Yoga, training and health inspiration for you

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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• 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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• 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

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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

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We have taken away many natural pauses in our daily living here in the West. Our fast way of life  comes with the cost of higher and higher tension- and stress levels. We also see many new diseases that are stress related.  I think one part of the answer is to add more pauses and slowing down our pace. For me it is a question of integrity. Of intention. Of asking oneself with what kind of energy I wish to wake up within two years from now. 

This is the second part of four in our yin and restorative December focus. Read part one here to get the introduction! 

Your life is the sum of your living

Life contains and involves everything. This everything possesses many definitions. Life refers to a collective phenomenon and to the ability of an individual organism to metabolize and grow, and life refers to the history of activities that an organism undertakes. Life is also the sum of our living: One’s experiences, discoveries, movement, and moments. Einstein once said that life is like riding a bicycle. In order to keep our balance, we have to keep moving, keep living.

When we are constantly on the go, we lose connection with ourselves because we don't pause to recharge our batteries in a biological, natural way. It is like we demand that our batteries recharge themselves. It seems we have become disconnected to the point where we no longer identify ourselves as humans, but consider ourselves more like gods, or robots. We are driven by schedules or perceived obligations. The busy mind has taken over, and our life has become built on concepts rather than the true aliveness that allows it to emerge naturally and effortlessly. We live in a cultural poverty where we no longer know how to to take a break, and many of us believe pausing is something strange or weak.

What if we took another route? What if some answers about the growing health problems lie in doing less rather than doing more?

Unblock your prana
A Buddhist thought regarding this is that life is movement, or change. The more fluid you are, moving with movement, the more alive you become. In yoga, life is what is experienced. It's philosophy also claims that life is being expressed out in our cellular structure and it is linked together by life force: prana.

We want our life force to flow uninterruptedly within our channels in order to be in homeostasis, balance. Over thousands of years, yogis have researched through their own and others’ practice that the body, mind, and spirit work in correlation and in connection to one another. If our circulation of life gets stuck somewhere due to too much stress and tension, then what we need to do is to unlock the blockages of prana and homeostasis will return.

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.

—Mahatma Gandhi

My own path 
When I first started yoga, I was introduced to a quite physical way of doing it, in which my teachers were strict and options were limited. It was good for me at the time, not to have so many options, to limit possibilities and variations in an attempt to simplify things. After a while, however, I began to feel insecure and vulnerable in my practice, so I moved on and kept searching for a yogic approach that resonated better with me. Years passed and through many in-depth studies in various styles of yoga, my yoga practice grew and became strong and selfless. I am so utterly grateful for all the techniques I have learned and for the knowledge and wisdom I have come across through several phenomenal teachers.

In teaching yoga, I am deeply imbedded in the various aspects of the architecture of this practice and I acknowledge the importance of tradition. I try to help my students to evolve and find the keys of the practice by helping them get inside themselves through investigation and inquiry, since it is only when we allow ourselves to play with conceptions and ideas that we start to research possibilities, and through that we evolve. So see if you can be your own teacher this week. What do you know already and what do you need in order to rest more?

This week's yoga and contemplation

Begin this week by doing one thing at a time. Stop multitasking! When you are focused on one thing and giving something or someone your undivided attention, you give yourself space and time to reflect and react without distraction. With a calm mind, you are less likely to feel overwhelmed and are able to tune in to your surroundings. It heightens your senses and intuition and you get to enjoy the flavors of life while making confident decisions with mental clarity and deliberate intention.

​In the attention you give, you are building a strong foundation and connection to create the trust and value to sustain the outcome you seek. With thoughtfulness and care you also tend to create better results as less careless mistakes are made along the way, enabling you to get the job done properly. When you slow down you encapsulate the “less is more” philosophy. 

This week try to:

• Put your phone away more often
• Avoid listening to music and ride on your bike at the same time
• Add more pauses and more silence
• Read a book on your way home from work if you commute
• Rest your brain. By doing something that adds knowledge to your living, not adding reaction and tension

For some help, ask a friend if you can support each other.

Videos of the week
Pick one of the Restorative yoga classes and one of the Yin yoga classes below and practice this twice this week. Follow up with one of the the recommended meditations right after. The other days work on balancing this class with some stability, flowing or strengthening classes.

