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31 Dec
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31 Dec

Restorative Yoga

 

Restorative Yoga Therapy: The Yapana Way to Self-Care And Well-Being

Q & A with Author Leeann Carey

 

 

The title of your book is Restorative Yoga Therapy. What is the difference between restorative yoga and restorative yoga therapy?  

 

The difference between restorative yoga and restorative yoga therapy is simple: Restorative yoga is a wonderful practice with a goal of using supported poses to elicit a deep body/mind relaxation. Restorative yoga therapy uses supported poses to elicit a deep body/mind relaxation and is tailored to meet unique needs such as injuries and common ailments. Each class is carefully sequenced to address those needs within the framework of a theme-based practice.

 

The subtitle is The Yapana Way to Self-Care and Well-Being.  What is the Yapana Way?

 

The Yapana Way is a teaching style developed over years of studies with master teachers and my own personal practice. A complete Yapana yoga class includes movements in all planes, DOING (dynamic) poses, BEING (passive) poses, held for an extended period of time with the support of yoga props. The BEING poses makes up the restorative yoga therapy portion of the practice. 

 

More importantly, a Yapana Way practice meets students where they are. It is the way for self-reflection, change and ultimately, acceptance.

 

How would you respond to someone who says they aren’t flexible enough to practice yoga?

 

You don’t need to be flexible to practice yoga. If you can breathe, you can practice yoga. This is particularly true with restorative yoga therapy. Every single pose can be smartly adapted to meet hyper-flexibility, rigidity and a host of other needs. Yoga props are strategically placed to bring the pose to the student as opposed to forcing the student into a predetermined shape. Restorative yoga therapy is a perfect introduction into a yoga practice due to its gentle approach. All that is required is interest.

 

In a culture where sweat is valued over mindfulness, what would you say to someone who thinks restorative yoga therapy does little to improve one’s health?

 

Stress negatively impacts our well-being. According to the Huffington Post, a recent article in Popular Science reported that 30 percent of U.S. adults say stress affects their physical health and 33 percent say it has an impact on their mental health. On the other hand, Columbia University researchers found that those who sat in expansive positions with their arms and legs spread out for two minutes saw lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, than those in more tighter poses, according to Popular Science.

 

An intelligent restorative yoga therapy practice is designed to expand the bodies habitual closed or compressed position (historic poor postural habits whether sitting or standing) in supported yoga poses. One can experience an outer opening, inner calm and overall tranquil feeling. With the proper support, students can relax into the pose’s shape for a minimum of two minutes.

 

Living in the 21st century is crowded with responsibilities, commitments and complications. A restorative yoga therapy practice is an excellent healthy option for coping, managing and decreasing stress levels in order to live a fuller and more joyful life.

 

 

The style of yoga you write about uses a lot of props. Why?

 

Yoga props help bring the pose to the student. Bringing the pose to the student prevents overreaching physically and mentally. It fosters balance and acceptance. And it allows for the student to spend longer than five or so breaths in a pose. The time is used for self-reflection into what’s happening now and is followed by an adjustment if needed. Sometimes the nature of a pose only requires presence and breathing. Each person’s experience is different because everyone’s needs are different. But this I know for sure: When the pose is strategically propped whether it is to awaken or soothe an area, the props are instrumental in extending the length of time possible in each pose. A little more time in each pose means a little more time to practice skills of all kinds.

 

What if someone doesn’t want to invest in the expense of yoga props — can they still practice this style?

 

It is not necessary to invest in the expense of yoga props in order to practice this style. You can typically find items around your house or office that will do the trick. You can also make your own props. My husband bought wood from the local hardware store and made all of my wooden blocks and dowels to my specifications. We saved hundreds of dollars. If you’re handy with a sewing machine, you can make your own yoga belts, pillows and even bolsters. Standard prop measurements are listed in the book as well as suggestions for other things you can use for yoga props.

 

If someone only had time to do a 3 poses from the book, which ones would you recommend and why?

 

Matysyasana (Fish Pose):  Backbends are so important for keeping the spine supple. Many of us spend so much time with forward shoulders, sunken chests and rounded mid-backs. As a result, our back, shoulders and neck become stiff and rigid. This is the go-to pose that helps to reverse those effects. Backbends open the chest, thereby widening the diaphragmatic band just underneath the chest. This promotes better access to the breath and is a good pose to practice Three-Part Breathing, a simple breathing technique that can settle the mind and support a meditative experience used to cope with stress.

