Crow pose at last

Happy to say that after spending a year building up my arm and core strength I can now get up in to Crow pose and...hold it :) A nice lesson in trusting your body and in your breath to get you there!

Yin Yoga

In my last post I spoke about signing up to YogaAnytime.com and how it's been introducing me to new styles of Yoga. One style of Yoga that I have been really enjoying is Yin Yoga. I absolutely love this passive and gentle style of yoga. I tend to practice Yin in the evenings before evening meditation and/or bedtime. You use props such as bolsters, blocks and blankets to support the body in each pose so it takes away any strain from the poses making it an incredibly relaxing and peace inducing practice. I was surprised at how powerful the poses are because to look at they appear to not be doing much but the experience is entirely different. Due to being so supported in each pose you can really focus on the breath and carrying the breath to places it needs to go. I've been so inspired by Yin Yoga that I'm keen to learn how to teach this amazing style.

Yoga Anytime

For someone like me who lives in a small town and has a limited budget being able to do yoga classes at home is vital. I also need to log 150 hours of yoga for my teaching course and if this is only to be at my 1 hour weekly yoga class at my local studio I'll be qualified in about 10 years :) So I did a quick search in google for online yoga classes and that's how I found Yoga Anyime. You can sign up for a free trial and after that it's only £12 a month for a subscription which gives you access to an abundance of fantastic yoga classes.

I signed up a few weeks ago and I've already been introduced to so many new styles of yoga and teachings. The classes to choose from are vast and all the teachers are so authentic and inspiring. I honestly can't recommend this website enough. It has transformed my yoga practice and I know that it is going to be an incredible resource for me not just as a teacher but as a student. Thank you Yoga Anytime and all the amazing teachers for putting this out there.

Here are some of the classes you can choose from :)

Click here to find out more

Half Moon

I had another break through today, this time with the ever so tricky half moon pose. I don't know about you but when it gets to the part of a yoga class where you're enjoying triangle pose and then the yoga teachers says in their gentle and optimistic manor "and now we'll just gently transition in to half moon pose" I always think "Oh crap, not half moon pose". Until today this pose has just involved me shaking on one leg and then eventually falling over, I fall over a lot :) But not today! Today I was practicing from home and happily enjoying triangle pose when I decided to give half moon another try, I read something recently about avoiding the poses that you find challenging and how that's not really not a good approach, so I have been practicing half moon a lot more recently. Each time I've tried the pose, its become easier and easier to stay on one leg, I haven't attempted to get the other arm up or look up until I felt steady in the pose. Today to my surprise I felt steady and I found that shifting the weight out of your bottom hand and really lifting up through the side waste and engaging the core gave me the ability to open my chest and lift my top arm up to the ceiling, what an amazing feeling and I managed to turn my head up too.  Hurrah!

Friday mood board

 

Here's a little mood board I made on Polyvore to get you in the Yoga spirit for the weekend. To view on the website and find out where all the products are from click here. Enjoy :)

Eco friendly Yogi

There is an increasing awareness these days that Yoga is so much more than just bending your body in to complicated positions. People are starting to cotton on to the fact that it is, in fact, a way of life. As well as the physical postures, Yoga also teaches us certain principles for living in the world, principles that help take us from self-centred to other-centred. Non-harming or Ahimsa is the first of the five Yamas or principles. I've been thinking about Ahimsa a lot recently and what this means in my own life. Something that's important to me as a trainee yoga teacher is that I'm authentic and trying to practice the Yogic way of life to the best of my ability. When I first thought of non-harming I just thought of the obvious things like not stepping on insects, refraining from harsh or harmful speech, being vegetarian, and generally being kind. Recently I've had my eyes opened to lots of ethical, sustainable and organic issues and I've come to realize that these issues fall under Ahimsa. It got me thinking about the shopping choices I make with both food and fashion and how by starting to have more of an awareness of what I'm purchasing ie. where it comes from, who made it, were any animals or insects harmed or killed in the process, that this can become a daily practice of Ahimsa. It's easy to get carried away with this sort of thing and start to feel like you can't leave the house in case you harm another living thing but as one of my Buddhist teachers once said "there's a lot or room in Buddhism for common sense" and I think that's appropriate here. We live in an imperfect world and there's not always going to be a way around something but when we can make a better choice I think we should.

