Spring Cleaning

“Be melting snow.  Wash yourself of yourself.” ~~ Rumi

Photo Courtesy of http://www.wrighthomes.com/spring-cleaning-new-homes-utah/

This week will mark the official beginning of the Spring season, and I can’t wait! Though I get miserable hay fever, I love this time of year. To see the trees and flowers blooming, the air warming up and smelling so crisp, all the people enjoying the outdoors — it makes me happy! Everything is thawing and softening, which is something we need to remember to bring in to our yoga practice.

In order to encourage softening all the tight and frozen parts of our bodies, we need to make sure to include poses in our practice that deeply stretch the muscles and encourage releasing tension. I always use the last part of my classes for these types of poses, so we’ll be continuing to do that this week. We’ll be including such poses as Pigeon, Reclining Big Toe Pose, Knee Up the Wall Pose, and Camel Pose among others. For any deep stretch we focus on, I encourage you to focus on letting go of the tension and tightness in the areas we’re working, allowing the body to soften and warm, just as the earth does when spring arrives each year.

When we can do this, we may find that this spills into our minds as well. If you’ve been feeling stagnant or “frozen” in certain areas of your life lately, then see if you can take this same concept of softening and warming, and apply it to your way of thinking. Open yourself to new possibilities and see what happens.

These past couple of weeks have been amazing for me in a variety of ways, and I am convinced it’s because I’m finally allowing myself to be a little more adventurous and open to taking some chances. I’ve been complaining for years about certain areas of my life, but when I started really thinking it through recently, I realized I was doing things the same way I’ve always done them. Staying in my comfort zone. But these past couple of weeks, I’ve changed things up in a few areas, and though it was scary, it was SO rewarding. Some of the things I tried turned out better than I’d hoped, some made me realize I’ve got more work to do, and others were a complete failure. But that’s OK. It’s the only way for me to grow. And I know that in the end, I’ll be able to say, “At least I gave it a go.”

So what about you? Let’s use this time of year to be like melting snow. Let’s thaw ourselves out, and see how we flow.

Namaste,

Melanie