Yoga, training and health inspiration for you

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: t96zYogobe Video: e9w6Yogobe Video: k6u3Yogobe Video: 3u4g

Get some flow in between

Yogobe Video: ge52Yogobe 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

Yogobe Video: fp68 Yogobe Video: fw68

Yogobe Video: z47a Yogobe Video: h6k4 Yogobe Video: 84038433 Yogobe Video: b26d

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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...

Yogobe Video: 79175340 Yogobe Video: a2u5

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Stressa ner och kom i balans med Yogobes Julkalender! Varje dag fram till jul bjuder vi på en yoga- eller träningsvideo, helt gratis. Vi delar dagens klass på vår Facebooksida och klassen är tillgänglig för alla. Perfekt sätt att prova på yoga eller ny sorts träning! Läs mer om årets julkalender här.  

Så här fungerar julkalendern

Varje morgon mellan 1-24 december kommer vi att dela en ny video på vår Facebooksida. Sekvensen är tillgänglig i 48 timmar från kl 06:00 på den aktuella dagen.

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Frågor & funderingar

Om du har några frågor är du varmt välkommen att kontakta oss på [email protected].

Hur balanserar du mellan energipåfyllning och energidränering och hur får vi in den livsviktiga återhämtningen? 

Få in vila i vardagen 

Den mörkare årstiden är här och det är tid att sakta ner, gå i dvala, reflektera över eventuella drömmar och mål, för att vila, ladda om och se inåt. Men. Om du är något som jag, alltså arbetar, ibland på flera jobb, har du förmodligen mycket att hålla reda på, jonglera med vad som ibland känns som fem miljoner projekt, aktiviteter, åtaganden, samtidigt som du försöker hitta tid för att hjälpa andra. Så den stora frågan är: när hittar du tid för dig själv?

När den enda vilan man får är några timmars sömn på natten, så är inte alltid den välbehövda vilan total. Många av oss snurrar runt nätterna i ända, våra sinnen och drömmar är ockuperade av tankar. Vilan man behöver kommer inte. Det är då din kropp slutligen mynnar ut i en förkylning eller influensa. Upptagna av det moderna livet kan kan vi ibland hamna i en återvändsgränd som kan bränna våra broar och leda till utmattning. Men det är här vi måste inse att vi har mer kontroll över våra handlingar än vi tror och att man kan utforma dagen för att hedra sig själv först. Vi kan och vi förtjänar att må bra!

Att ta hand om mig själv låter som en enkel uppgift, det borde vara ett konstant mantra. Att leva ett liv med optimal hälsa är ett heltidsjobb. Att vara mamma, kräver ibland att jag spelar Wonder Woman, jag skulle behöva en hel outfit då och då. Men bara för att jag kan göra allt som krävs av mig, betyder inte att jag måste! Att styra mitt liv handlar om att ta ansvar för vad som finns i mitt omlopp, implementera metoder som förstärker känslan av att älska mig själv. Så låt inte den mörka vintertiden släcka gnistan. Jag får jobba lite på att tända mitt inre ljus och fortsätta min dagliga praktik.

Hur kan jag ta hand om mig själv?

Hur gör jag då för att hitta lite personlig vård som hjälper mig att hålla mig på spåret och inte tappa gnistan? Jag försöker, jag kämpar, jag måste hjälpa mig själv – och det är inte alltid lätt. Men små saker gör skillnad ibland.

Bokstavligen och figurativt: rensa eventuell röra som dyker upp i ditt liv. Lösning och upplösning av emotionellt bagage så att du kan hålla ett rent hjärta. Att rensa ut gamla kläder, rensa din mobil av några kontakter du inte längre behöver i ditt liv, du förstår nog vad jag menar.