Here are some of the things that I'm going to do to practice Ahimsa in regards to my purchases:

1. Where possible to buy locally grown and organic produce

I'm lucky in that I have access to a local organic farmers market in Shrewsbury and can get my fruit and veg from there. I recently went to a lecture on organic superfoods (yes I know how wanky that sounds but it was great) and the woman giving the lecture mentioned how many people say to her "Oh I'm not fussed about organic, I've been eating this kind of food for years and there's nothing wrong with me". She explained that although that might be the case, our food decisions aren't just about us. Harmful pesticides don't just kill insects but can also kill small animals such as field mice and small birds and of course are harmful for the environment.



2. Continue to switch all my beauty products to ethical, organic and sustainable brands. 

To be honest I jumped on this band wagon a long time ago when I lived in Sydney and used to work for Perfect Potion. When I learned about the harmful sulphates and other toxic chemicals contained within most beauty products I was horrified, not to mention the cruelty of testing on animals. It's too expensive for me to purchase Perfect Potion products now that I'm back in the UK but luckily I have Neal's Yard Remedies. 

On this topic, if you're wanting to switch to natural and organic beauty products just make sure you read the label! There are a lot of companies out there using these buzz words like organic and natural but if you check the label they're still full of harmful crap but have just added a bit of almond oil in to the mix. If in doubt it's best to buy products that are certified organic by the soil association as this means they are at least 70% organic.

3. Continue to clothes shop in charity shops

I've shopped in charity shops ever since I can remember and its always been because I've been broke. I've often day dreamed about the day when I could afford to shop in swanky designer shops but after learning that UK consumers purchase around 1 million tonnes of clothing every year and discard roughly the same amount, I am going to continue thrifting! And besides, I love it. There's nothing more rewarding than scoring a Moschino belt for two pounds and the old dear behind the counter telling you that she thinks they might be quite a big name.

4. When the urge to purchase something new takes over, to only buy from sustainable clothing companies

Times have changed and buying sustainable, fairtrade and organic clothing no longer means that you have to dress in a hessian sack and try to make it fabulous. There are so many affordable sustainable clothing companies out there these days you don't have to choose between looking great and being eco friendly. Two of my favourite brands are People Tree and Braintree

Also, did you know that ASOS have a sustainable fashion section called the ASOS green room? And I've found some amazing organic and sustainable clothing shops on Etsy.com such as Kowtow (pictured left).




5. To switch all my house hold cleaning products to eco friendly ones

These items are no longer that hard to get hold of thanks to Oxfam. If you do a lot of washing up your skin will thank you for changing to an eco-friendly washing up liquid but you can also rest assured that you're not pouring harmful chemicals in to our water supplies. Likewise with switching to eco-friendly laundry detergent and softener.

6. To make the switch to either a moon cup or re-usable pads

Ah, the dreaded topic of how to have an eco-friendly time of the month. Ok, it's not as bad as you think! There are some amazing companies out there offering eco-friendly products such as moon cups and washable pads (sorry to any blokes who may be reading this, but we bleed, this is not new information). I'm yet to try anything but I am finding the Luna Pads wesbite very helpful.


I really hope this post inspires you and doesn't come across as me getting on my sustainable, eco-friendly high horse :) thanks for reading, XO

Almost there

I've been practicing side crow for a few months now and to be honest most of the time I just fall on my face :/ which makes me giggle and then I try again and fall on my face again! I've been focusing a lot more on upper body strength in my sequences and the other day I managed to get in to side crow and hold it for a few seconds.

In the photo you can see that my legs and feet need to come up a lot more but I'm just so chuffed to have gotten up there. I'm also aware that there are a gazilion blogs and instagram accounts with people executing perfect yoga poses so maybe this can be refreshing, I'm certainly not perfect and there are a lot of poses I can't do properly or at all but I'm learning and enjoying these small moments when you just get your feet off the ground. xo