Yoga, training and health inspiration for you

We are not in control. We are governed by reaction and fluctuation. By our own patterns, habits and programming. Can you really say that you are light, free and can you communicate with yourself and others in a way that leave you inspired and motivated? Happy even? If yes, you have got it. If no, then you don't ride the waves of prana. But you could! Here, in this months concluding fourth part on the theme of breathing I'll tell you more.

Go to part one, part two and part three in this series about breathing to learn even more.

Learn to listen to your breath

When prana is spread evenly throughout the cellular body, compassion and equanimity arise and the fluctuations of the mind ceases. This phenomenon can be achieved by cultivating the art of listening intentionally to your breath. To let go of the need to manoever and control the breath. Pranayama and meditation are acts of letting go. With these practices you learn how to let go of psychological blockages and attachments. They will over time help you to free yourself from who you think you are and get you in touch with the essence of who you really are. 


Really, the only thing that stands in between the percieved y o u and the real y o u is the identification of yourself. What you can and can't do. Our emotional dams block the flow of prana. This disruption creates an increased tension in your body, mind and spirit that directs itself as pain, stress, anxiety, anger and frustration as well as weakness in the body due to poor circulation and breathing musculature. When you see yourself as separate from everything conflict with everything often arise. There is little peace and relaxation in that mode, mostly wear and tear. Fight and flight. 


During pranayama we literally drink litres of vitality and immunity. We supercharge the blood with extra oxygen. When we retain the breath, we literally inject more oxygen into the bloodstream.

Practicing pranayama is tenacious. Few people keep at it. Maybe for a few weeks, then something more ”fun” and ”important” takes over. Some people just want the quick fix and others notice the rapid changes and that can be confusing and some get afraid of the gained insight and strength. Pranayama practice is subtle and affect us at the root of mental and physical exictense. That is why we need it daily; since it is delicate and powerful. It will change you towards your optimal potential.

Be in your body
I cannot emphasize enough that one needs to be in the body in order to succeed with pranayama. To stay safe you should not overestimate your vitaly and stamina. Your mind might want to achieve a lot. But this is a powerful practice and one needs to cultivate a sensitivity towards hearing the bodys signals since it tells you the state of your inner organs and systems. Therefore a solid asana practice (or martial arts, pilates, tai chi or qigong is great as well) is important.

First, asanas help to revitalise our limbs, organs and nervous systems. Then they open up our vital force that lies dormant in our pranic sheath. Asana and breathing in asana help purify the channels, which if clogged, can overwhelm the system and practitioner. So if your heartbeart races, you experience shortage of breath, increase itch, powerful headaches, pressure in the head, eyes or ears; your body tells you that it cannot release the pressure inside its systems due to toxins, tensions, weakness and/or stress.

Pranayama is the next step after you can sit still. Think about it. You might be able to do advanced asanas, run and move a lot but have a problems sitting still. Sitting still can be hard. And that is where you can really strenghten the mind, brain and nervous system. When the body can circulate itself for 30 minutes and leave the power of awareness over to you to cultivate, train and practice what governs all of you; the BREATH.

The practice of pranayama takes us beyond our skeletal, muscular and circulatory systems, even beyond the nervous and endocrine systems. In its essence, this practice aims to attain mastery over the life force itself. And in that pursuit, your body heals, your mind gets strong and focused and your spirit free and happy. You are on you way to your strongest and truest you.

• For further reading go to my YINYOGA book (Skyhorse Publishing)

• Take part of my new 10 weeks course here on Yogobe - The Art of Breathing

Videos for your breath practice

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Breath carries everything. Breath is a life force; we begin our life with a breath and we end it with a breath. The breath, body, and mind all work together. If one of these is agitated, the others will follow. If one is calmed, the others will follow. From the breath we receive oxygen, which nourishes the blood, organs, and cells, and Prana — life force — travels on oxygen. Join this second part in our month of breathing!

Body, mind and spirit are one

You can read part one in this series about breathing here.

The main objective of hatha yoga (physical yoga), is to create an absolute harmony of the interacting activities and processes of energy, mind and physical body. In hathayoga ha represents prana, the vital force, and tha represents mind, the mental energy. Therefore hathayoga is about the union of pranic (prana shakti) and mental forces (manas shakti).

When this occurs, the awakening of higher consciousness happens in the individual. Every object in the universe, from the atom to the star is composed of these two energies. When they interact with each other, creation happens and when they are separated they move back to their source and creation is dissolved. This is described as the total annihilation of matter; the same way as physics do.

All matter in this creation is alive and conscious. Therefore everything has potential and everything is alive. In yoga, consciousness and life are known as purusha and prakriti, in tantra they are named shiva and shakti. In hathayoga they are named pingala and ida and in taoism as yang and yin and in physics as energy and matter. They have different names in different times and philosophies.

