Connect and Balance During Spring & the Upcoming Pink Supermoon

"In just-spring when the world is mud-luscious
and... puddle-wonderful"

e. e. cummings

 
In Ayurveda, every season has a dosha, or set of qualities, associated with it. Winter, governed by Vata dosha, has been cold, dry and dark. But when the sun stays around for longer, everything gets warmer and the ground begins to thaw, making mud often the first sign associated with Kapha season.  Kapha season starts out wet and cold in March and ends up wet and warm, in May and June.

And Ayurvedically, it’s been an interesting time this past month to say the least! With COVID-19 happening, we’re being told to do the opposite of what we instinctually want to do since March is early Kapha season, a time when the world is slowly coming out of hibernation, but we’re all “hunkering down”.

Yet don’t despair. The spring flowers are still poking their heads above the mud, the birds' ecstatic singing signals mating season has begun, and soon young fawns will be born. It’s also a good time to reconnect with the upcoming April’s full Pink Moon. The name Pink Moon comes from one of the first spring flowers, Wild Ground Phlox, as they cover the ground like a pink blanket

On the night of Tuesday, April 7, venture outside to catch a glimpse of April's full Pink Moon. This full Moon—which is a supermoon, the first full Moon of spring, and the Paschal Full Moon—will be visible after sunset and reach peak illumination at 10:35 P.M. EDT. We’re in a series of supermoons, which are 15% brighter than a typical moon, but this April moon will be the brightest of 2020!

And here are other ways for you to savor the beauty of the skies and the season this spring using all five senses:

Sight: See the light, make space for the light.

Shake out winter blues by letting in the light, fresh air, and de-cluttering the space(s) in your environment, mind, and body. Start by cleaning your closet and filling a donation bag with the clothes you no longer wear but just keep around in case you might want them (hint: if you haven’t worn it this winter, you likely won’t wear it next winter). Get rid of the random knickknacks around you, organize papers, and streamline your space by reducing clutter which can be stressful. Create a peaceful space with room to breathe. Clean your house with homemade concoctions including lemon and vinegar.

For your body and mind, do vigorous yoga flows such as sun salutations to create more space and cleansing that our bodies need this time of year. And for pranayama, Kapalabhati is a great antidote for seasonal allergies and mucous congestion.)

With the full super moon coming, also make sure to embrace your lunar side to with chandra namaskara, or moon salutation. The 15 steps in the sequence are here by Yoga International represent 15 tithis, or lunar days.

Taste: Lighten up and have vigilance.

In the winter months, we naturally gravitate toward sweet, sour, oily, and salty foods to mitigate the dry, light qualities of the cold (vata) season. But now we’re feeling a lot of vata going on due to recent events. Despite needing to work in more pungent, bitter, astringent, dry, and light tastes to reset the weight of heavy kapha season, both kapha and vata need warmth to keep agni going, said PYI Faculty, Ali Cramer, in her recent Kapha busting workshop via Zoom.

She recommended getting good routines established and having them not be negotiable – such as eating three meals a day, dry brushing, and exercising regularly to keep lungs healthy, and endorphins to keep depression at bay. The consistency in practice will help keep momentum and strength in our health going forward. For food, work in natural fats like avocados, drink Tulsi tea, Triphala powder in water before bed, and cook your greens like kale and collards.

Hearing: Tune in to birdsong.

Meditating in nature is a foundational practice that I follow during all seasons, but spring is one of my favorites. With flashes of color, from red cardinals, robins, and other bright winged colored birds, and the sounds of bird song, the very music and sights herald the changing season. And if you pay close attention, you can even get to know individual birds since they usually stay close to one location for the season. Re-connecting and observing individual animals in their natural habitat can also help us avoid a term called, species loneliness, which is a sense of isolation and sadness coming from human estrangement from other natural species.

Smell and Touch: Appreciate new growth and life.

As the days grow longer and warmer, this beautiful time of year inspires us to appreciate the renewal of life. Be mindful and fully take in all the new growth around you with your senses of smell and touch – touch the soft tree leaves growing, smell the spring rain, put on some gloves and dig your hands into the earth and smell the rich soil or plant early seeds, watching them grow in your windowsill.

As we all continue on this journey, say or sing a few words of gratitude, and remember to take time to pause and savor the mysteries of the moment while we watch the inner and outer blossoming of life.

