Now check out the flow of thoughts moving through your mind. Do you have a perpetual to-do list? Are you rehashing some conversation or planning the future? Are you spacing out, or do you feel sharp and clear? Try not to make judgments—simply observe. As certain thoughts come, is there a physical response in your body or your breath?
Next, place one hand on your heart. Take a moment to feel the beating of your physical heart, your chest rising and falling with your breath. Let your awareness settle into its rhythm, then drop your attention in a little deeper, sensing the emotional heart. Is there sadness, joy, or anxiety?
Make note of the relationship between your emotional state and your breath, between your feelings and your physical body. Finally, feel all of these dimensions at once: physical, energetic, mental, and emotional. Notice the part of you that is observing—your unchanging awareness.
Now rest in this spacious awareness. Remember, your observations may change from day to day, depending on the hour, your schedule, and all of the other variables that affect your energy and mood.
If you observed that your breathing was labored, your mind dull, and your heart heavy, try an energizing practice. Was your breathing rapid, your mind racing, and your body tense? Then a calming practice might be most appropriate. Feeling scattered and disoriented? A focusing practice can help you come into balance.
It gives the practitioner the opportunity to rest in awareness. Physical movement such a a sport, dance, walking running or cleaning. This can easily trip the brain into a trance as the potential brainwaves fire every 90 seconds. Focus on the breath coming in and out of the nostrils paying close attention to the quality of the air across the inside front edges of the nostrils. People often confuse the gateways and triggers to help get into meditation as the act of meditating. When the body finds the state of meditation and is in need of sleep—it usually sleeps.
Let it! This is very rejuvenative! Guided Meditation is a great choice to help the body relax which in turn allows the mind to relax. And I've gotta tell you, at the risk of sounding woo-woo, I've had a LOT of really incredible revelations during Savasana. I call them my "yoga epiphanies," and they have actually become a big part of both my creative process and my spiritual one.
Creatively: When I find myself stuck in the midst of a creative project, my practice is the best way I know of to get my creative juices flowing again. What I usually do is start with a brain dump - for instance, if I'm trying to come up with a name for something, I'll just write a list of every single word or phrase that is somehow relevant to the thing I'm trying to name.
Then I put the list down, and go practice. Without fail, during Savasana if not sooner , at least one awesome idea will appear. I kid you not, this is exactly how I came up with the name for my Sanctuary retail line.
Spiritually: When I have a question in life, or am struggling with something specific, I come to the mat and set my intention around that.
And without fail, every single time, I achieve some kind of new clarity around that question or struggle. Sometimes the answer appears, clear as day. Sometimes, it's just the next step that's revealed to me. Either way, I am somehow moved forward in my journey.
But it's not always fun and clarity and new ideas. If you've got something heavy going on in your life, chances are that it will get stirred up in Savasana or possibly even while you're still in the midst of your practice.
Whether it's because you've been in denial, too afraid to face it, or just too busy to even realize these feelings were happening deep inside of you And sometimes, the view ain't so pretty. But that's ok. It may be ugly, but it's important. It's there whether you face it or not, and the sooner you face it, the sooner you'll be able to get past it.
In the words of Robert Frost: "The best way out is through.
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