Even so, the dualities of matter and energy can be translated to the human nature. We have a physical body but we also have a subtle counterpart too. So what happens on the inside when you think? What happens inside you when one thought results in the next?

In yoga, one should always keep in mind that the body, mind and the spirit are not three; they are one. At one level you see the body and at another you see it as the mind. The spirit is never different from the body and vice versa. They are one.

It's all about the focus – conscious breathing

The prana shakti and manas shakti are usually in an unbalanced and unharmonized form in us. Either of them are usually predominant over the other, creating imbalances in mind, body and spirit. Due to this imbalance, physical disease and mental diseases manifest. The techniques of yoga like asana (body posture), pranayama (the art of breathing properly) and kriyas (to focus the mind) is to bring these into better harmony and learn how to calm the nervous system and cleanse the body from toxins.

The nervous system needs to be trained since it is the carrier of impulses through the sensory and motor channels. For an uninterrupted flow of energy to pass throughout the body, it is vital that you move into pratyahara, or sense withdrawal. If not, then it is hard to meditate. Pratyahara is the bridge between the physical/mental and the subtle body awareness and of spirit.


The first tool to apply to move into pratyahara is learned how to breathe properly and through breath to start to move and direct energy, or Pranayama.

The subtle body is the energetic mold of the physical body. It is more accessible to the mind and consious control. On a subtle level, change is somewhat fragile and demands powerful intention. Once change on a subtle level has filtered down on a physical level it tends to be more stable. This means it is difficult to make and maintain change purely on a physical level. For example; a person can exercice and eat properly and perfect and yet be affected by ill health.

“Whatever controls Prana controls the minds and whatever controls the minds controls Prana”

– Hathayoga Pradipika 4. 21

Through breath our physical body is linked to the mind, and the mind to the life force, Prana. The breath enhances the mind-body connection, so when we start to cultivate the breath, we connect to our higher self.

The yogic texts and masters state very clearly that in order to balance the mind, one needs to control the prana inside. If prana is restless, mind becomes restless and vice versa. The mind is very difficult to control by the mind and the more ones tries the more the split grows. By practicing pranayama correctly, the mind is automatically stilled.

The general idea is that pranayama ought to remove blockages in the autonomic nervous system in order to have the breath run even in both nostrils.

When the flow is even in both nostrils, your nervous system is in harmony and you move easily into meditation and flow better with life.

About the breath

• The breath is one of only two functions of the body that is both voluntary and involuntary (the other function is blinking). If we can master breath consciously, we can control other functions in the body like heart rate, blood pressure, and breath. Through the breath, we can access the parasympathetic nervous system and activate the relaxation response in the brain, which results in stress reduction for our entire system.

• Most people are not breathing to their fullest capacity, which actually means that the nerve cells do not get fully activated, which chokes the life force in us. Through conscious breathing, we can mindfully generate more oxygen for the body.

• Tightness or stress in the body often creates tightness in the breath. Think of wearing a body suit that is too tight — it is hard to breathe. When your body is tight and tense, you can’t breathe fully. You can be tight in your breathing body just like you are tight in your physical body. Some of this is physical strain impinging on the breath volume; some is emotional or mental blockage preventing us from breathing fully.

So the more we can learn conscious breathing the better. 
We enhance our quality of life via how we breathe. 
Welcome to my Pranayama Course where we embark on learning the magic techniques of pranayama.

• For further reading go to my YINYOGA book (Skyhorse Publishing)

• Take part of my new 10 weeks course here on Yogobe - The Art of Breathing

Videos for you

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More reading

• Creating a space for the wild birds to settle down, by Eleonora Ramsby Herrera
• Yin & Restorative: The art of pausing – part 1, by Ulrica Norberg
• Yin & Restorative: The art of pausing – part 2, by Ulrica Norberg

Gwyn Williams from Team Yogobe is the founder of the ZenThai Shiatsu practice and facilitator at BaliSpirit Festival since its second edition. In this interview with Elisabetta Crovara he talks about balance, letting go, and the festival.

“Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.”

Simple and on point. But, how many times are we told to hold on and how many to let go? Growing up and even during our adult life, holding on is associated with strength and resilience. We do rarely let go, because we feel like we are giving up. Somehow, it’s counter-intuitive.

However, these two, need balance. And balance is what BaliSpirit Festival 2019 wants to restore. This edition will be Gwyn’s 11th — and when he talks about it his voice has the same excitement as if it would be his first time attending BaliSpirit Festival.

