🌷Spring Yoga Practice
Affirmations + a seed-flower yoga flow to welcome spring
Happy Spring! Tuesday, March 19 honors the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. I love watching the purples, pinks, and yellows pop up out of the brown, muddy earth this time of year.
In this season of transition from the darkness of winter to the brightness of spring I invite you to be gentle with yourself. In the February Full Moon Yoga class I encouraged restraint even though the signs of spring were already apparent. Now that spring has arrived, it’s time to start opening back up to the world. But this is also a delicate season that requires careful attention to the outward pull. Symptoms of mental illness, manic episodes, and suicides peak in the springtime for susceptible individuals, and though researchers are unsure why this happens, some scientists believe that the increase in sunlight and its affect on circadian rhythm are a major factor.1
Enjoy the sun and the colors, the flowers and the breeze, your friends and springtime activities. But don’t forget to come back inside and tend to your energy. Protect the tenderness and vulnerability of this season. The beautiful blooming flowers outside your front door have bold, immaculate petals that are also fragile to the elements. Yet, their roots and resolve remain strong and protected buried in the earth. These seeds lie in waiting to grace you with their beauty for a short period of time each year when the conditions are just right. Creative energy functions similarly. Strong roots wait within for the right conditions to blossom forth. Then you must come back inside to regather strength. Recharge, rest, and start the cycle all over so that next spring you can bloom again.
Follow the lead of your own energy. Go do your spring cleaning if you feel called to, but then give yourself the gift of rest. Celebrate with long hikes, hours in the garden, or dinners on the patio, but don’t forget to come back inside and regenerate. It’s easier to rest in the winter when the cold keeps you inside craving cozy blankets. But in the spring, the tendency is to get back out into the world with a giant hurrah! Do that. Have fun. Welcome the sun’s warming rays and vow to fiercely protect your energy. Don’t forget to rest.
Women are the caretakers. We are the sunshine for our children, the water for our partners, the earth for our family, and the air for our village. But we also need to be nourished. So give freely and reserve a little energy for your own care. You don't have to say yes to every invitation. You don’t have to go to every t-ball practice and soccer game. You don’t have to make every meal. Make sure you can sustain this spring energy into June and beyond.
The cycle of growth requires both outward activity and inward rest. You can’t just go, go, go, grow, grow, grow, without rest, rest, rest. Otherwise you die out. Death is part of the cycle too, the trick is in the timing. Your creative projects and personal energy will peak, dip, die, and be reborn. Rather than holding on to something that is no longer giving you what you need, let go, rest and reflect, and allow yourself to be reborn again and again and again. This is the power of living in cycles, which is the most feminine form of living. You can fight it because society likes straight lines or you can own it, harness it, and watch as your life flourishes because you are living in tune with your own natural rhythms and the natural rhythms of Mother Nature.
Spring affirmations
In your yoga practice this week, play with these affirmations:
regenerate
transform
rebirth
Try it out:
“I am regenerating.”
“I am transforming.”
“I am reborn.”
How does that feel?
Spring yoga practice: the seed-flower sequence
This simple sequence from Uma Dinsmore Tulli’s Yoni Shakti: A Woman’s Guide to Power and Freedom through Yoga and Tantra takes you on a journey from seed to flower and back to seed, just like the cycle of life, the cycle of spring, the cycle of creativity, and the cycle of being a beautiful and imperfect human.
Happy Spring!
Let’s chat in the comments:
You can also just hit reply and send me an email with your thoughts 🙂
What is your favorite part of spring?
What do you notice about your personal energy now that Spring has arrived?
How is your yoga practice shifting now that Spring is here? Let me know if you like the Seed-Flower Flow!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5900367/
I really loved this practice so powerful and poetic. Thank you for sharing !