Downward Facing Dog – Youtube Yoga Practice

The Dog by Picasso

Silent Moon - How can we find silent time to restore and regenerate our enthusiasm for our lives/work/relationships? ~ CAYA's Full Moon Questions.

When the breathe wanders the mind is unsteady.  But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life.  Therefore, one should learn to control the breath. ~ Hatha Yoga Pradipika

I would like for people to realize that yoga is not about touching your toes. ~ Gary Kraftsow

Yoga has a sly, clever way of short-circuiting the mental patterns that cause anxiety. ~ Baxter Bell, quoted in "Worry Thwarts," Yoga Journal, March 2006

The first time I heard “Rest in Downward Facing Dog,” I turned towards my friend (the one who talked me into coming to this free yoga class) and smirked.  It was a “Now I heard everything” smirk while holding back a big belly laugh that would ultimately cause me to land on my head in this position.  Looking around, I could tell everyone in this class was very serious resting in their inverted “V” poses.  This only made me want to giggle more.  How could you be serious in this pose – bum pushed up into the air while you are looking at your feet?  And, rest?  Hello - my arms were killing me.

Yet, Yoga and energy work has somehow managed to weave in and out of my life since that 1988 class. 

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Adho Mukha Svanasana (AH-doh MOO-kah shvah-NAHS-anna)adho = downward, mukha = face, svana = dog

Benefits

•Calms the brain and helps relieve stress and mild depression

•Energizes the body

•Stretches the shoulders, hamstrings, calves, arches, and hands

•Strengthens the arms and legs

•Helps relieve the symptoms of menopause

•Relieves menstrual discomfort when done with head supported

•Helps prevent osteoporosis

•Improves digestion

•Relieves headache, insomnia, back pain, and fatigue

•Therapeutic for high blood pressure, asthma, flat feet, sciatica, sinusitis

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As I’ve spoken before, our bodies are made up of energy that vibrates (science speak – partical energy theory). Many people are familiar with chakras, but there are also many more energy layers that make up our bodies.  Even our physical form that you can touch is an energetic body (science speak - its molecules move around at low energy.)  These individual energy layers don’t work in solo by themselves.  They’re interconnected and working in concert together.

If you injure your physical body, the others will be affected.  When I broke my ankle, I found it so easy to get caught up in healing the physical.  For example, I went to the emergency room and got a cast, had to navigate stairs and doorways for 8 weeks, taking a bath with a garbage bag was.... – I didn't even consider the other layers in my treatment plan.   

The same can be said about negative thoughts, emotions or habits.  We may stop or change them, but energetically speaking they’ve been imprinted on the body.  They are in our muscle memories.  Again, each energy body needs to also be healed in order for the habit to be permanent. 

Bodywork like Yoga is a great way to integrate healing throughout the energy levels.  I think of Yoga or Qigong working like oatmeal does for the digestive system.  The poses or movements unclogs and scrubs out the places where energy is stuck.

Why is this important?

Magical living is about working with energy.  If I have stuck places like stress pain in my neck and shoulder it makes it hard to concentrate on what I’m trying to manifest.  I become so focus on the pain that my energy is diverted between two places – what I'm trying to create and that “pain.”  My craftiness becomes not so perfect: the lemon happiness cookies burn or taste odd, the healing candle for a friend becomes more about me and I have to rip out many rows of stitches. 

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There is no excuse for not doing bodywork.  Thanks to modern techology you can do Yoga or Qigong at your home via Youtube.  Start off with something gentle like Hatha Yoga.  There  is no Olympic medals in this practice.  Turn off the competition - yoga is about being present in the moment without judgement.  It is accepting where your temple body is at each day.