For more information on yogic listening skills, consider PYI’s Sound Yoga Therapy online April 17-19, 2020, and our annual Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy Training with Ali Cramer and the PYI Yoga Therapy faculty.

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Katie Leasor is a second year Prema student and owner of Elements Yoga Therapeutics, a yoga therapy studio in Fair Haven, NJ.

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From Lip-Synching “Om” to Leading Chants: One Yogi’s Sound Therapy Journey

Music and I have always enjoyed a pretty fraught relationship.  I have long been something of a screech owl blundering amongst a watch of nightingales, forever surrounded by the musically gifted but unable to join in their chorus without causing amusement or, more often, wincing.  It’s been my dubious fortune, as someone who literally cannot sing in key, to be a kind of magnet for people with perfect pitch (although I am, at least, consistent: my college roommate—a violist— used to stare at me in a kind of appalled awe as I sang along with the radio.  “It’s uncanny,” she’d say, “you are literally always exactly a quarter step down.”)  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people express appreciation when I sing harmony on “Happy Birthday”—I’ve learned to stop telling them that I’m trying to sing the melody.

But speaking of perfect pitch, my personal euphonic albatross: do you know what percentage of the world’s population has perfect pitch?  Less than eleven percent.  Here is a partial list of the people in my life who have (or had) perfect pitch:

·      My husband
·      My best friend
·      My college roommate
·      My late father
·      My uncle
·      My paternal grandfather
·      My paternal grandmother
·      A seemingly endless parade of my students
·      You get the picture 

Music has a bit of a complicated history in my family: my father’s father, the son of a bandleader, was a ragtime piano prodigy who was forced to tour the Orpheum Circuit with his father from the age of six.  At fourteen years old he quit the band, left home, and eventually became a surgeon and, later, a psychiatrist.  He married a woman with a stunning soprano voice in the style of Jeanette MacDonald, and together they raised four children absolutely devoted to music.  My uncle is one of the very few people in the United States who has made a living playing professional tenor saxophone over the past forty years. 

Many people my age grew up with fathers obsessed with jazz, and I would stake my late father in a jazz trivia contest against any one of them—his knowledge was beyond encyclopedic, beyond obsessive—jazz was, I think, his literal best friend.  NPR’s “The Art of Jazz” played on multiple radios throughout the house every single weekend of my childhood.  My father would often interrupt me or one my sisters from our Shrinky-Dinks or Sweet Valley High books to point at the stereo demand, “Who’s that on trombone, girls?”  It was never someone easy to recognize, like Tommy Dorsey or J.J. Johnson, it was always a hard one. “You mean to say you don’t know Miff Malone when you hear him?!”  Sorry, Dad.

There was also musical talent on my mother’s side. My maternal grandfather, who died when my mother was twenty, was a classic Irish tenor—although I never met him, I have a false memory of his beautiful rendition of Danny Boy, from hearing it lovingly referenced in so many family stories. 

It probably doesn’t help that I spent three years of piano lessons practicing on an out-of-tune piano before my teacher—a local Methodist pastor’s wife whose large family definitely had use for every spare penny—told my mother that she couldn’t, in good conscience, continue to take her money.  I joined Seattle Girls’ Choir in the fifth grade and, over the course of three years, came to tower over my fellow choristers as every girl in my training choir class was promoted to the Intermediate Choir except for me.  Eventually, the choir director echoed my piano teacher in gently suggesting to my mother that I be redirected in my interests, perhaps towards watercolors, or volleyball, or ikebana, or literally anything other than music.

All of which is to say, I am not, at this point in my life, confident about my musical abilities.  While I enjoy many kinds of music deeply, and have always found music and dancing to be a direct channel to spiritual connection, I avoid singing in front of others, and freeze up instantly when a musical instrument is put in front of me.  So you can imagine my reaction upon discovering, during the first day of my Sound Therapy training at Prema Yoga Institute, that by the end of the weekend I was expected to chant while accompanying myself on the harmonium.  Outwardly, I nodded enthusiastically.  Inwardly, I panicked.

Ironically, I am not afraid to use my voice—I taught vocal technique for actors for years at various acting schools and studios in New York City, including the Musical Theatre studio at NYU, where I was, I think, the only non-singer in the building.  The technique I taught, developed by Kristin Linklater, teaches actors to undo the maladaptive muscular habits that prevent them releasing their sound fully and expressively while speaking.  The technique is often referred to a “freeing the natural voice,” and—especially in the beginning—“ugly” sound is not only allowed but actually encouraged.