“At BaliSpirit Festival, people get out of their suits. It’s a space where we’re not defined by the other life that we’re living.” Gwyn says: “While our ordinary identity fades, we dance and celebrate in true freedom. We’re finally present.” It’s a beautiful image, the one of the festival grounds. Some holding on to asanas, or practicing the stillness of meditation. Others singing their heart out and dancing in pure liberty. A kaleidoscope of colours, darkness and light. Sounds and silence, ecstasy and calm. An image of balance, unity and community. Like the practice of ZenThai Shiatsu, brought to the festival by Gwyn, since 2008.

“On a superficial level,” Gwyn explains, “ZenThai Shiatsu is the integration of Zen Shiatsu oriental medicine, Thai Massage and osteopathic techniques,” practices that he explored at the Queensland College of Oriental Medicine and in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Here, he discovered the osteopath Arnaud Le’ Hermitte, who combines osteopathy with the art of Traditional Thai Massage.

With a strong background in martial arts, until 1997, Gwyn utilised the prana, the life force, to fight and compete. Then, he slowly realised the importance of the yin and yang, in other words: of a balanced life. If energy goes out, energy needs to come back in. And so he discovered and got into alternative therapies and yoga. Balance is at the very core of ZenThai Shiatsu: “beneath the superficial level is the practice of getting to know who we are in our true nature, in our stillness state, where we can melt away all the boundaries and just let go.” Holding on to stillness, we can then let go.

Photo: Rosa Chen

By creating balance in our bodies and minds, ZenThai also embraces a full sense of unity and acceptance, and is also a great reminder of the power of community. During Gwyn’s classes and workshops, participants work in pairs and in group as a whole. They gather together, practice, share, grow and offer their own healing, kind and loving touch to others. “The hand being an extension from the heart.”

ZenThai is like music

ZenThai creates a safe space of belonging, where people feel nourished and supported, no matter what is going on in their life. In Gwyn’s words: “ZenThai is like music. It’s an intention to move back into unity and a great modality to eliminate the conditionings. It’s a feeling of ‘we’re doing this together — and of going back to balance.” A practice that perfectly merges with BaliSpirit Festival’s vibe and energy. When we asked him a little sneak peak of his workshops he will offer this year, he replied with his main intention instead: to bring people together through movement and therapy. He won’t plan the content in advance, he will listen to the planet and to the family gathering on that day. What do they feel, wish and need. What are their intentions. And then the practice will start.

The common thread, as the festival’s theme, will be “Restore the Balance.” As Gwyn puts in, we live in a world overwhelmed by negativity, tragic dynamics perpetuated by the media and other channels we are constantly bombarded by. Well, it’s time to look at the positives and not to panic. Time to look at the flower growing on the cement. He continues: “The Earth works on a state of congruent vibration, like a pendulum. It’s a sequence and we need to embrace changes because everything is temporary. It’s a continuous swing from darkness to light.”

Movement from darkness to light is balance itself. One cannot exist without the other. So, for us, falling out of balance doesn’t matter really, because if we sharpen our senses, relax and become more aware, we can always swing back to balance. Yin and Yang. Sekala and Niskala. Dark and Light. All strong opposites that we need to accept and learn how to deal with. To meditate in stillness and in movement. To find serenity in the darkness and compassion in the light. To find silence when surrounded by hundreds of people and to speak out loud without saying a word. That’s what Gwyn’s practice is about and common thread to all BaliSpirit Festival’s workshops and events.

Gwyn gave one more blissful message, that we’d like to share in particular for any first-time attendees: “At BaliSpirit Festival, just say ‘Yes,’ and you’ll feel in the perfect place and time.” Shake your conditioning off and find your OWN way back to balance.

Photo on top: Caroline Schiff

Read more about BaliSpirit Festival here!

Practice with Gwyn here on Yogobe

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No matter how rich we are — in money, power, houses, cars, or sex — it means nothing if we do not appreciate and respect life’s pleasures. At the same time, if we live in harmony with spirit and experience the feeling of joy and satisfaction, we will be happy just to be alive. This month we will discover our breath and our power to educate the brain into balance. This is the first blog post of  four. Now, let's begin our journey into the art of breath. 

Just breathe – it is your right

Our yoga practice should help us to live fuller lives. Our practice should help us climb a little higher every day, and if we climb too high, teach us we have to come down and rest, and next time, learn how to equalize.

The meaning of life is hidden inside our emotions. Us humans often get caught up in the so called “I-ness,” in which we live our lives in our feelings and everything else has no real relation to life. It may sound strange, but our life is our feelings, moods, and emotions. When we are in a good mood, we are inspired by everything — the world around us, people, atmosphere, and even possessions. When we are in a bad mood, nothing can force us to feel pleased and satisfied, not even the most valuable and vital things that usually lead to happiness. When we are happy the whole world is in harmony and everything brings us joy. In other words, the meaning of life is to experience the feelings that give pleasure and joy.

