing my feelings for it in writing (pun intended).

When you first learn how to write, you start with simply forming letters on wide lined paper with dotted lines, helping you to craft the letters as your shaky unfamiliar little hand experiences a new form of art for the first time. Those letters (more like vague symbols in the beginning) are crooked and bent, looking like you wrote them while jumping on a trampoline. With much practice though, you start to connect those letters into words and then into sentences with “two-finger-spaces” in between. I remember one of the first “stories” I ever wrote in Kindergarten was actually just a drawing of my brother with squiggly wave-like lines underneath it. I loved the story and was proud of it. It was all about my big brother Jimmy. My teacher asked me what is said. Even though no one could read it (since all that was on the page was up and down lines), I knew what it said. I “read” it perfectly and already knew I wanted to write again…and again.Read More

How To Find Your Creative Mind

September 2, 2014 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 39 Comments

As I sit here in Kogan Plaza, in DC’s 95°F August weather, on a Sunday afternoon, enjoying the quiet, the water fountain, I just allow myself to think and write this. A stream of conscious, but “they” say doing so is the best way to channel and find your creative mind. Just think, just write, no distractions and no editing.

As a blogger, a student, and a young enterprising woman, having a creative mind is essential. Ideas need to flow and come frequently. I keep a Google Doc of post and recipe ideas, but sometimes I like to just skip all that and find my creative ideas like this, by writing. It’s comforting. Pen and paper, no technology or speaking. Just me and my thoughts, translated into script. This is when I can really drift deep and truly find my creativity on a deeper level. It’s hard to start sometimes, but once I get going it becomes harder to stop. To me cooking and yoga are creative outlets, but they are physical and work on a different level. Writing is a more perceptual form, but one that works just as well, if not more. It also becomes a therapy (just like cooking and yoga), but has a different calming effect.

It takes the loneliness out by flooding the mind with creativity; a creative release of emotion, feeling, and thought. For some reason, I don’t do this often enough, but when I do, I feel so good afterward, so cleansed, free, new. Sometimes we forget to just sit down with no distractions, grab a piece of paper (I’m writing this on the back of one of many GW campus maps I have with me), and just let ourselves release our thoughts quietly on paper. Making them real, making them come alive to spark something new, creative, fresh. Something that can morph into a blog post, a letter, a poem, a song, a recipe, a new invention, and best of all, a creative therapy. A therapy for the soul. To calm down, to take in, and then shoot out all it has been holding onto. You might be surprised by what comes out.Read More

It’s Okay To Cry During Yoga

November 12, 2013 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 75 Comments

“Straighten you arms and push up into Cobra. Turn your neck to the left and look out over your shoulder.” And that is when I get a lump in my throat and my breath hitches. My whole body is feeling intense pressures and stretches. My mind becomes flooded with thoughts, feelings, and really just “static”. I am not sure what it is, but it makes me feel like I am about to explode. But all of this isn’t in a bad way. Everything is coming to the surface, in my body and my mind. When I release back down to the floor, before switching and turning my neck to the right side, my eyes well up with that salty liquid we call tears and one slowly drips down my face. In that moment I feel a release, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Practicing yoga allows you to find that mind-body connection. It forces you to be present right then and there, on your mat, and to focus inward on what you are feeling at that very moment. The movements you flow, push, bend, and stretch your body through, awaken all those nerves and sensory feelings within your body. It increases your blood flow and energizes every corner (even your toes). But it also awakens every part of your brain. Don’t think you are going to go into a yoga practice for a quick workout and one goal in mind, to just sweat. That is not going to happen. Your body is going to connect with your brain and make you feel things you may not have even known were there, lurking in those back corners of the mind.

This is when all those thoughts, feelings, and emotions come flooding up to the surface and seem to gather all together right in your center. That exact moment is when I feel just pressure and all the intense feeling ready to blow, but I can’t pin point exactly one thought or feeling. This will usually happen in a pose that you hold and really allow your body to feel. And then when you release from that pose, your emotions release with it. The physical and emotional are connected spirits within you.

When you cry during yoga, it is just the physical representation of what is going on inside the body. The tears build up under all that pressure and then flow from your eyes as everything releases. It is cleansing. It is purifying. It is invigorating.

That is why it is okay to cry during yoga! It may not happen every practice, but I find it happens to me when I have had a pretty tough week or something significant happened. That is why yoga is so healing and restorative. It is not just a workout. It can act as a “therapy” session as well. The best part is that no one needs to know what those thoughts and feelings are inside you. You don’t have to speak them out load to the world. But you can bring them out during your practice, through the asanas, and through that emotional release you are bound to feel.

Allowing yourself to go there and fully commit to your practice will only make you stronger. You will step off your mat feeling refreshed inside and out. You will feel confident with yourself and emit a glowing aura of love, strength, and power.

Yoga is for everyone. Yoga is not only a physical practice, but a lifestyle. You are fully committing and giving yourself permission to actually find your inner peace. Your inner light. No one is saying it will be easy. You may be scared of the feelings and emotions that come up, of the moments that you become vulnerable enough to cry, to release. But that is why yoga is a lifestyle. These things don’t happen in a day or in one practice, they happen over time, when you commit and allow your practice to take you to the far reaches of you mind and soul. The places we don’t always want to feel or see. But discovering these places leaves us with a purer sense of self. We can find love, confidence, compassion, strength, acceptance, and peace.

Now take a moment and decide if you want to embark on a journey that will require you to let go, to accept, to release. If you do, then you may what to come and step on to the mat. Bring all you stress, worries, insecurities, anger, happiness, sorrows, burdens, everything. Bring it all and then release it. Release it and feel what your body truly is. A beautiful creation, a powerhouse of love, an extraordinary work of art that should be loved and cared for. Release it and feel what is truly inside you mind, your thoughts. Those feelings are real, accept them, and acknowledge them. Break down those fears, accept the past, appreciate the wonders, and brush away the guilt, the shame. Forgive. Release.