But I had never encountered “ugly” sound in yoga.  At that point, the only sound I was really familiar with in the yoga world was kirtan: a division of bhakti yoga often involving melodic call-and-response chanting, generally led by a yogi playing a harmonium.  I had attended large kirtan sessions where my imperfect voice could be masked by blending into the wall of sound, and found them to be ecstatic experiences.  But the idea of leading a kirtan myself—of being responsible for the sound element of a yoga class—was beyond daunting: it seemed actually impossible.  How could I expect a class to echo my chanting when it would almost certainly be off-key?

Happily, Jessica Caplan’s sensitive, inclusive teaching gradually made me feel more confident in my ability to lead a class in chanting over the course of the weekend. She also offered a variety of non-vocal ways to include sound in my yoga experience, whether as a teacher or as part of my home practice.  I came away with a practical understanding of what had been, before, a nebulous idea of the concept of sound healing.  I learned about the bija mantras’ relationship the chakras, and how to use them effectively in sequencing a chakra-centered class or private session.  I learned about toning and humming, and how the body responds to vibration and frequency.  (A useful maxim from the manual: “Sound is organized vibration.  Thus, organized sound can organize matter.”)  I was introduced to a variety of simple but powerful musical and percussive instruments (such as singing bowls, hand drums, chimes, and rattles) that I could accumulate and practice with in order to provide, for example, a soothing sound element during savasana, or an invigorating percussive element to a chi dance.  I also learned about the history of Indian sacred music.

Most transformative were the two immersive sound baths I experienced in the training, one a standalone experience and one incorporated into one of Dana Slamp’s incomparable restorative yoga classes. I also had the opportunity to create one myself, in conjunction with two classmates.  I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything as simultaneously grounding and transporting as a sound bath conducted by Jessica Caplan.  The experience is hard to describe, and I would be lying if I said I left the class feeling as if I could instantly replicate what Jessica had created—she is, after all, a professional sound therapist.  But I did leave with confidence in the imperative of my curiosity to explore sound.  I have since started acquiring instruments to be able to create sound baths for my own students and clients, and have begun incorporating healing sound into my own yoga classes, and especially into my teaching of yoga nidra.  I can’t tell you how exciting it was to learn practical ways to begin including sound into my own teaching right away.

Another major takeaway for me was the incorporation of chanting and mantra in to my own meditation practice.  We learned several mantras and were each encouraged to select one that resonated with us and practice it for a week.  I was deeply moved by the Maha Mrityunjaya (“The Great Chant of Healing”) and continue to use it in my personal practice on a daily basis. Perhaps unsurprisingly, consistently chanting in my daily meditation practice has made me more confident in leading chants, and now I am more likely to begin or end a yoga class with Loka Samastah or Om Navah Shivaya, rather than my usual three Oms.  I use an app version of the droning chord created by a harmonium or shruti box (a sort of elementary version of a harmonium that I plan to add to my collection of instruments), so the students with better ears than mine have an accurate pitch to follow.  Surprisingly, though (to me, anyway), chanting nightly backed with an accurate drone has actually improved my relative pitch.

In PYI’s Sound Therapy training, I learned that sound itself can be therapeutic, not just what we conventionally think of as “music” or “singing”.  This was a major revelation for someone who has always thought of herself as musically challenged.  It is not an overstatement to say that the course opened new world of expression and devotion was opened to me through this course, both as a yoga teacher and as a practitioner. 

Prema Yoga Institute’s Sound Yoga Therapy Training runs from April 17th to April 19th.  More information can be found here.

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Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.

5 Yin Poses for Calm in Uncertain Times

Therapeutic yoga seeks to bring us into balance -- not only within our bodies but with the world around us. Through pranayama, asana and meditation, we find ways to balance our current internal and external states with what is needed to nourish us physically, mentally and emotionally.

So when we find ourselves in times of extreme uncertainty -- which seems to be the collective global experience these days -- therapeutic yoga is a critical tool to help with the anxiety, depression, and sedentary states that may result. One therapeutic modality to consider trying is Yin. In Yin yoga, the focus is on holding poses for long periods of time (three to five minutes) to access the connective tissue that holds our form together. By cultivating stillness in the body and mind, we are better able to counterbalance the chaos and uncertainty of the world around us.

