Ah, fall.
so pretty. So scary. So hard.
A well designed practice moves with the seasons and the seasons of our lives. Our needs change, and different techniques become more effective at different times. Fall, with its jarring chaotic schedule, its rapidly shortening daylight and cold, its different foods and social behaviors, the holy days, is always a psychologically challenging time. It tends toward the anxious, fearful, burned out but anxious. For those with a more depressive bent, it’s downright ominous.
Because the world has been so out of kilter and careening toward grief and violence and insult for so many years, and because these things aren’t going away any time soon, the qualities of autumn are even more pronounced.
The biggest thing I can suggest is cultivating a compassionate, engaged, listening awareness of your body mind. For many, a morning practice is impossible during the fall (hello, capitalism). But we suddenly have hours of dark evening: can you switch to something soothing in the afternoon or before bed? Here’s a truth. There are such a spectrum of techniques and approaches. Often, the hardest one to ‘make yourself’ do will have the biggest impact. But you have to balance that realistically: if you won’t really do it consistently, then it doesn’t have an impact at all. Find something you can do. Do a lot of it.
Don’t lose touch with yourself, your innermost, your soul. Focus on prayerful, truth holding, stabilizing and heartful practices.
I start making soups and roasting a chicken most weekends (slow food + nesting. I get several simple meals out of the chicken and several pints of stock which I use to make rice, veggies, soups for the next week). I lube up my nose with nasya oil before I go outside and before bed. I need morning sunlight, but I am careful to cover my head and neck. I need warm hands and feet.
And my āsana practices take on two truths: 1) I need the muscle, heartbeat, and enthusiasm that exercise brings my mental health starting in the fall and carrying on until spring. In the summer and the edges, I don’t have to worry about it. But from here on, I intentionally ‘exercise’ at least twice a week, to the point of sweating. 2) I go for super savasana and a restorative pose to close almost every āsana practice. Optionally, find a restorative teacher to really learn some set ups for yourself. Or yoga Nidra. Or one of the langhana practices I provide. Our parasympathetic nervous system tends to need a boost.
A third: we need and we deserve love. We need to be heard, mirrored, supported. I recommend therapy wholeheartedly. Or support groups. And the subtle power of having a study group or yoga cohort is magic. You don’t notice how powerful it is until you don’t have it. Please: have it.
Bio-psycho-social balancing:
Letting go of control
60 minute exploration. One of the first things yogis learn is ujjayi or ‘ocean breath’, that control of the breath with the throat.
But once human beings realize they can control something, they tend to do it ALL THE TIME. It has become a Samskara. This is fine, sometimes. Everything is fine sometimes. But when we are valving our breath with our throat whenever we feel stressed, or are looking for ease, we are in the end controlling our emotions.
What is it like to let go of that control mechanism?
More interestingly, what is it like to let go in other places in your life? Where are you trying to control things you don’t have to?
Evening Exhale
a 50 minute, low to the ground, langhana practice to facilitate end of day rest. This is really only four postures (bridge, reclined butterfly, reclining extended leg, and a somatic few rolls) and a guided pranayama leading to 6.x.12.x.
Stable inside
1 hour 40 minute practice designed to show you some fall tricks: exhale into backbends, use the support of exhale and feet to find novelty in twists, balance a stability inside yourself with the space inside yourself that allows.
I’ll show you several propped variations of camel ustrasana. Everything else is fairly strait forward. This is an example of how breath focused asana can change our experience, and get to deep places inside ourselves.
I suggest you give it a try once as a tutorial, and then apply what is most profound or helpful to your autumn practices.
Most importantly, be strong as we go into the hard things. And rest when you can rest.
Balance Practices
Balance - in both the physical and more cogintive/emotive senses - is a central theme of yogic practice. Autumn tends to be a time when our balance is disturbed. Practicing balancing postures invokes quite a bit of leg strength, which directs Vata energy and gives it some purpose. It also works like a magnet for our mind. The point is not to balance perfectly - impossible - but to explore and play.
Gayatri practice with saṇkalpa
Less instruction, more just putting it all together for those folks who have been learning the components of sandhyavandanam. Anyone can do this, just know that I cue shoulder stand, head stand etc without explicitly teaching them.
omkara, vyahritis, Gayatri śiras as both ajapa and japa are offered, as is a closing with Kayena Vaca.
Anatomy explorations:
anatomy focus: hand to back of the heart
An hour long exploration of how we can connect the hand to the spine, which is a pretty stabilizing approach to anything bearing weight on the hands. We can access the deep center of us even as we do things like arm balances. This is a very touch and feel and look workshop.
psoas workshop
This is several years old, and I’d probably change some things. But here’s to recycling old content.
90 minute workshop with a number of images and talk at front end, movement and exploration follow. There is palpation (touching muscle with your own fingers), lots of low lunges (blanket under the knees, or flip on your back to do the same shape), and I throw in some conventional plank/chatturanga/down dog to keep nervous systems okay. Point being, this is workshopy: explore, rather than judging yourself.
Not appropriate for pregnancy.