Soar to Success May 2019

you attend a beginning class, don’t try to start at an accelerated level.” With the physical practice of yoga, it’s truly not about getting a pose perfect or the practice getting harder and harder as you progress. The goal is to ߑ QG WKH ULJKW VW\OH DQG OHYHO WKDW VXLWV WKH QHHGV RI each person’s individual constitution, their lifestyle and their goals. “Yoga is really about the mind. How can we do things to positively affect our mind to clear the clutter to eradicate stress and tension within the body.” A regular Yoga practice will strengthen and stretch the body releasing chronic tension in the muscles and fascia. It will also regulate the nervous system and turn off the stress response. Once this is done then the nervous system has the ability to regulate all of the other systems of the body so that the body can heal and recover and come into a state of health. Freia Recommends a Daily Routine Anyone Can Do ,W ڕ V VR LPSRUWDQW WR ߑ QG D PLQXWH URXWLQH WKDW \RX can do both in the morning and at night. According to Freia, it doesn’t have to be an hour, which would be great, but 10 minutes is all that some people can commit to doing consistently. She recommends three stretches so that you move your spine in the six directions that it can go and then right before bed, do three other movements, so you move again in the six directions. With these exercises you’re at least keeping your spine supple. During the day try some back bends to counter all the forward folding we do. It could be a big backbend, but it doesn’t have to be. Freia suggests WKDW \RX OD\ RQ \RXU EDFN RQ WKH ߒ RRU DQG WKHQ SXW a little towel roll under the back of your hips and pelvis and rest on that to give you a gentle back bend. Another integral piece of a daily routine is to breathe. Simply set your alarm on your phone IRU WKUHH WLPHV GXULQJ WKH GD\ DQG WDNH ߑ YH GHHS breaths. Focus on the exhalation more than the inhalation because you must get the stale air out before you can get fresh air in, otherwise there’s no place for it to go. Exhaling slowly and deeply slows down your brain waves and calms your nervous system. Then the piece that Freia does even when she doesn’t do anything else, is a daily yoga Nidra practice; this is a type of meditation that translates as yoga sleep. Basically, it’s a guided meditation, where you go through different points of the body and as you pay attention to the different areas, you systematically release and relax your muscles and the corresponding parts in your brain. It is important to remind the mind how to turn off the stress response. We need to re-establish a non-stress baseline. When the stress response is constantly triggered, the body forgets how to turn it off and it becomes the new normal. That is