Engage Your Inner Warrior: Standing in Balance

Many of us are entering this new year shedding off the old.  The dust is finally settling and it is time for us to move into greater states of connection with what we want from life.  So, here are a few questions to sit with:  What do you want from life?  What are you doing to achieve it?  What is your resistance to making these desires manifest?

As we move into this new year I want to bring a bit of warrior energy into our practice.  In yoga, warrior postures take us into places of strength, balance, focus.   I will however point out that too often we hold these posture with too much rigidity.  Warriors have to be flexible, they have to move with the elements, with life itself.   Engaging the practice of asana work helps us to embody the warrior.  When we move our bodies into a posture that represents our warrior nature we are calling that force into all of our parts.

Here is a quick and simple mediation that you can do to help you find balance.

Warrior 2-

Step one leg forward into a lunge.  Your back foot is at a slight 45 degree angle.  Your front knee is either above the ankle or slightly behind.  You can lessen the intensity of the lunge depending on your fitness level.  Your hips are turned outward.  One hand is moving forward, the other back.  Look forward and back and your hands should be aligned through the center plane.  Here is a video to help work your into the posture:

Once in the poster here is a meditation to help you get the most from the power of this posture:

This warrior posture represents standing in the center.  Being fully in balance and in control of our experience.

STR_Warr2

While standing in warrior two, listen to your body.   Where is your mind drifiting?  How does your body feel standing in the posture, do you feel strong, weak, small, big?  Sit with these thoughts as they come up.   Where do you need warrior energy in your life?

Now shift your focus to the rear hand:

STR_Warr2

What in your past is still binding you?   Do you find yourself drifting through the your past?   Where do you feel that you need balance in your past experience?   Send light and energy through your fingertips to those areas of your life.

Now Take your focus to the front hand:

STR_Warr2

Where in your current experience do you feel bound?  What do you feel about your future, does it bring fear or joy?   Where in your current experience do you need energy, balance, strength?  Send energy through your fingertips to those parts of your life that need it?

Switch sides and do the same thing with the opposite side forward.  This becomes a practice of balancing our bodies and engaging the mind/body/ and spirit connection.   After you do this practice, take a few moments to journal your experience.  What thoughts came to mind?  What came up for you?  Do you feel powerful, do you feel like a warrior?  If not, touch the solar plexus, ask the body what it needs in order to bring that energy into your life?

Blessed be warriors!   Practice, connect, love, and stand in your power!

and remember… You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Michael A. Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

www.facebook.com/yogawitch

www.michaelbrazell.com

www.soulinteraction.com

theyogawitch@gmail.com

Daily Practice Minute: Look Up

147943431_730b0c3b62Daily practice is essential to opening our spiritual lives.  Each week I’ll give you an exercise that you can use to establish a practice, or that you can integrate into a current practice.  Some of these will be simple and quick, and others will be designed to take you a bit deeper into your practice.

Many moons ago I use to be a Navy Instructor.  Each week my students would have to take tests on the knowledge they had learned during the week.  Coming into the Navy from civilian life was not an easy next step and there was a lot to absorb in a short amount of time.   During the tests I’d see them struggling, and crinkling their brows.  I remember telling them “Look up for inspiration and not Down in desperation.”

Fast forward to now.  Stepping from the mundane world into the spiritual world has the same effect.  There is so much to absorb and often it can become overwhelming… not to mention that life itself can at times feel overwhelming.

Looking down is typically a sign of worry.  Our minds become heavy and we forget to look up.  Looking up does a lot more than take our eyes to the sky.  We we look up our heart center opens to sky.  Hunched postures are locked postures.  Heart center is a posture of surrendering upward.  When our spines are aligned energy can move through us a bit more freely.

Place your hand on your heart center.  Look down, now look up.  Feel how your heart rises to the sky, or compresses into your center.

How often do you notice the tops of the trees on your walks?

Take a deep breath deep.  Look up.  Surrender your heart center to the sky, to the divine, to your breath.

You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Michael Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

www.michaelbrazell.com