The great, ancient yoga masters understood that one system was superior in connecting all the other ones: The breathing (respiratory system), since it affected the mind and energy of the individual (endocrine system, cellular system), and in adding breathing with asana they saw that the overall health and balance (homeostasis) improved dramatically. They learned that a person’s balance has a lot to do with how well the body circulates blood (circulatory system), since the blood carries nutrients and oxygen to all the building blocks and maintenance stations in our bodies and brains.

Conscious breathing as a way to battle stress and tension

A great step to a healthy attitude about stress is to realize our ownership over our brain and learn to engage our brain intentionally to manage the consequences of the fight and flight response.

It is actually very simple for us to learn to intentionally engage the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the relaxation response in our body. The relaxation response returns the body’s resources toward the digestive system but also the brain balance needed to maintain a healthy brain wave. We have the power to educate our own brain to do so intentionally. Once the over stimulated fight and flight response returns under control, the true potential of our brain becomes accessible, our learning ability is enhanced, and our executive reasoning functions become strong again.

The only autonomic nervous system function that can be directly affected by our conscious mind is the breath. Conscious breathing is a great way to experience deep levels of relaxation and to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Start here and now. 


Read this text first and then try to take ten Deep, Full, Complete Breaths:

• Sit comfortably. Elevate your seat if you have to in order for your spine to be long and erect. You can sit against a wall if need be. Place pillows or a block underneath the thighs if you have tightness in your hips.

• Rest your hands on your knees. Roll your shoulders back so you can lift your chest a little. Close your eyes and your mouth. Keep your lips soft and jaw as relaxed as possible.

• Exhale slowly and empty your lungs. When the inhalation appears, let it evolve until you have reached your fullest expansion. Then pause two seconds and slowly start to exhale, and follow the exhalation until it ebbs out completely. Pause two seconds. Repeat.

• Do this ten times. When breathing, try to stretch your breaths by making the start of each inhalation and exhalation long and listen to the sound of the breath more and more. Pick up its sound in the middle of your head. Try to really listen; notice the sound of the breath.

• After the ten breaths, sit quietly for a moment, sensing the effects of your breath.

I bet you will be calmer. It is because you have altered the distribution of energy from the sympatheic nervous system (activating part of our NS) to parasympathetic nervous system (calming aspect of our NS). 

The Full Complete Breath is a great technique to bring into the practice of restorative yoga. It is the breathing method I often recommend my students apply in order to start to release, unwind, and keep their mind occupied with something other than reacting, while their body sinks deeper into the poses.

When the body is calm, the mind quiets and the breath lets go. Then the breaths just happen. No technique is needed, and you are in floating state; in being with the moment. When you arrive here, the stress hormons are down to a low minimal. In this state your creativity can flow, oxygen levels increase in your blood and you often feel calmer, clearer and more present.

• For further reading go to my YINYOGA book (Skyhorse Publishing)

• Take part of my new 10 weeks course here on Yogobe - The Art of Breathing

Videos for your breathing journey

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Reading suggestions

• Full Complete Breath technique, by Ulrica Norberg
• Dare to let your dreams guide you, by Maria Paulsson Rönnbäck
• Ayurvedic tips for a healthy skin, with Dr. Venu Sasikumar

Meditation is a word that often triggers expectations of how we are supposed to practice it. When I introduce mindfulness meditation to people who are new to the practice, they often respond with a degree of resistance and hesitance.  In situations like this, it can help to approach meditation from a different standpoint, which views it as a life-long practice.

Approaching mindfulness meditation

People are quick to assume that they can’t meditate or that they are bad at it because they can’t get themselves to “stop thinking”. Assumptions like these are all understandable but, unfortunately, they often get in the way of people giving the practice a try in the first place. I would therefore like to offer some insights into how we can relate to mindfulness meditation in a way that opens up a path of curiosity and exploration whereby we do not carry the pressure of expectations and outcomes.

Whether meditation is familiar to you or not, I hope that you find these personal reflections useful for your own practice. If you are curious to explore meditation further, I have created a 6-week program, with a simple progressive structure.

What is mindfulness?
According to Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness can be defined as “The ability to pay attention to the present moment to moment experience without judgement”. It is a way for us to practice concentration and through this channel of consciousness, to immerse ourselves in our present lived experiences. By allowing ourselves to become fully involved in our lived experiences, we cultivate a stronger awareness of what we are experiencing in the present moment, and thus can choose to become more mindful of how we live our lives, both in relation to ourselves and others.

