July Theme: Break Through to the Other Side! Double Challenge classes
Summer is in full force!
This has always been my favorite season. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest I loved climbing cedar trees, jumping into the crisp Puget Sound, going barefoot as long as I could, bicycling across the island I grew up on to meet up with friends for days we spent outdoors from sun up to sun down.
It is a season to embrace our physicality, our spontaneity, our agility, our connection to the natural world, to challenge ourselves, play hard in the heat of the day so we can sleep like a baby under the summer moon beams. Open to the radiant, abundant, plentiful, and playful summer energy. Like opening your mouth for a plump sun-ripened blackberry, opening ever skin cell for a plunge into the pool, opening your arms to dance in a warm summer downpour, allow yourself to open to the vibrant pulse of the summer season and let it move through you.
In the Sunday Yoga Church Zoom Room this month classes have a simple and straightforward plan: We will start strong, simple, efficient, and build up two peak cardiovascular, strength, or endurance walls to break through. Bring a towel to mop up the sweat - we will plan for a strong, joyful, playful flow. Meet yourself as you are in the hot seat of your own challenges. When you break through these walls you come out to the other side a different person. Anything seems possible! You unlock that inner chocolate, the swirl of exercise endorphins through your cells that makes you feel powerful, calm, connected. Think 2 minute forearm planks, yoga burpees, mountain climbers, squat walks, and the like. These challenges will be super accessible for all levels and surefire ways to cultivate Tapas, the friction, the purifying fire of pushing through the mentally perceived obstacles and debris of self doubt, inner criticism, or general spacing out to get into the present.
Once you have made it through these two well - spaced power sets, you will really feel like anything is possible - that tough conversation, that task you have beens setting aside and avoiding, trusting yourself to follow your gut, to open to all the beauty that the day or week may bring ahead. You will emerge softer, kinder, less critical, more connected, more generous. Like sea glass tossed by the ocean waves, you will lose your hard edges. It is good for your muscles, your heart, your lungs, your joints to challenge yourself in this way but I also think it is good for your nervous system, your relationships, your wisdom and compassion.
Once we have lathered up a good sweat and got ourselves moving, we are primed for deeper poses. This month we will also be sure to visit the hamstrings, adductors, and inner thighs - balancing the vibrant yang energy of summer by opening, mobilizing, and releasing the inseams of the legs to soften our roots, quiet 0ur minds (and summer hotheads!), and connect into the yin meridians of the inner legs. Good for all your summer cycling, swimming, hiking legs.
Stay playful. Stay juicy. Stay curious.
It’s going to be amazing! See you there, my Dear Ones.