March Metabolic and Meditative Resets
Yoga Therapy for Metabolic Health
Success in Yoga necessitates that its technologies be applied according to the season of the year and the season of your life. The fresh start we need to emerge from this freezing season starts with a brightening of the winter-weathered mind and a boost to the metabolic system - that which governs digestion, detoxification, hormone levels, weight, temperature and energy levels.
While everyone else is ramping up cardio and fad diets, try something ancient and novel, by today's standards. Yoga's contribution to improved metabolism takes an entirely different, sustainable, progressive approach - one we'll introduce to you for this inspiring late winter/early spring reset.
Shedding physical and mental weight via Yoga's lens requires a new way of conceptualizing our problem: our proverbial cups are too full. We can’t fill a full cup, and original Yoga knows and runs out that premise. Similarly, adding more water to a clogged drain doesn’t mean it will drain. It will pool and run off.
The vicious cycle of stress and its detrimental impact on the mind and body, including weight gain, has been well-studied. The impact of trying circumstances on our mind not only causes mental stress, anxiety and depression, but a cascade of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that lead us to make poor food and lifestyle choices, to feel guilt about these, to weaken our self esteem and sense of agency in the course of our lives.
Stimulating practices may take our mind off our problems, but they don’t take our problems off of our mind. Calming, eliminative ones do. Through practices that enhance our exhale component, stress and heaviness are literally escorted out of our systems. The sense of stress and turmoil is temporarily alleviated, a significant task, one that Yoga was developed to encourage. New patterns of lightness emerge as this category of practice reduces the mental load for a time, and in doing so, resets our hormonal system to encourage parasympathetic nervous system response, or the rest and digest state. Here, energy is diverted toward digestion and metabolism, increasing the flow of digestive juices, including insulin. Proper absorption is encouraged and elimination and efficient waste removal become the norm. When we do this enough, we cultivate a new pattern of calmer-ness, lightness and hope for a brighter, self-empoewred future.
In March, offload winter with the bottom up approach, taking care of the body to influence your state of mind, with our Yoga Therapy for Healthy Metabolism course. In addition, explore March Meditation as a top down approach, honing the mental acuity to influence your physiology. Combined, you’ll thrive as spring begins to bloom.