Konkreta tips för energi i höstmörkret & ta hand om dig själv

• Se över din kost. Grönare inuti = renare inuti. Mörkgröna grönsaker är en rik källa på mineraler (inklusive järn, kalcium, kalium och magnesium) och vitaminer (inklusive vitaminerna K, C, E och många av B-vitaminerna). Och en mängd olika fytonäringsämnen som skyddar våra celler mot skador. Mörkgröna blad innehåller även små mängder Omega 3-fetter. De hjälper till att reglera blodsockret och bryta ner fetter och rensa blodet.

• Träna på morgonen. Prova yoga, promenad, jogga, simma eller pranayama för att kicka igång din dag, lägg till styrketräning. Du behöver inga verktyg, din egna kropp duger fint.

• Gå ut. Planera lite tid i ditt upptagna schema för att göra lite saker utomhus, om det så bara är en kort lunchpromenad så är det ett sätt att få i sig dagsljus. Gör saker du älskar, då är du lyckligast, då är det övning utan ansträngning.

• Stäng ner. Finns möjligheten att stänga av sociala medier en dag i veckan? Om tanken ger dig panik, testa ett par timmar, sedan en halv dag. Mobil, iPads, datorer, videospel etc. Ta den tiden att se inåt, ta tid att uppskatta det värdefulla ögonblicket som är nutiden.

• Stanna upp. Kanske gör du en plats i ditt hem där du kan sitta i tystnad och stilhet och se inåt.

• Hitta andningen. Djupandning och fokuserad koncentration saktar ner hjärnvågor, vilket gör dem mer organiserade. Det tillåter oss att aktivera det parasympatiska nervsystemet, frigöra endorfiner i blodflödet, egna må-bra-hormoner. Det hjälper oss att ha närvaro, "härvaro", sinnesfrid och eventuellt känna tacksamhet.

Mycket kan låta lätt men allt detta kräver din vilja och framförallt din self-compassion<3

Video- och programtips

• Behöver du stressa ner? Gå vårt 12 veckors program för mindre stress och ökat välbefinnande.

Yogobe Video: 4tu7 Yogobe Video: 5e4w Yogobe Video: ru65 Yogobe Video: xr35

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Läs mer 

• Novemberglöd - gör av med energi, få energi
• Ayurvedatips för energi i höstmörkret, av Eva Forsberg Schinkler
• Self-compassion förändrade mitt liv, av Anna Gordh Humlesjö

Leila och Gabriel Andersson har förändrade sin inställning till träning från ett måste till ett nöje genom att lyssna inåt och göra medvetna val. Det kan du också göra!

Vilken sorts relation har du till träning?

Vad skulle hända med din träning om du såg på den med mer ”yogiska” eller medvetna ögon? Vad skulle hända om du tränade med mer öppenhet och nyfikenhet? Om du var mer närvarande? Mer uppmärksam på vad som händer inte bara i kroppen utan även i tankar och känslor? Vad skulle du kunna upptäcka om din relation till din träning?

I de allra flesta yoga- och meditationssammanhang är det vanligt att ställa sig dessa frågor varje gång man kliver på sin yogamatta eller sätter sig tillrätta på sin meditationskudde. Men hur är det när du går in på gymmet eller ute i löpspåret?

Om vi behöver, och om vi känner att vi stagnerat i intresse och motivation vad gäller vår träning, kan detta vara ett värdefullt förhållningssätt. Det kan ge oss mer information om oss själva och tillåtelse att förändra vår träning till något som kanske passar oss bättre, som tar oss bortom tankar och idéer om hur träning bör se ut och som istället främjar medvetenhet och därmed en hälsa mer anpassad till våra unika behov, våra liv och vår utveckling.

Anpassa din träning efter livet i övrigt

För en tid sedan hände något med vår träning, som en naturlig del i vår personliga utveckling och en mer ”mindful” inställning till livet och allt i vår tillvaro. Frågan om varför vi tränade som vi gjorde blev mer och mer aktuell. Inte för att vi inte visste vad som motiverade oss tidigare utan snarare som en undersökning av om våra motiv fortfarande var gällande för oss. Vi upptäckte att träning och val av träningsform kändes mer baserade på upptrampade stigar om hur träning ska se ut, vad som ”räknas” som träning och vad vi alltid hade tränat.