Yin yoga can be highly beneficial to calm and balance the nervous system. Why?

●      By holding poses for an extended period, we can actually lengthen and manipulate the fascia and connective tissue, helping keep it supple and healthy, even as we age.

●      In Yin yoga, we strive to find a balance between effort and ease by stretching to about a level six out of 10 -- if level one is just lying in bed, no effort at all, and 10 is the deepest stretch you’ve ever felt, you want to be around the middle of that spectrum.

●      Finally, Yin asks us to practice with patience and respect for our bodies and minds, and to maintain a heightened state of awareness throughout the practice.

Here are five Yin poses to try to calm the anxious and unsettled mind.

1)    Caterpillar -- This is most closely related to what you may know as paschimottanasana, or a seated forward fold in a vinyasa class. Folding inward can help focus the mind and calm the nervous system.

Begin seated with your legs extended, and bring one or two bolsters on top of your thighs. Lift tall through the spine and fold over your legs, letting your chest rest on the bolsters (adjust how much support depending on where your level six is). While your vinyasa teacher might have instructed you to keep your spine long, it’s okay in this Yin pose to let the spine round, feeling a stretch across the low back. If your hamstrings are tight, you can widen your legs and bend your knees to create more space. Hold for four minutes.

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2)    Sleeping swan -- You likely know this as pigeon pose. Not only does this also serve as a forward fold, helping to instill a sense of security, but it also opens the hips, which helps release tension held in the pelvis.

Beginning on all fours, bring your left foot forward by your left hand. Walk the left foot across to the right hand, slide the right knee back until both hips reach the mat. If your left hip remains lifted, bring a blanket or bolster underneath it for support. Gently release your chest onto a bolster, releasing the upper body completely.

If this feels more intense than a level six, you can slide your left ankle back toward the left hip, creating a gentler stretch for the outer left hip.

Once comfortable, this is a great opportunity to come into meditation. Notice the temperature of your breath as it enters the nostrils, and then as it leaves the nostrils. Has the temperature changed? How about the color -- does the breath look the same on the inhale and the exhale? Continue to breathe and focus on the look or feel of the breath for four minutes on each side.

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3)    Viparita karani -- In English, this pose is known as “legs up the wall” which is about as simple an explanation as you can get. You’ll need an empty wall for this pose. To begin, bring one hip right to the wall, and swing your legs up it, lying your torso back on the ground to form a 90 degree angle. Bring a blanket underneath your skull to give it a bit of padding, and it may feel nice to bring another blanket or block to your belly to increase the feeling of groundedness. You can bring your arms to a T, above your head, to your sides, or hands can rest somewhere on your body. Hold this pose for five minutes.

This pose is especially beneficial if you’ve been on your feet all day or been traveling, as it helps reverse blood flow from the feet and bring it back to the vital organs, while gently stretching the backs of the legs.

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4)    Snail -- Begin lying on your back, with your back and shoulders on a folded up blanket, while the head neck are off of it. Lift your hps and support them with your hands. Let the feet come behind the head, taking caution to maintain plenty of space between the cervical spine and the mat. Your feet can touch the floor behind your head, although they do not need to, and can remain dangling in space. Round the spine.

Snail pose serves to release pressure on the spine, and cradle the heart, calming the nervous system in the heart space. Hold this pose for three minutes, and roll gently down to lie on the mat and let the spine neutralize.

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5)    Reclining twist -- This is a simple supine spinal twist. By nature, spinal twists can help bring equilibrium to the nervous system and release tension in the spine, while also stimulating the internal organs.

To enter, bring the knees to the left side, while twisting the upper body toward the right. Your gaze can be toward the ceiling or over the right shoulder. If you need to back off the twist a bit, a bolster under your knees and/or a blanket underneath your right shoulder can help give some extra support. Bring your left arm anywhere that feels comfortable. You can also move the knees toward or away from your head to adjust the sensation. Hold for three minutes, pause in savasana, and then repeat on the next side.  

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The next time you find yourself watching the news or scrolling through Twitter, only to find your heart begin to race and your mind begin to spiral, consider taking a few moments to practice a couple of these postures to help find calm in these uncertain times.

 References:

Paulie Zink, often referred to as the founder of Yin yoga

Videos on Yin yoga asanas, by Bernie Clark

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Hannah Slocum Darcy is a yoga teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and adaptive practice for many life stages and scenarios.