A new year, a new blog!

Happy New Year!! We offer to you some yogic practices for enhancing your life this year:

Yoga Off the Mat: Practicing yoga in your daily life includes how you relate to yourself, to others, and to the planet. With the symbolic time of this "New Year," we can bring our yoga off the mat by taking the opportunity to reflect on the past and to set conscious intentions for the future.
To bring consciousness/awareness to your life is a central element of yogic practice. For me, I notice where I hold myself back with limiting beliefs and habits. I may tell myself I'm not good enough or that things aren't going right. Then, when I remember the Tantric teachings, I ask myself, "says who?" These teachings remind us that we are limitless, perfect and supremely intelligent. They tell us that we already have everything we need to flourish. We need only remember this truth and open to the abundant offerings of Grace, to see the perfection and beauty in ourselves and in the unfolding of each moment.

A New Year's Ritual: Make a list of any habits, burdens, beliefs, or attitudes that no longer serve you that you would like to release from your life. They are like stuck energy inside blocking your experience of inner freedom. On a separate piece of paper, write a list of new habits, beliefs and attitudes you would you like to magnify in the new year. Then make a simple affirmation summarizing each list. "I release insecurities and fear. I live with compassion, faith, and abundant joy." Build a fire and as you remember your affirmation for the first list, repeat the word "svaha!" three times, throwing the list into the fire. Watch it burn into oblivion, symbolizing the dissipation of this stuck inner energy. Do the same for the second list, offering your wishes into the fire to be taken up like a prayer of smoke to some higher spirit. Remember that you can continue to use your affirmations by visualizing a fire of transformation each time you find yourself stuck in limiting thoughts. ("Svaha," an ancient Sanskrit term of renunciation, is traditionally uttered with the gesture of making offerings in a fire ritual).

Thanks for all of your heart-filled offerings to us each year!

May your year be full of sweetness, beauty and joy!