Hello Lovely Creators!
So I’m writing this having had way too much good coffee ergo you may have to excuse my super excitedness (WordPress tells me that isn’t a word but I don’t care) at life in general.
Anyhoo…
Today I thought I’d do something different. Initially I was thinking I’d do a great showcase piece introducing the Sun Salutations (Surya Namaskar), with graceful movements and easy looking stretches.
Then I realised something. I am not that flexible. Yes I can warm up lots before and film something where I look quite good, but that wouldn’t be real. And it wouldn’t be me.
You see, I talk a lot about yoga here, but I am not the same yogi as the ones you find on Instrgram (Kristen Noelle, Laura, Naya, Kerri Verna, Nightmare Tales etc). These people are INCREDIBLE Ashtanga Yogis and I love following them.
I, on the other hand, am not a hatha or Ashtanga Vinyasa yogi. I am a spiritual yogi. Yes, I do the physical practice, but I am Vata with a touch of Pita (air and fire dosha or consitution) so if I were to push my body physically like that I would end up suffering. I work better with gentle, balancing and grounding postures like Tree or Triangle (the ones where you don’t stick you leg over your head).
When I talk about my yoga practice, I mean I try and do 15-20mins each day of a physical nature to keep my body moving, but my main focus is the yoga lifestyle. By this I mean that I try to embody the yogic values of karma. I’m vegetarian, I try to be nice to people, I am conscious of the universe and my intrinsic connection to it and I try to stay mindful and present at all times. I seek to be honest with myself and others.
All that being said, I used the word try a lot in that last paragraph. That’s because I’m not perfect and I’m not an expert and I’m still learning.
That’s very important. An ex used to accuse me of being fake because I got stressed sometimes. Apparently because I called myself a yogi I should be completely chilled and zen the whole time.
Well that used to piss me right off!
Obviously he was wrong (very unyogic statement). If you want to try yoga, try it. You don’t have to be good at it, you don’t even have to be better than yesterday. You just have to want it.
So in the video below I’m showing you the basic ‘warm up’ for yogis. It’s a vinyasa (flow of postures from one to the next) and stretches all the major muscle groups. As the name suggests, it was designed as a form of thanks for the sun rising every morning and giving life to Earth.
You will notice that, without warming up first, I struggle to touch my toes and my stretches seem stiff. This is me being honest and true with you. I could have done a few first before filming and presented a better image of myself but it wouldn’t have shown the real me or what my Hatha practice looks like.
Humility is important in yoga. So I humbly offer you this video in the hope it will encourage you to be true to yourself too.
If you like it let me know and I can post more!
P.S. Unfortunately, I stupidly recorded this on an HD camera then really struggled to edit it in to any sort of decent format, so the quality is pretty shocking, for which I apologise however, you’ll get the idea and I will just record on my iPhone in future (it zoomed in when I switched to video mode and I didn’t fit in the screen anymore 🙁 ).
Yoga Sun Salutations (cold) / Surya Namaskara from Emma Brooke on Vimeo.