Meditation: a method of practicing mindfulness
Mindfulness can be practiced in a variety of ways. It can be applied to driving your car; having a mindful conversation; being mindful of your own feelings and the feelings of others; paying closer attention to playing an instrument; or being fully immersed in a physical activity.

Meditation is one of many methods of practicing mindfulness and is often referred to as mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation is a westernised approach, incorporating eastern influences, which derive from ancient Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese philosophies and meditation practices. Traditional mindfulness meditation is a practice of concentration that is most often practiced sitting with the eyes closed. By bringing the body into a comfortable seated posture, one can focus one’s attention on the breath. According to yoga philosophy, our state of mind and our breath are interconnected. For example, a passage from one of the ancient yoga texts, Upanishads, suggests that the mind and the breath are bound together:

"Just as a bird tied by a string, after flying in various directions without finding a resting place elsewhere, settles down (at last) at the place where it is bound, so also the mind, my dear, after flying in various directions without finding a resting place, settles down on the prana [energy], for the mind, my dear, is bound by the breath." - Extract from Tias Little book “Yoga of the Subtle Body”.

Thus, we can regulate our mind by allowing it to rest on the focus point of the breath. In western psychological science, this has been demonstrated through studies that link the breath with our autonomic nervous system. These studies highlight that our breathing has a direct influence on our mood regulation, which is interlinked with our thoughts and feelings.

“But what if I can’t get my mind to quieten down?”

Meditation is not about stopping or supressing your thoughts or feelings. However, this is unfortunately a common misconception, which stops many people from trying it. Rather than forcing ourselves to stop thinking or feeling certain things, one can stay with the experience of what is unfolding by allowing oneself to be present, compassionate and accepting of whatever arises. Thus, there is no need to burden ourselves with the idea that we need to stop thinking/feeling and that we fail every time this human trait surfaces. In fact, the attempt to force ourselves to quieten down our experiences often makes things worse. Instead, we can allow the thoughts and feelings to be there in the background and rather direct the spotlight of attention away from fluctuating ruminations towards the core of our breath. When your “bird mind” flies away and becomes distracted by thoughts (which it will at times), then notice that distraction and gently draw your attention back to the breath. By doing this, we consciously choose to make our breath the focus point, which serves as an anchor for the birds to settle down.

The key is to notice this continuous cycle of birds flying wild and settling down by witnessing this process from a loving distance. In this way, you can create a bigger space for consciousness to notice your present moment experiences without judgement, as if you’re watching nature move from afar through binoculars. Undoubtedly, your thoughts create judgements. However, you can observe these “thinking judgements” through non-judgemental observation. This extra space also creates more distance between having an experience and reacting to it impulsively. Thus, the more you practice, the more skilful you become at slowing things down and approaching life from a place of mindful action.

Embrace the process over the outcome and remember that it is a life-long practice without a means to an end.

Go well!

Learn mindfulness meditation with our new 6-weeks program

In collaboration with Yogobe I have created the 6-weeks program "Explore mindfulness", a guide for you to learn mindfulness meditation. The program is for everyone who are interested in mindfulness meditation, whether you are new to yoga and mindfulness or an experienced yogi that wants to start meditating more. 

Mindfulness meditation videos

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Read more

• How yoga helped me from burnout to bliss, by Yohanna Mannelqvist
• Full Complete Breath technique, by Ulrica Norberg
• Yin & Restorative: The art of pausing – part 1, by Ulrica Norberg

Yohanna Mannelqvist writes about how yoga came into her life eight years ago. Her life in London was glamorous but hectic and she was constantly working, training, traveling, and socialising. Although she was living her “dream” in all areas of life she started feeling empty inside. 

A soul searching trip around the world

I developed sleeping problems, exhaustion, anxiousness, digestive problems and became gradually underweight. I rarely took time for contemplation and tried to live up to the idea of “Wonderwoman” that society celebrates. Truth is, we are only human. Eventually, I hit burnout and decided to change the rhythm of my life. I reduced my workload, read self-help books, went to therapy and healed my eating habits.

I had been doing  yoga for a couple of years but the practice became increasingly important, as a part of my recovery. After each yoga session, I felt more relaxed and aligned. It was the rare moment for me to check in with myself, to stop and to listen. I could feel the psychological and emotional benefits right away but what I didn't know at the time was that yoga has many physiological benefits as well.

A restorative yoga practice and conscious breathing balances our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, moving us out from the fight or flight mode, and into the rest and digest mode. Stress causes the hormone cortisol and if levels are high over a longer period of time it can lead to burnout. Practising yoga reduces your cortisol levels, allowing your body go in to a state of restoration where healing can begin. 