Våra kroppar, vår familjesituation och livet i stort förändras hela tiden och i takt med det vill vi såklart även anpassa vår träning. Vi började därför vara mer närvarande, ställa frågor, dagligen. Hur känns det i kroppen idag? Hur vill jag röra mig idag? Vad behöver min kropp just nu? Vad kan jag göra annorlunda idag? Vad är hälsa för mig idag? Och vi tog emot vad som än kom upp.

Bli en "moover" – få in vardagsträning

Vi har valt medveten träning inom ramen för hela livet istället för att träna en viss del av dagen och veckan för att ha det avklarat som ytterligare en punkt att checka av på “att göra listan”. Inspirerade av bland annat yogalärarvänner som är aktiva inom så kallad ”movement training”, där träning fått lämna plats åt rörelse och vår kropps naturliga förmåga att röra sig, stärkas och utvecklas. Frågar du ”movers” när och hur de tränar är svaret självklart - hela dagen.

Just nu innebär det promenader i naturen, att alltid gå upp för rulltrapporna i tunnelbanan, hoppa några minuter i barnens studsmatta varje gång vi är lekparken, isometriska och funktionella styrkeövningar på yogamattan mellan bokföring och poddinspelning, ”hoppsa”-steg till och från förskolan (bonus är att vi får gladare barn) och så vidare. Och såklart blir det yoga, massor av yoga, ibland på klass, ibland hemma, kanske med 20 minuters dynamisk yang på morgonen och 20 minuter lugnare yin på kvällen.

Längre eller kortare pauser dagligen där vi kan väcka inte bara vår kroppsmedvetenhet utan även komma i kontakt med vårt ”varför”, vår intention, den kraft som själva aktiviteten vilar på. Precis som andetaget förankrar vår närvaro när vi mediterar blir dessa ”träningspauser” ankare och broar till mer medvetenhet i vår vardag. På det sättet har vi just nu fått till vår “sadhana” eller dagliga praktik. Genom att helt släppa bilden av vad en “sadhana” ska vara. Men det kommer med största sannolikhet förändras igen, och igen och igen.

Ge din kropp och själ det den önskar

Varför väljer du att träna på det sätt du gör, hur påverkar träningen din helhetshälsa (kropp, hjärta och sinne) och skulle du vilja att träningen såg ut på ett annat sätt? Vilken funktion fyller den och för vem gör du den? Är det hälsa om det skapar motstånd, stress eller prestationsångest?

För många av oss skapar träning, särskilt den som är förankrad i borden och måsten, motstånd och motvilja. Inom mindfulness och buddhism sägs det att allt du gör som är baserat på ”orena intentioner” skapar motvilja och motstånd och är ohållbart i längden.

Den inneboende potentialen med ett mer ”mindful” sätt att närma sig sin träning blir alltså att den redan från start får kapaciteten att, inte bara bli av, utan att faktiskt bli livslång. Testa dig fram, hitta din praktik, din stil, var närvarande och uppmärksam, men vad du än gör, låt dig inte begränsas av normativa uppfattningar eller trender i sociala medier om vad träning ska eller inte ska vara.

Lycka till!
Leila & Gabriel Andersson

Foto: Malin Wittig

Videotips

Yogobe Video: 7ba8 Yogobe Video: at47 Yogobe Video: 2dr3 Yogobe Video: 4f9w

För att kunna se en hel video behöver du vara inloggad som betalande medlem på Yogobe. Är du ny till tjänsten? Prova gratis i 7 dagar utan bindningstid – klicka och kom igång här!

Läs mer om mindfulness

• Mindful eating, av Therese Elgquist
• Maxa din höst, av Rebecca Carlowitz
• Mindfulness för barn, av Maja Öberg
• Förebygga utmattningssyndrom med mindfulness?