Better. Less. Finding Magic in the Mundane.
What brings you to yoga?
Why do you continue practicing? Is it about getting a work-out? Is it about relaxation? Is it about an alternate physical activity because of injury? Is it about gaining flexibility?
Thinking about our purpose with our yoga practice can help us define the experience we crave. Slowing our practice and embracing the parameters of what our practice already contains is in essence appreciating this journey. Meeting ourselves at face-value and exploring the beauty within this space.
Fast-paced yoga practices as any active physical exercise can bring fluidity, flexibility and strength to our stressed body as well as lower stress. However, slow yoga, through intentional poses and passive exercises, serves up a larger dose of long-term relief to specifically counter our daily activities. In other words, we can swim, walk, jog and do cross-fit (and we should do the cardio), but without a complement to specifically address our alignment, we will continue suffering pain in the neck, stress in the shoulders, uncomfortable stretching across the mid-back and a weak and painful lower back.
In sum, the chair sucks the flexibility from our body. Slow yoga and passive exercises correct our alignment, build our flexibility, increase our good moods, and help rid our body of aches and pains by alternating work and deep relaxation.
Slowing down the practice for love of the experience can provide some substantial
benefits:
1. Moving slower through a yoga practice builds more strength than moving quickly.
Muscles have to work harder to control movements of transitions and to hold the postures. Movement is therefore more intentional and powerful and contributes to avoiding injuries during transitions. We experience the movement towards the final posture rather than forcing or pushing into it.
2. Slower yoga strengthens bones by holding postures, allowing the body to “find” the alignment and nourishing bones by pushing the muscles to the bones.
3. Slow yoga focuses the mind. Senses become sharper and we begin witnessing sensations in the nervous system. We feel not only the physical effects of the practice but also realize on a more subtle level, how much our mind and mood is affected by how our body feels.
As our relationship with our partner, our relationship with our practice changes over time. In function of our body, our desires, experiences and even trends and fads, we look for stimulation in different places. What if the stimulation you seek is already within? What if it can be released by embracing the stillness in and between the poses? What will you discover there?