Back to self love through yoga
Eventually, I left my life in London and my fashion business career to go on a soul-searching trip around the world. I felt the urge to explore yoga deeper which lead me to my first yoga teacher training with Rachel Brathen at Island Yoga in Aruba. It was a life changing experience, where I could finally let go, heal my wounds and find back to self-love.

Once the training was completed, I traveled to Tulum with a one-way ticket and decided to make it my home. I now live in Tulum, Mexico half of the year and teach Jivamukti yoga at two studios; Sanara on the beach and Holistika in the jungle. I also work as a Wellness coach, allowing me to use my experiences from burnout to guide ambitious women to mindful living and lives in balance. Luckily, my work as a coach can be performed from anywhere in the world and I see many of my clients online during the summer, I live in Sweden where I host Yoga and Mindfulness retreats on the West Coast. I’m also in London on a regular basis where I host various workshops.


Yoga eventually helped me recover from exhaustion but has also brought clarity and purpose to my life, which I am forever grateful for. My practice reminds me of what is important, it keeps me grounded and brings me to my authentic self. Yoga reminds me to choose love over fear and transform emptiness to fullness of spirit.

More about Yohanna

Yohanna is a Vinyasa and Jivamukti teacher (500 hr) and a Wellness Coach. She lived a fast-paced lifestyle in London for many years, working in the fashion industry. She eventually experienced burnout and decided to embark on a new path in life which brought her into the world of wellness and yoga. Today, Yohanna lives in Tulum, Mexico half of the year, where she teaches weekly yoga classes and retreats at Sanara and Holistika. The rest of the year she lives in Sweden from where she hosts Yoga & Mindfulness retreats and workshops around Europe. Yohanna is currently building a community for ambitious women to explore mindful living. She also coaches women 1 on 1 in person and in online session.

Read more about Yohanna on her website or follow her journey on instagram at @yohasana

Video tips

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Read more

• What I talk about when I talk about yoga, by Frida Boström
• Increased Performance with Mobility Practice, by Matthew Griffiths
• Yoga is not important, by Simon Krohn

Yogic philosophy claims that we have all we need inside. All the resources are there for us to lead a great life. We have capacity and potential. It is just our stressed and imbalanced minds that tell us we don't have enough and can’t do enough. What we need is balance. But how do we find it? 

This is the third part of four in our yin and restorative December focus. Read part one here to get the introduction. You'll find part two here and part three here if you want more.

How we lay the bricks to a more sustainable life 

Our imbalanced minds limits how we see life, and we never go up on our inner mountain to have a look out, to see our surroundings, to see our scenery, to learn about ourselves through reflection and looking at things from a distance. Stress is just a thought. If we tell ourselves we are stressed, we become stressed. Stress is not something that happens to us but something that happens within us.

That is why yoga emphasizes reflection and meditation, since that gives us the tools we need in order to elevate ourselves so we can see the bigger picture. And so we can, over time, start to figure out how we can yoke our potential with our capabilities. We can only do that by trying things out, doing it again differently, and then trying yet again. We need to understand our potential and train our capacity, since life will always involve challenges and will always be a dance of opposites, or highs and lows. If we are better equipped in dealing with the dance of life (in yoga this is called lila) we will have a richer, fuller, stress-limited life.

The more we start to look into each polarity of being and try to find a balancing point, the better-equipped we’ll be, since we can gather forces from two spheres of being: the right and the left, the upper and the lower, the inner and the outer, the being and the doing, life and death, etc. Then we become humans par excellence. Then we can balance life and reach happiness since we have all we need and we live in harmony with nature and evolve accordingly.

So, yogic philosophy teaches us that if we are too much over on one side, we need to add the opposite in small dosages, little by little, until both polarities in us are more in equal balance.

Rest as an antidote to stress and tension 
We are taught to work hard to attain goals in life, and sometimes in pursuit of those goals we can fail to experience each passing day as full and complete. We only see the lack of the goal achieved. Life is living life, not putting living off for a while until you achieve a goal.

Many people think that relaxation is very simple. Just recline and close your eyes. Few people understand what relaxation really means. You are tired so you go to bed and sleep and think that is relaxation. Unless you are free from muscular, emotional, and mental tension, you are never relaxed. In order to relax completely, the inner tensions of the body, emotions, and mind must be released.

The antidote to stress is relaxation. To relax is to rest. Deeply. This rest is different from sleep. Deep states of sleep involve periods of dreaming that increase muscular tension. Deep relaxation is a state in which there is no movement, no effort, and the brain is quiet.

