Stateside Quarantine and Your Yoga
It is day 14 stateside (AKA our last day of quarantine)! After spending 2 years in Spain, we've found our way back to both a different world and a different life then the one we left. Like all things unfamiliar, this comes with both fear and discomfort and a sense of curiosity and possibility.
What has been helpful for me first and foremost is to BREATH.
And to remember that uncertainty can be scary and in the midst of the stress response my first line of defense is to pay attention to my breath and take long slow exhales. The second thing I've been working with is reframing. We hear and read a lot about returning to normal or the “new normal”. What has been essential for building a curiosity and possibility mindset has been to throw out the word normal. Instead, I’m moving through the day with a guiding question: How can I respond to this situation in a way that will help me feel safe and grounded while holding a kind of - wow, this is interesting, I haven’t experienced this before - perspective?
Remember that our primitive brain likes the familiar and our higher level brain likes problem solving and creativity, so today more than ever, we need to feed both.
First, offer your brain stem and your limbic system a dose of safety by encouraging a long slow exhale while noticing all of the ways that you are in fact safe right now. Once you feel calm and grounded, give your prefrontal cortex an opportunity to get creative. Given what you are dealing with, what new solutions are available to you and which ones might help things flow with more ease?
Pandemic or no pandemic, we all have daily rituals and practices that are essential to our well being. For me, that’s time in nature, pranayama, meditation, and yoga (in no particular order), and of course teaching. I’ve missed it a lot this last month and a half and I’ve had some time to reflect on how I might be of service in the months to come. With the help of both my primitive and higher level brain, I’ve come up with a grounding and creative solution: Your Yoga: a virtual community.
Like many of you I’m feeling more comfortable practicing at home right now AND I have a hard time being disciplined when I don’t have a community to hold me accountable.
With that in mind, I’ve created Your Yoga, a personalized online membership focused on responding to your individual needs and the needs of the community. While I miss the spaces created at our favorite yoga studios as much as you do, what I’ve found this year is that the same intimacy, support and nourishment can be found when we see each other’s faces and hear one another’s voices online. That’s why this membership will be infused with conversation, requests for feedback and real time responses to your wants and needs.
I’ll be teaching 4 classes a week starting next Monday and I hope you’ll join me. For more information or to subscribe, click here. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.
As always, I love hearing from you. I’d love to know what’s keeping you both sane and curiously engaged these days!
Wishing you a little extra ease today and sending much love,
Rachel
P.S. Save the date for Your Brain on Mindfulness starting September 28. Your Yoga members will get a discount on all online courses.