Contemplation of the week
Ask yourself and inquire around the following questions when you have a moment before, during or after your practice:

• What have you done today that is really good? What felt really nice?
• When you hear ”good living” what does that mean to you?
• Do you smile a lot? If not, why is that do you think?
• Do one thing everyday that is new to you. Simple things like taking another road to work or drinking less coffee. Listen more when people speak. Favor silence at least an hour everyday.
• Lay yourself on the floor at home for 20 minutes daily and listen to some great music, closing your eyes and breathing deeply. Make wishes for the future that makes you smile.

Yin, restorative & mediation videos for this week

Yogobe Video: t96z Yogobe Video: e9w6 Yogobe Video: 26tf Yogobe Video: 5f3c Yogobe Video: k6u3 Yogobe Video: 3u4g

Get some flow in between

Yogobe Video: ge52 Yogobe Video: g42f

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Since the start of civilization we have emphasized the active life (yang) in some cultures and the contemplative life (yin) in others. Now we have the opportunity to explore both and find the appropriate balance between the two. But how do we find time to figure out what we need when everything around us is spinning so fast?  What does mindful living mean in a modern world? 

Find a balance between yin and yang

For most of us life today doesn’t offer any natural breaks. We eat lunch on the go and we are constantly online or communicating on phones, laptops and iPads. We may even try to do yoga while doing these other things. But to achieve deep relaxation and mental ease, we need a practice where we can turn our senses inward and quiet the mind. We can stately claim that the need for a more inquiry based, contemplative, complementary practice, is well needed in the life of the modern human and yogi.

Yin and yang can be described as two variables; they are either on the opposite ends of a cycle, like the seasons of the year, or opposites on a continuum of energy or matter. The opposition is relative and can only be understood through relationships between the two. For example: Water is yin relative to steam but yang relative to ice. Nothing is totally yin or yang. Just as a state of total yin is reached, yang starts to grow.

This is evident in the yin yoga practice, since after you have gotten deep into relaxation and mental stillness in a yin yoga pose, the blood circulation increases and you can start to feel heat inside. You are ready to mobilize energy into movement and weight bearing.

They constantly transform into each other, just as there can be no energy without matter and no day without light. The classic energy philosophy state that yin creates yang and yang activates yin. This falls true in one's yoga practice when your breath brings stillness to the mind and you start to flow through the poses. You experience inner heat rather than extensive sweat (that cools your body). This way the metabolism and circulation increases, and your body is enable to burn toxins and impurities better.

Different types of yoga
Yoga means “to yoke” together opposites. That is also what hatha yoga, the platform for all physical yoga practice. To balance the ha (yang) and the tha (yin); the solar (doing) with the lunar (being) aspects of the practice. In this sense, our yoga practice should be a blend of yang/out/action/contraction and yin/in/observation/extension to make the whole balanced and to affect our entire health to move towards homeostatis (the maintenance of equilibrium). Yang yoga is a more vigorous yoga practice that targets the muscular tissue and through movement creates heat. Examples of yang based yoga is ashtanga vinyasa, power yoga and anusara yoga.

Through the practice of yin yoga, one targets the fascia/connective tissue in the body, which makes it a marvellous therapeutic tool for healing bodily, mental, and emotional imbalances. Yin yoga is most effective when more active forms of yoga or exercise are also practiced regularly.

Let go of your own limitations and your preconceptions when it comes to yoga
The demands of Western culture can easily lead to low self-esteem. While there is usually room for improvement, we are all amazing beings just as we are. In a yoga practice we should just get to the mat, work within our limitations, and feel how we detach from all of what inhibits us, rather than get caught up in competitiveness without looking for some specific results.

There is a misperception that an “enlightened yogi” is passively accepting of all circumstances and will not care how she or he is treated or what her circumstances may be. Study and application of your practice will erase many of those misperceptions.

For example, there is no sutra stating that the true yogi never says “no.” Sometimes practicing truthfulness and respect for yourself, others, and a given situation may result in more action as you develop clearer boundaries and integrity. This has been my experience. Before yoga and meditation, I had little awareness of my own boundaries and I had never been showed to move inwards for answers. I searched on the outside instead and I had such a need for affirmation and acceptance that I never said “no.”

For me it took many years of practice and life lived in order to move more into sattva guna; to a more centered positioning in myself where I could speak of my needs. This spiritual maturity gave me the ability to better accept different situations and of letting go of things that doesn´t give themselves automatically.