Find delight in the ordinary
Often you’ll find yourself using quiet moments as a springboard for the pursuit of some new, more exciting event. But if you can shed your intensity addiction long enough to experience the ordinary moments in your life, you will find that they are all doorways to the richness and vitality that live within your own heart. Instead of relying on a rush of external events to delight you, you will quickly find the delights of connecting to life just as it is, in this very moment. When you celebrate the ordinary moments in life, you begin to connect with all that has gone unnoticed in both your inner and outer life. Awareness begins to permeate not just the juicy moments but the plain ones, too. And you begin to question the human inclination to externalize both happiness and unhappiness. You start to examine the long-held belief that your sense of wakefulness depends upon intensity.

Restorative yoga provides the perfect antidote to stress because it creates a supported pause. By completely supporting the body and being still for extended periods the breath, the mind and the nervous system begin to calm. Different restorative poses can be used for different purposes though they all help to quiet the nervous system.

There are poses that open the breath and lift the spirits when we're feeling depressed, poses that are supportive and nurturing when we're feeling anxious, and poses that target specific parts of the body where tension accumulates. Another thing worth mentioning is that after one comes out of a period of exhaustion, the body carries more excess tension and excess toxins that need to come out. Therefor combining restorative yoga with some gentle weight training, maybe jogging and flowing yoga, is a great way of detoxifying and de-stressing.

Also, I cannot stress enough spending time in nature as much as one can. Being in its silence and natural sounds, walking, hiking or just sitting and watch its splendor. Letting natures arms catch and hold you and help you shred layers of stress and tension. Hit the brakes in your life, break out from the urban living for a while.

Do this and it will save your life, your holiday season with your loved one as well as building a stronger foundation for your upcoming 2019.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Parts of this text comes from my book RESTORATIVE YOGA (available here in swedish, for english go to Amazon.com) if you wish to explore this topic further.

This week's yoga & contemplation

Keep practicing your favourite sequences from this month. Which ones did you feel you needed the most? Do them! 

Contemplation of the week
I invite you to ask yourself and inquire around the following questions during the week when you have a moment before, during or after your practice

• Can I add more play into my life?
• Go outside at least 45 minutes everyday this week.
• Have I told people I love that I love them?
• Do I need to apologize to someone?
• What are the best memories from this year?
• What would I like to cultivate 2019? In myself and in my life?

Yin, restorative & mediation videos for this week

Yogobe Video: 4gu3 Yogobe Video: a2z3 Yogobe Video: 9r5f Yogobe Video: 8bc4 Yogobe Video: h85u Yogobe Video: z69a

Flow classes for the days in between

Yogobe Video: h6k4 Yogobe Video: 5hu3

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A yoga practice is meant to fuse together opposites in order to attain balance, or equanimity. In life as well as in yoga, we want to add what is not there, to find better balance. So if we are stressed, rushed, and on-the-go, we need to add more relaxation, pausing and doing less, in order to get ourselves back into a better flow of life. The most intelligent choice in hectic times is to destress and to restore.

This is the third part of four in our yin and restorative December focus. Read part one here to get the introduction, and part two here if you want more.

What is restorative yoga?

Restorative yoga is a kind of active relaxation, since its techniques help us learn how to unwind, relax, and de-stress in order to reboot and restore our nervous system by taking as much pressure off our bodily functions as possible. The aim is to feel weightless. The way we do that is by using different props to support the body so we can let go of all tension. We stay in the poses for a long time so the nervous system has time to alternate from firing from its active part to its more restorative part. The aim is to communicate with the brain through the supported poses in a way that tells the body there is no tension, no danger anywhere. After a while, the brain gets the message and will lower the stress hormones and increase the life-enhancing hormones that we need in order to heal and feel well.

Restorative yoga is what I call a “lifeline” yoga practice. It helps at times when you feel weak, fatigued, stressed, before or after major life events, change of a job, divorce, through challenges in marriage, parenting, major holidays, and vacation—in any moment in life where you feel unsure, unfocused, challenged, scared or vulnerable. It also works beautifully as a boosting practice for athletic performance, creativity, and mood enhancement.

Restorative yoga is pretty clear: Grab the props you need, set yourself up in a nice space, settle into a pose, stay there, let go, and breathe. Pillows, books, blankets, towels—anything that helps support the body can be used to create a restorative pose.

Unlike other exercises, this practice places minimal metabolic demand on you and increases your energy rather than subtracting from it.

The benefits of restorative yoga
Restorative postures are a powerful way of rebalancing our energy. We can choose from a variety of poses to help achieve this: Backbends lift our energy, forward bends calm our energy, twists calm the nervous system and help with digestion, and inversions quiet the mind. And there are so many more benefits from restorative yoga: 

• All the organ systems of the body benefit from deep relaxation. Just a few of the measurable results are the reduction of blood pressure, serum triglycerides, blood sugar levels as well as an increase of the "good cholesterol" levels.

• Deep relaxation can also provide an improvement in digestion, fertility, elimination or reduction of muscle tension, insomnia and generalized fatigue.