 

Parivrtta Pavanmuktasana (Revolved Knee Squeeze Pose)

Many of us spend most of our time during the day bent over and rarely get the chance to safely rotate our spine. Twists are a great way to unwind tension built throughout the day while opening the shoulders, chest and hips. There are prone twists and supine twists. The prone twists are a bit quieter on the nervous system than the prone ones. Although I like twists of all kinds, the prone twists by nature are ones you can really melt into. They require less rotation of the spine than the supine ones and when well-supported, feel absolutely divine. People have been known to drool on their bolster. It’s true!

 

Viparita Karani (Legs Up The Wall Pose)

This pose can be practiced with or without support underneath the pelvis. Either way, I recommend practicing it every day; I do. Think of the saying, “take a load off your feet”. That’s exactly what this pose does. It turns the body’s typical standing or sitting position upside down and draws the fluids from the legs into the lower abdomen. This is a perfect panacea for those that spend long hours of sitting or standing, experience leg swelling, or suffer from an achy lower back. It’s also a great pose to practice after airplane travel. You’re guaranteed to feel refreshed and renewed afterward.

 

What do you think the most common misconception people have about yoga is�and what is the actual truth? 

 

I think the current misconception about yoga is that it is a workout. Hatha Yoga or asanas (poses) seems to be the most popular branch of yoga in the U.S. It is a wonderful thing that a reported 21 million Americans are practicing yoga. However, like all things that have grown exponentially, it has been watered down from its original purpose.

 

These days, many practitioners use the poses solely as exercise – to sweat, get a better butt, or lose weight. While none of these reasons are negative, yoga’s roots go much deeper. And if acknowledged, can be stepping stones to deeply taking charge of our self-care and well-being. However, many people walk into the doors of yoga due to a desire for a physical experience. Over time, they may come to find other benefits and that’s a good thing.

 

The truth is, yoga is a practice, not a workout. It was designed to address way more than our physical needs. A yoga practice can tone the physical body, but it also tunes-up the mental body and delivers the skills that are needed to cope with the daily stressors we all face. The real workout is what happens when we step off the mat. The kind of mind we bring to our time on the mat is a direct pointer to the kind of mind we bring into the world.

 

Those that think yoga is about getting the best workout they can, miss yoga’s intention: To learn skills that develop presence and self-acceptance throughout all aspects of life. That’s why it makes no difference whether you are sweating in dynamic poses or relaxing in passive ones. The opportunity for meeting your thoughts and feelings whether you are in “doing” or “being” mode is always there. Now. And now.

 

Tell us about your yoga journey. How/when did you first start practicing and what inspired you to want to go on to teach?   

 

There are two experiences that started me on my yoga journey. In the late 70’s while I was visiting my brother in college, I went for a walk and passed a house with a sign in front that read: FREE Sunday Dinner. It was Sunday and I was hungry, so I walked into the open front door. Everyone was dressed the same and playing instruments and singing the same words over and over again. Afterward, they welcomed me and gave me a bowl and utensils and told me to stand in line to get fed. Everyone seemed genuinely nice and happy to have me at their dinner table.  I never thought much about it until a year or so later when I was dating a guy who got up early each morning to “breathe”. He was a cyclist and claimed it helped him to focus and stay calm in the face of his challenging rides. He taught me how to manage my breath. From then on, I had a dedicated daily pranayama practice before I ever struck a pose. It made my head feel so clear — it was undeniable and indescribable. Those two experiences started me on my journey. Once I let yoga in I never looked back.  

 

Circumstances came before inspiration. I was attending classes regularly and one day my teacher didn’t show up to teach the class. I was encouraged by other students to “lead” the class. Begrudgingly, I did. Although it was not a positive experience for me (I trembled when demonstrating the poses and stumbled over my words), others continued to ask me to share with them what had transformed my life. Years later, co-workers from the company we all worked for said to me, “clearly, you should not be working for this company.” So, I quit and studied to become an official yoga instructor so someone could hire me to teach them. Witnessing the countless transformation in others inspired me to continue to share the principles and practice with others.

