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Healthy Activities Yoga

Why oh why?

Usually Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer and … we feel the autumn season approach. This weekend is a time of transition.

Loved British Columbia, Canada:)

Be Like a Tree & Let the Dead Leaves
Drop.

– Rumi

Heatwave? Well, let’s enjoy the last bits of summer as … Autumn is coming, one of my favorite seasons. Going with the idea that this too will pass so staying in the present even more.Balance:)Bridge Over Water…BALANCE and find that focus & then smell some rosesand hug a tree trunk, a biggest one you can find. Love, love, love.We get energized when we are in and with nature.There’s a lovely yoga teacher who offers Yoga in Nature in mid-south Peninsula area. Lorraine Schulze. Go on a hike with her and enjoy some yoga. On my bucket list:)

So… our neighbor up north has this well balanced yogi as their leader but … why, oh, why, here in US … !%#$$$*?

It’s time to do more yoga and then …work towards a change for the better.

Categories
Beautiful Places Healthy Activities Healthy Living

Cool 60 degrees and misty

Weather reports heat alert as high as 107 degrees inland but transported to this foggy misty place via magic (ehh, i.e., driving a car? Gratitude for what’s taken for granted!)

Heat wave? Into the 90’s and 100’s for the inlands from San Francisco-Bay Area? Really? It’s Funny I subbed a class to cover a friend at a hot yoga studio where temperature run into the 100 degrees easily. Super sweaty and stretchy and that feels good. Dripping with sweat … beads of sweat forms on my nose I probably looked a mess, a bit heat haze dizzy and teaching a sweet group from age 9 up to maybe 40’s – Then 87 degrees outdoors… pleasant balmy summer day … then driven to a beach … to walk our foxy Honey.  Anticipating the hot summer beach, we get prepared putting on our sunscreen, put on my straw hat, skipping to shower, still in my soaked with sweat yoga wear, figure it’s going to dry in the sun – off we go.

What’s this?

Chill!
The grey white fog rolled in and visibility is compromised while driving through the fog …can’t see the peripherals too well and the car bumper in the front is in the fuzzy silken threads of white vapor and mist.

It’s a completely different world covered in white haze that iPhone camera cannot capture.
chilly & misty at the surf …

Toes dig into the soft weeet sands – ouuuu – Feels soooo good.  Cooling down from the heat. 


So lucky to live where temperature differential can be 40 degrees within 30 minute drive. Reminded, there’s a choice. There’s freedom. That there’s a change, a shift when we move on.
When we are open and receptive, we can change our surroundings, landscape, the climate… our perspectives. Playing in the waves, cool wind through my sweat tonic-ed hair feels heavenly.  

An affirmation:

So blessed to embody this super Yin Yang day.
I am open and receptive to abundance and beauty.
I invite fluidity in all areas of my life.
I invite the flowing breath to pave the path within, to my source, that higher consciousness.
I rediscover my inborn source of strength and resilience.  
***
May we all be less guarded, defensive, separated and apart.
May we resist the patterned ways of dogmatic thinking and be free and creative.

To be whole.

To find peace within.

***
Reminded of this mantra:

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

(repeat & repeat)
Namaste:)

Categories
Healthy Activities Healthy Living Yoga

Sweat Once a Day!

from Mayo Clinic Site

Words from one of the Yoga Therapy Module last year – in the Ayurveda section.
Sometimes living in a very mild climate (California has mild climate … lovely mild Mediterranean climate envied world over), our sweat glands are not stimulated enough. Spoiled in such ideal climate, when we travel to places like Singapore, Japan, other tropical hot places of the world with sweltering temperatures with high humidity, we wither away in exhaustion.(that was me, lol) There, we cannot live without an AC and …still, we simply … wilt because our sweat glands are out of shape. To prevent that and for general day-to-day health, based on Aryuvedic health prescription, we are well served when we engage in an activity that allows us to perspire at least once a day … (I can explain this in posts to follow – checking my notes:) There is a belief that heating the body flushes out the toxins and some even believe that the heat can prevent or reverse cancer and other serious illnesses from lodging in ourselves. Provided that one is prudent to avoid heat strokes with enough hydration and intake of electrolysis, heat that causes us to perspire can be beneficial and history is a testimony to this belief prevalent in many cultures such as in sweat lodges in Native Indian cultures; Russian Banya; Finnish Sauna, Japanese Sento(and the sweltering summers!), Turkish Hammam …

So off I go – a chilly day for the Bay Area to turn on my inner heat by doing some yoga. Get some heat or turn on the natural furnace we have within:) Feel the beads of perspiration on your skin … then just relax and chill:) As Judith Lasater’s book title would say “Living Your Yoga”!