Yogi Archives - Strength and Sunshine

Power Monday #69 Snow, Yoga, And Clarity

March 2, 2015 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 48 Comments

Have you ever noticed how just before, most of the time during, and especially after a snow fall, the world just seem much more quiet and at peace? It’s kinda the same way with a yoga practice. Everything is all hustle and bustle before you step on the mat. Then you take a few moments to center and ground yourself. Everything turns quiet and you take some deep breaths. Then you begin your flow. At times there may be a lot of noise and your mind and body may be going crazy with sensations, but for the most part, the flowing sequences are clam and lovely. Very peaceful as the snow falls. Then things wind down and the world becomes still as you lie in savasana. Just like the snow. everything is quiet, freshly laid anew and untainted by outside noise. You take some more deep breaths and lose yourself in the calm, peaceful stillness.

Nothing is yet disturbed as you lay there with a peaceful mind, a depleted, but fresh body, and a still mind. The snow lays there quiet, creating a beautiful serene landscape of glittering untainted beauty. It’s so quiet. You can finally breath. With the laying of a new snow and the finishing of a practice, all the previous noise and chaos is hidden and no longer the glaring ugliness we may find it to be. It gives us a fresh new perspective and the rational calm mind we need to move forward.

With this bright new clarity that comes with the snow fall and the yoga practice, we are able to see things in a new way. It’s literally a whole new world. During the snow fall, as with during the practice, things change. The end result will not be the same as what was started with or was there before. Have you ever simply watched the snow fall outside your window? It’s so peaceful, chaotic, and surely cold, but beautiful non-the-less. The same with a yoga practice. It’s peaceful, beautiful, but also very involved, strong, and a tad chaotic.Read More

My Yoga Is Not Your Yoga

February 10, 2015 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 97 Comments

This is why I don’t think yoga at a studio will ever work for me (at least my own practice). I would love to teach of course and share my love for the art one day, but my own practice is solely my own and can’t be done in a class setting. I think I always knew this, even before I took my first studio class back in September. It felt like I was back in dance class (my long 13 year career of competitive dancing). The setting was something I “knew”, but it gave me that same vibe. That vibe of competitiveness and wanting to “show-off”. Not very yoga-like. This was an easier level class too (the only would I could find) so I had it in my head right off the bat that I would be too advanced.

I modified and practiced harder poses and always took the deeper variation. But I left feeling so unfulfilled. I focused too much on showing off my skill and lost that part of the practice I love. The feeling and true release. I knew then, that I would not be back. I would be back, however, to my own perfectly crafted home practice.

Thus, I’ve come to the conclusion that my yoga is not your yoga. Nor is your yoga her yoga or his yoga. Each yogi is different. (Yes, if you practice yoga, even once a week, you are a yogi). Yoga is such an individual practice. Just like each and every human on this earth is different, each and every practice is different, and that’s the way it should be.Read More

Why This Yogi Loves Inversions…And You Should Too!

January 19, 2015 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 71 Comments

There is something so relaxing about being upside down. So calming, unwinding, and tranquilizing. Believe it or not, but I enjoy taking savasana while in forearm stand or scorpion. I could rest in these inversions all day. Being upside down lets my mind zone out and allows me to just focus on my breathing.

I always start my practice with a forearm series against the wall to warm-up, then I lose the wall and move on to a handstand series and another forearm series. Maybe this is a yoga sin, to start a practice with moving the body in such a way, but it really gets me ready and focused for a beautiful practice. Not only do I practice handstands and forearm stands, but I have an undieing love for all backbends (hey wheel!), shoulder stand, half-moon, etc. I love them all (did you know forward bends are even inversions?). They are so freeing and show me the full potential of my strong and beautiful body.

I’ve always loved these kind of movements. When I was a little girl, you could always find me in the living room flipping around in handstands, bridges, cartwheels, and my ever-so persistent practice of trying to walk on my hands. (I was a yogi at heart and I just never knew it then!) I have vivid memories of waking up on Sunday mornings, going downstairs to practice walking on my hands and flipping onto the couch, all while waiting for my dad to come back with out traditional weekend breakfast of bagels and donuts! Haha!Read More

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 #61 Something Only Yoga Can Teach You

September 29, 2014 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 40 Comments

Yoga is an astonishing act. It’s in its own category of art and physical movement. Blending together the imagined, the dreamed, the impossible, and the real. It is much more an act of release and emotion than anything else. The beauty of the body and mind expressed on the canvas that is the yoga mat. Flowing, pushing, struggling, but expressing and conquering all that we have within us.

Yoga has healed me, has taught me, has shaped and changed who I am. I needed something to take the place of the graceful body movement I had been so accustomed to for years, but would no longer have. I needed something to show me the strength, mentally and physically, that I did truly hold. I needed to find the confidence I once had and a way to combat the chaos in my head. Yoga provided that and still grants me those powers. It allows me to show myself the strength I have. The poses and asanas I can hold and flow through, for minutes, for hours, demonstrate that. This strength brings me through each practice, but extends past those designated times and into my life.

Yoga is my time, my private space, my moment in the day to acknowledge what is really happening inside. What am I feeling and why am I feeling this way. I can practice angry, sad, stressed, happy, tired. I can take my emotions out and use them in my practice. Ultimately I am left healed if I’m hurting, relived if I’m stressed, or simple over joyed more than I had been before I started.Read More