 

Restorative Yoga Therapy by Leeann Carey

June 15, 2015 • Yoga/Health & Wellness • Trade Pback & eBook

224 pages w/ B&W illustrations • Price: $17.95 • ISBN 978-1-60868-359-8 

 

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31 Dec

WHATEVER YOU THINK OR FEEL, THE UNIVERSE SAYS YES

An Excerpt from Sidewalk Oracles by Robert Moss

Whatever you think or feel, the universe says yes. Perhaps you have noticed this. Yes, we are talking about the law of attraction. It is indeed an ancient law, never a secret to those who live consciously. “All things which are similar and therefore connected, are drawn to each other’s power,” according to the medieval magus Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim. It is a rule of reality that we attract or repel different things according to the emotions, the attitudes, the feelings, the agendas that we carry.

Before you walk into a room or turn a corner, your attitude is there already. It is engaged in creating the situation you are about to encounter. Whether you are remotely conscious of this or not, you are constantly setting yourself up for what the world is going to give you. If you go about your day filled with doom and gloom, the world will give you plenty of reasons to support that attitude. You’ll start looking like that cartoon character who goes about with a personal black cloud over his head that rains only on his parade. Conversely, if your attitude is bright and open to happy surprises, you may be rewarded by a bright day, even when the sky is leaden overhead, and by surprisingly happy encounters.

Through energetic magnetism, we attract or repel people, events, and even physical circumstances according to the attitudes we embody. This process begins before we speak or act because thoughts and feelings are already actions and our attitudes are out there ahead of us. This requires us to do a regular attitude check, asking, What attitude am I carrying? What am I projecting?

It is not sufficient to do this on a head level. We want to check what we are carrying in our body and our energy field. If you go around carrying a repertoire of doom and gloom, you may not say what’s on your mind, but the universe will hear you and support you. Attitude adjustment requires more than reciting the kind of New Age affirmation you see in cute boxes with flowers and sunsets on Facebook. It requires deeper self-examination and self-mobilization.

What are you doing? A woman in one of my workshops told me she hears this question, put by an inner voice, many times a day. Sometimes it rattles her and saps her confidence. But she is grateful for the inner questioner that provokes her to look at herself. It’s a question worth putting to yourself any day. As you do that, remember that thinking and feeling are also doing.

“The passions of the soul work magic.” I borrowed that from a medieval alchemist also beloved by Jung. It conveys something fundamental about our experience of how things manifest in the world around us. High emotions, high passions generate results. When raw energy is loose, it has effects in the world. It can blow things up or bring them together. There is an art in learning to operate when your passions are riding high and to recognize that is a moment when you can make magic. Even when you are in the throes of what people would call negative emotions — rage, anger, pain, grief, even fear — if you can take the force of such emotions and choose to harness and direct them in a certain creative or healing way, you can work wonders, and you can change the world around you.

How? Because there is no impermeable barrier between mind and matter. Jung and Pauli in concert, the great psychologist and the great physicist, came around to the idea that the old medieval phrase applies: unus mundus, “one world.” Psyche and physis, mind and matter, are one reality. They interweave at every level of the universe. They are not separate. As Pauli wrote, “Mind and body could be interpreted as complementary aspects of the same reality.” I think this is fundamental truth, and it becomes part of fundamental life operation when you wake up to it.

The stronger our emotions, the stronger their effects on our psychic and physical environment. And the effects of our emotions may reach much further than we can initially understand. They can generate a convergence of incidents and energies, for good or bad, in ways that change everything in our lives and can affect the lives of many others.

When we think or feel strongly about another person, we will touch that person and affect his or her mind and body — even across great distances — unless that person has found a way to block that transmission. The great French novelist Honoré de Balzac wrote that “ideas are projected as a direct result of the force by which they are conceived and they strike wherever the brain sends them by a mathematical law comparable to that which directs the firing of shells from their mortars.”

Bring in the creative imagination, and it is wonderful how the world can rearrange itself. I heard a beautiful little story about this from a friend in California. She had been consciously building a kind of inner sanctuary, a place of peace and joy where she could take herself anytime in her imagination. She envisioned a lovely place with healing waters, around an oak tree she knows in the natural world. In imagination, she added a swing to the tree, visualizing the ropes fastened to one of its great limbs. She pictured herself rocking happily under the spreading canopy of the oak. She used this image to help her get through a long and sleepless night when she was severely ill.

A week later, feeling much restored, she took a hike to the place of the oak. And found that someone had added a swing, exactly where she had placed it in her imagination.

Scientific experiments have shown the ability of the human mind and emotions to change physical matter: studies by Masaru Emoto have shown that human emotions can change the nature and composition of water, and the Findhorn experiments have taught us that good thoughts positively affect the growth of plants. Conversely, rage or grief can produce disturbing and sometimes terrifying effects in the physical environment.

