If you’re in need of an energy boost, ujjayi pranayama—otherwise known as victorious breath—can help uplift your mood and leave you feeling revitalize. It’s a type of breath technique that naturally stimulates and heats your body, so it’s especially ideal for keeping warm in cold weather.
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Monday Meditation: The Ebb and Flow of Emotions
Confronting our emotions is no easy task. In fact, most of us choose to run away or shut our feelings out. However, resisting our emotions can leave us feeling even more stressed and fatigued.
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What are Yoga Blocks For?
Whether you have just started doing yoga, are looking to advance into certain postures, or just want to meditate more regularly, having yoga blocks at hand can be very helpful and enriching in your asana and meditation practice.
But what exactly are yoga blocks for? There are actually a number of ways to use them. Here’s how you can use your yoga blocks:
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Monday Meditation: Grow Roots Like a Tree
Visualizing and focusing on a specific image during meditation can help enhance your focus, reduce anxiety, and improve your mood levels. Certain images are especially effective in grounding the self and bringing about feelings of calm.
Take the image of a tree, for example. A tree represents grounding but growth. It is fully rooted to the earth yet continues to grow skyward. Below is a meditation to help you keep grounded and calm but feel expansive and full of possibilities.
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Monday Meditation: A Mind Like the Sky
Some days, the mind feels especially loud, restless, and volatile. This can leave us feeling upset and overwhelmed. However, meditation can help calm and quiet the thoughts, and reveal the true nature of the mind.
Here’s a meditation that you can do, to experience a mind like the sky.
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Monday Meditation: A Self Forgiveness Meditation Script
Forgiving oneself can be more difficult than forgiving others. However, remember that forgiveness is a conscious decision that one must make each day. It isn’t something you simply achieve in a single moment—it requires practice and effort, as well as the willingness to let go.
To practice forgiveness, then, is a way to gradually release yourself from grief and cultivate self-love. Below is a self forgiveness meditation script that you may find helpful.
Begin seated or lying down. You may sit down comfortably on a chair or cushion. You may also lie down on your back on your bed or yoga mat. Scan the body from the tips of your toes all the way to the crown of your head. Feel the rhythm and cadence of your breath. Then when you are ready to begin your meditation, begin to observe your emotions.
Notice any emotions and emotional barriers are rooted within you, from having carried grief, pain, and all the other hurts that come with struggling with self forgiveness.
Observe the physical sensations that come with these emotions. Do you feel heavy and weighed down? Is there a knot in your chest? There is no need to judge or resist these emotions and sensations. Simply observe them, and allow them to flow through you.
As you continue to be aware of and pay attention to your emotions, make the intention to let everything go—from the sorrowful experiences that you’ve had in the past, to the pain that you carry with you now. Let your body be soft and your breath be gentle, as you tell yourself: I forgive myself for all the ways I have hurt myself and others. I invite forgiveness into my heart. I forgive myself.
Continue to repeat this phrase to yourself, for as long as you desire. Most importantly, be patient. If you still feel angry or hurt even when the meditation is over, tell yourself that forgiveness is a process as much as meditation is a practice.
When you feel that your meditation is over, come back into your body and breath. Wiggle the fingers and the toes, and allow gentle movement to ground you back to the present moment. Open the eyes, and be grateful for the time and space that you’ve given yourself.