To be a yogi, you just have to practice yoga regularly. The yoga will do the rest. Becoming a yogi doesn’t mean giving up the old you and becoming someone else. However, things that are not serving you well may fall away. As you practice yoga, you move toward the more intuitive, less fragile you.

The yogi way
On the other hand, being a yogi doesn’t mean you don’t have problems; you just have more tools for dealing with them. Yoga provides kaivalya, or space around your experience that allows you to have perspective regarding your problems and what to do about them.

In yoga, we work with tension and through different techniques we wish to move deeper into it, step by step, day by day, practicing again and again, until we reach its core. Then we stay with it and use releasing techniques like slow poses, visualization, breath, and silence in order for the tension to resolve. We need to slow things down in the core of tension so the bodily systems that have perhaps been drained of energy can take some time to recover new energy, and slowly the stress and tension release their grip.

Take a sponge as an example. We leave it close to water and it will slowly start to move toward the liquid in order to absorb it. That is the code, the programming of that texture. We can look at our own systems in a similar way. The more we use them the wrong way, the more we take away from their binary code intelligence.

This idea is shared in general in medicine and, similar to yoga (though carried out in different ways), its aim is to lower the thresholds so the obstruction of flow can be reduced in order to get the blood pumping and nerves to speak with each other again. Here they use medicines, surgery, and other techniques but with the same aim, in general.

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

So on the question regarding if it is possible to live more mindfully in the society of today I would say yes. And the first step is to start adding more slow style practices into your life. Add the natural breaks that your life is not handing to you. Otherwise life will runa away with you.

If you wish to read more on behalf of this topic, I have written a book on yin yoga called YINYOGA – An Individualized approach to balance, health and Self wellbeing available on www.amazon.com.

This weeks yoga and contemplation

Pick one of the two yin yoga classes below and practice this twice this week. Follow up with the recommended meditation right after. The other days work on balancing this class with some stability, flowing or strengthening classes.

I also 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:

• Is there anything I can remove from my schedule that is not that important?
• Where do I experience stress in my body right now?
• Does my thoughts move around a theme? Are they pulling me towards validation? Negative criticism?

Give yourself this month of recurring stillness. Let go "yinside"! 

This weeks videos

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Are you running to fast and tend a bit lost? You are not alone! This is why I would like to invite you to a month filled with yin and restorative. To find inner peace in Christmas time, and a harmonious ending to this year. We'll start these four weeks tomorrow, but get a sneak peak here! 

Find the balance between yin and yang

December is a month where we try to desperately unwind all the stress and tension created by high expectations, a massive workload, managing several social events, endning the year in grace and prepare and enjoy Chistmas time. Yet, why do we run so fast? It is not like time will stop at New Years. It is not like you do not get more chances to improve or work.

My advice to you is to practice adding pauses. Say no to events you do not have to participate in and don't start any new projects on this side of the year. Plan for them instead. Focus on closure. On pausing. On spending time with yourself everyday. Both on and off the mat. Mix your social life with solitude. Time with YOU and those you care strongly for. Stop running. This month is a fantastic month to practice pausing, rebooting and restoring. Welcome to this month's theme: Slow Down – GoYin

Many of us strive to maintain a balance between yin and yang, the active and the passive, the hard and the soft. Both on and off the yoga mat. This month I will share some thoughts around ways to unwind tension, seek clarity, release stress and boost inner peace. 

This month will consist of four parts broken into four weeks.

Starting tomorrow I will guide you here on the blog and in our Facebook community BEYOGA365 with inspirational reading and video recommendations on Yogobe. Welcome to a month of going more yin.

Start december right...

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Yoga teacher Frida Starvid (fd Boström) asks her self if there really are some yoga forms that are better than others or more true? And does it really matter as long as you find the yoga form that suits you and your needs?

Exercise as such has never interested me

I´ve known for a while that this piece was going to center around a book by Haruki Murakami called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. This month´s blog theme is “pulse, heat and exercise”, and I had picked this book in lieu of having to write anything personal. It´s a good read, which you might expect from a writer of his caliber. Murakami writes about running, basically, in a very straightforward fashion, but uses the subject as a cover-up for what is really an autobiography.