“We are magnets in an iron globe,” declared Emerson. If we are upbeat and positive, “we have keys to all doors….The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.” Conversely, “A low, hopeless spirit puts out the eyes; skepticism is slow suicide. A philosophy which sees only the worst …dispirits us; the sky shuts down before us.”

Whatever our circumstances, we always have the power to choose our attitude, and that this can change everything.

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Excerpted from Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life ©2015 by Robert Moss. Printed with permission of New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

Robert Moss is the author of Sidewalk Oracles and numerous other books about dreaming, shamanism, and imagination. He is a novelist, poet, and independent scholar, and the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. He leads creative and shamanic adventures all over the world and leads popular online courses in Active Dreaming for The Shift Network. His website is www.mossdreams.com

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31 Dec

Reclaim Your Intuition

By Psychic Medium Bill Philipps

I firmly believe that my ability as a psychic medium is a God-given gift, and that not just anybody can become one simply because he or she wants to. Trust me, I know many people who have tried, and without success. But I do believe all people have some psychic intuition — more than most know they have — that can be cultivated enough to enable them to receive and recognize signs from spirits.

The first step in tapping into that intuition is to set your intention by silently asking the spirits for help when you need it. If you are going through a difficult time and are looking for answers or guidance in a particular situation, you first have to ask for help and for signs. That’s the easy part. The second step, which is more difficult but equally important, is to open your heart and mind to receiving those signs.

Let’s say you are thinking about leaving your job to take one at another company, but you don’t know if you should. Pray about it, then keep your eyes and ears open for the answers. What does that mean? Well, chances are pretty good that a random person is not going to walk up to you after you pray and say, “You need to take that job.” I have told you how the spirits work — they love to play charades — so you know it’s usually not that simple. But if you go out to dinner in the midst of trying to make this decision, and your extremely happy waitress tells you it’s her first day on the job, that could be a sign to you that you need to accept your new job. Or if you are watching someone being interviewed on television who comments that the grass is not always greener on the other side, that could be a sign to stay in your current job.

Your intuition is a spiritual guidance system that you were born with. We all have it, but we often ignore it as we age because we become too concerned about our Earthly selves and duties rather than the spiritual side of our lives. How many times, when we’re trying to make a big decision, does someone remind us to “listen to your gut?” It happens a lot, and it’s something we should do more often, but we forget to do it because we have let our souls succumb to our humanness and fear.

So how can you better connect with your intuitive side? Here are four steps you can try:

1.) Meditate. I don’t know of a better way to connect with your intuition. You can meditate in several ways, such as through silence, with soothing music, or with sounds form nature. Meditation will help you to separate yourself from your earthly worries and to connect more closely with your soul. 

2.) Be more aware of your thoughts in your everyday life so that you can more easily separate them from your intuition. Thinking is a reflex for most people, so much so that it can be difficult to distinguish between what is your intuition and what is your ego, or earthly thoughts. The more we think and ignore what our gut is telling us, the more confused we can become about what to do in a particular situation. Yes, we need to think things through, but don’t let that overshadow your intuition. 

3.) Pray. Set your intention to being more in tune to intuition. Ask God or Spirit for the insight you are seeking. Doing that focuses your energy on what you want to achieve. We’ve all heard the phrase “Ask and you shall receive.” I believe that’s absolutely true. Asking is setting that intention. Receiving is listening to your intuition, which is coming from that higher place.

4.) Pay close attention to how your intuition works for you because it works differently for everyone. Some might feel chills. Others may have more of a gut feeling. And yet others could have a daydream that comes true. What works for one may not work for another. Understand and trust how your intuition works for you and what the strongest way is for you to receive information from Spirit.

Don’t doubt that you have a guidance system within you. You were born with intuition, whether you know it or not. It is up to you, though, to find it. Having that intuition and knowing when it is trying to tell you something can make your life much easier, especially when faced with difficult circumstances.

 # # #

Bill Philipps is the author of Expect the Unexpected and is known for being one of the world’s youngest psychic mediums. He has appeared on the Dr. Phil show and has helped countless individuals deal with the grief of losing loved ones by bringing through validations, evidential information and beautiful messages which heal and bring a sense of peace. Visit him online at http://www.billphilipps.com/.  

Based on the book Expect the Unexpected ©2015 by Bill Philipps. Printed with permission of New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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