• Restorative yoga helps to release tension on a physical, mental, and emotional level. Since our bodies store all our past experiences, when we let go of the hold on the physical body we often have strong emotional releases as suppressed emotions bubble up. For this reason, it's very important to create a supportive environment.

• Restorative yoga can be practiced by everyone. People who aren't physically able to practice asana, such as the elderly and physically challenged, can practice restorative yoga and reap the benefits of deep relaxation and energy rebalancing.

Yoga can help you self-heal
Our yoga practice should help us to live fuller lives. Our practice should help us climb a little higher every day, and if we climb too high, teach us we have to come down and rest, and next time, learn how to equalize.

We often forget the importance of pausing, calibrating, and equalizing. We often push and go full speed. But in order to get safely up our inner mountain, we need to fail, reflect, try again, push, rest, breathe, stop, go, do, be, and mix them all up in a nice blend.

That is what yoga is here to teach us: To find our own personal way, our own yoga, and our own balance where we see and connect to our fullest potential, becoming who we really are beyond all the reactions, beliefs, and fear. Yoga allows us to integrate what we already have—lots of tools inside our body, brain, and nervous system. The more we yoke all of our systems together, the more they work together.

For the longest time, yoga has claimed that we are self-healing creatures and that we can mend ourselves if broken. All we have to do is yoke the things we already possess: the gifts from our bodily systems. In yoga, we see that the nine systems in our bodies are connected and supposed to work in unison. When this unison is interrupted or distorted, then disease, stress, and imbalances appear. Therefore, yoga says, let’s yoke together the circuits of the systems again. These systems carry so much intelligence on their own; however, when united, we become full-powered beings that can reproduce (reproductive system) ourselves, evolve beyond the imaginary, and create wonderful things.

The power of the breath 
We need to find and clear the pathways for our systems to unite. Historically, the masters of yoga tried different ways and came up with body postures; asanas to connect different parts of the body with other parts of the body; getting the systems (muscular system, nervous system, and skeletal system) to work; and slowly finding each other through doing. The great masters understood that one system was superior in connecting all the other ones:

The breathing system (respiratory system), since it affected the mind and energy of the individual (endocrine system, cellular system), and in adding breathing with asanas they saw that the overall health and balance (homeostasis) improved dramatically. They learned that a person’s balance has a lot to do with how well the body circulates blood (the circulatory system), since the blood carries nutrients and oxygen to all the building blocks and maintenance stations in our bodies and brains.

Update your body and mind through meditation
Meditation in particular allows us to step away from the patterns and challenges in our life and see our greater roles, feel our places in the universe, and return to daily life with new perspectives. The expansion of ease, awareness, and prana (life force) that results from yoga is an expansion of our ability to live and follow your karmic path with ease and grace.

Before I started doing meditation and yoga, I often identified myself with my thoughts and feelings. I became them. Today, I have learned to view them more as patterns and reactions coming from my mind and soul. In looking closely at them in meditation, I learn a lot about myself in the now and how I function; and I begin to see what takes me out of balance and out of reach of myself.

Yin yoga and restorative yoga are two practice methods that both are mindful practices where one can look at and relate to reality and understand one’s relationship to it. Paying attention to something can be done in several ways. These techniques creates understanding, both of our current condition and of the reluctance or avoidance of being in what we perceive as negative or unpleasant experiences.

I often see my practice as updating all my inner programs, like when you are upgrading your computer, so they function better and can communicate more easily with each other, without friction or disturbances.

Parts of this text comes from my book RESTORATIVE YOGA (available here in Swedish, for English go to Amazon.com) if you wish to explore this topic further.

This week's yoga and contemplation

This week the goal is to meditate on a daily basis. Try to find time each day where you move away from social life, sit yourself down somewhere tranquil and breathe deeply for ten minutes. That is your investment. Your lifeline. Your blissfood.

How to sit when meditating
In order to feel comfortable with sitting in meditation, we need to have a practice that works towards good alignment. All seated meditation postures aim for one thing: holding the back upright without slouching or strain so that energy can run up and down the spine more freely.

Contemplation of the week

• Can I try a little yang practice after my yin/restorative practice one day? Like a brisk walk, a jog or some gentle weight lifting?
• Can I maybe treat myself to a massage?
• Can I list four awesome things about life and living here and now?

Yin, restorative & mediation videos for this week

Yogobe Video: ae67 Yogobe Video: 3r4k Yogobe Video: 5z7s Yogobe Video: p53r Yogobe Video: 4s5p Yogobe Video: 67hu

To be able to see the full video you need to be logged in as a paying member. New to Yogobe? Register to start your 7 days free trial here!