It wasn´t obvious, however, what my take on the subject would be, even through the lens of Murakami. Not until I found myself in a locker room with one of my students after a challenging Rocket class, and the opening appeared as if by magic. While changing, we were leisurely talking about different styles of yoga, and my student made the observation that it seemed like yoga was gaining popularity because people see it as a form of physical exercise. “I don´t know much about that”, I said, pulling on my jeans. She looked at me, confounded.

A long conversation followed, in which I talked about the background of Rocket yoga - that while it is up-tempo and physically challenging, it is derived from the disciplined Ashtanga tradition, firmly grounded in yoga philosophy and that it has mantras, bandhas and breath work at its core. I talked about the fact that exercise as such has never interested me. That only insofar as my mind can be absorbed into something more meaningful while moving, my body is willing to work. The girl nodded thoughtfully. “I guess I´ve never looked at it that way,” she concluded, just before we said goodbye.

Is there only one true yoga form?
While I sat on the bus, I thought about things I´ve heard people sometimes claim over the last couple of years - that physically demanding yoga in some way should be less profound and require less awareness than slower forms of practice - and therefore is shallower and more about performance. I´ve heard someone say, for example, that sitting in Lotus and meditating is harder than doing Pincha Mayurasana. And that is perhaps true, depending on who you are. But perhaps not. Or maybe on some days, and not others. The question is, does it matter? Isn´t the comparison futile? To me, doing advanced asanas is not about snapping fancy pictures, but about a natural will to progress. Being spurred on by gradual development, having positive mental and physical feedback from trying new things and achieving postures one never thought possible, is a good thing in my book. That does not, however, make me opposed to any other type of yoga, which is the main important point I want to drive home. Everyone should not have to prefer the same things.

Absorbed in the physical concentration
I think one´s preference when it comes to style has a lot to do with one´s personality. In his book, Murakami reflects that to a certain extent we can change our physical and mental setup, but we all have slightly different constitutions, and in the end, you have to make the best of what you have. Murakami is a proven long-distance runner; I would not choose that term to describe myself. Both in yoga and in life I am good at dynamic and creative aspects, good at initiating stuff, happy when I reach fast results, but with a sad tendency to burn out because of it.

I am at the core a fast, driven, restless person without much patience, so when I started doing yoga, there was no chance I would have been able to continue with something like Hatha or Yin. I tried, so I know. Then one evening, without the slightest idea of what to expect, I tried a Rocket yoga class. And when I came out of the studio 90 minutes later, it was the first time in my life I experienced my mind quiet. I had been so absorbed in the physical concentration, that I´d had no time to notice that something had miraculously shifted. A mediation class would never have done the same job. Not for me, not ten years ago.

The physically challenging yoga was my entrance to mental stillness
What I can say, is that dynamic yoga has helped me work with some of the negative aspects of my constitution. Physical challenges make my mind one-pointed, as I need to concentrate my whole being, be one with my breath and my body and feel what´s going on in each single body part. While naturally I want to succeed the first time I try something new, practicing this way has taught me patience to a degree I never thought possible. It has been my entrance to mental stillness, to concentration, and in its wake, to meditation. Also, when I practice I need to stay focused solely on myself. I sometimes go through large parts of a class with my eyes closed. And whether that´s the case or not, after class I never have an idea of what the person next to me has been up to. I am so focused that there is no room for comparison. To me that´s a big part of what yoga is about. What style one chooses in order to achieve this is superfluous to the equation.

Murakami´s autobiography is one long contemplation on running, and on life. He talks about ageing, the way the body and the mind changes, and that his preferences change with it. And he manages to squeeze in lines as beautiful as “The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can´t be learned at school.” In fact, he writes, most of what he knows about writing fiction he learned by running every day. I guess I could say something similar about life and yoga.

Videos you might like

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Read more

• On the Pursuit of Slackness, by Frida Starvid (fd Boström)
• Living Healthier with Ayurveda, by July Huang

About Frida

Frida Starvid (fd Boström) is a Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Rocket and Yin teacher (200+140 hr), educated in India, Sweden and Spain. She started off as an architect but after a burnout she decided to shift careers. Her first trip to an ashram in India in 2015 led to many more, and evoked her already existing curiosity about philosophy and meditation, as well as fun and physically challenging yoga. Frida gives regular classes and assists at yoga teacher educations in Sweden and abroad. Read more about Frida at her website or follow her at Instagram: @fridastarvid