"There's no place like your yoga mat..."
We're in the sweet spot between endings and beginnings. It's a time of letting go, a time of reflection, a time of hope and dreams for the future. Yep, I get all sappy around the holidays, and especially during this in-between time. It's been an Upward Dog kind of year for me -- that feeling of heart-opening expansiveness and joy. Of course I've had some hiding in Child's Pose moments and some Wild Thing moments and plenty of Warrior 1 moments with a few flat out in Savasana moments thrown into the mix.
What yoga pose best describes the year of 2014 for you?
What pose are you choosing to embody for 2015?
Right about now you're probably getting inundated with directives to set up goals for the upcoming year, to create a list of resolutions, to make up a vision board of desires for 2015...yeah, I'm not going to tell you to do that. Hell, no! I could give a Downward Dog about any of those things. Here's what I do around this time of the year:
--I get into some sort of comfy supported posture (think lots of bolsters and a nice warm blanket) and reflect back on the past year and celebrate my victories, love up everything that transpired, say yes to what (re: everything) occurred and say thank you for a year of the miracle that is life.
--I put on some music and move it through my body -- for me this usually means a mix of movement and yoga postures.
--I turn off the music and sit in stillness. I open my heart and tap into how I want to feel in the New Year. I spend a good 15-20 minutes marinating myself in these feelings. I don't necessarily attach certain outcomes or get very specific about what, in particular, shows up in regards to the feelings -- I just get into the feeling of it all.
--I end my marination by writing down the key feelings for the coming year and then I attach a yoga posture to each one. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how various yoga postures make me feel and then I choose the postures that best represent the feelings on my list.
--I spend some time in each yoga posture marinating on the feeling that I want to embody. I hang out in the posture until I really feel it in my body. Sometimes I'll match up some visions with the posture to really juice up the feeling.
--I use the postures as touchstones for the whole of the New Year to bring myself back to the feeling that I desire to hold.
And that, my friends, is New Year "planning" the yogic way. I believe that focusing on the feelings rather than the hows, the details, the plans, opens us up for magic and all of the miracles that follow.
Here's to a New Year filled with magic, unexpected suprises and delights, love, possibilities, miracles, joy, and feelings coming into form. Bon voyage 2014 and welcome 2015!
Namaste!
P.S. Yogatrail.com is conducting a World Yoga Survey to paint a picture (perhaps literally, as they will be sharing the results possibly in infographic form at some point in the new year) of how we practice, why we practice, where we practice, and what we practice. You can take the survey here.
