Proud Warrior practices with the message of Ahimsa

Transcript

hello I'm Cheryl Woolever with Susan weeds wisewoman forum I'm creator of yoga legends which are stories that connect the yoga poses but today I would like to speak about yoga being more than just the asana the poses the vinyasa that we do Yoga is an eight limbed philosophy or practice and the very first limb of yoga is called the Hamas or Yama's and the very first one of the Yama's is called ahimsa and ahimsa is a Sanskrit word that means to do no harm or non harming and if you take a hem saw into a group of students or people and ask them what no harm means it becomes a very big subject and it's wonderful so hopefully you get the chance to do that sometime but I would like to bring the practice of ahimsa into the yoga class today and remind us that when we are not feeling well when we have a virus or a flu of bronchitis some type of an illness to please stay home last month last March I experienced this one of my students was coming into the class and wasn't feeling well and I didn't actually pick up on it right away but shortly afterwards I caught it and it has literally been the last month that I've been dealing with us and I still can't laugh oh my god again laugh because when I start to laugh sometimes I'll cough but I'm getting much better and for about three days I was literally in bed and then when I started to feel better I was thinking well I can go to work I am feeling better now and in my ego was doing all this well your students and your depend on you and you need to make money and the ego was doing this huge promising but at the end I chose to stay home and take care of myself and protect others so I practiced him saw in in the whole practice of yoga which it was very challenging at times and I am beautiful at the end for sure but when we're not feeling well we still need to have a little bit of the movement so I chose to practice virabhadrasana two throughout this illness which is the proud warrior or the proud warrioress because I felt I'm going to conquer this virus even though at times it made me surrender to it but we'll start in the center of the mat we take the feet wide as we comfortably can because when we're not feeling well things do not move the same and the breath does not move the same either but we're going to take the legs as wide as we can come up onto the heel pivot around and as we pivot the foot forward we're going to remind ourselves today in practicing verb Atrocitus to to keep the pubic bone and a sternum forward through this movement we take the arms out to the sides and when we lift our arms this helps to move the lip through through the body this is something we want to do very gently when we're not feeling well we turn our face so that the chin looks out over the shoulder the eyes gaze out into the horizon and into the future this is where our mind takes us we're going to get better things are going to change bending the front knee and remember right now we're just in the beginning so the knee might not bend quite so much we're just getting a muscle memory going here shoulders down away from the ears we're going to straighten the foot come up on to the heel and as we pivot around to the other side today we're going to remind ourselves about the pubic bone and the sternum staying forward again the face looks out over the fingers the future the horizon and a chin over the shoulder now one thing I see in practicing this veerbhadra sin tattoo is a lot of times shoulders will kind of shrug forward like this so we want to remind ourselves to keep the shoulders back and down away from the ears coming up onto the heel we're ready to pivot around and that means we're going to try and keep the sternum forward it's quite challenging and difficult but the movement is slow and gentle and actually quite beautiful breathing in and now of course you'll stay where you want to stay you know with your breath and how you're feeling it's your own practice coming down for if the arms get tired be sure and drop them down before you bring them back up again and we work into these poses gently slowly with some thought and intention as I'm going to move through whatever this is and then there's time so we're not feeling well of course we go back and we just kind of surrender into it and we rest and we lay out and take care of ourselves I was fortunate enough during this time to use Susan weeds herbal wisdoms because throughout the year I I make honey elderberry honey and different things to protect and keep my immune system strong because you go through all these different phases within an illness and so my heart goes out to Susan weed for sharing these wisdoms with us and making our own medicine but please take care of yourself and do no harm to yourself or others namaste oceans and mountains of peace you