YOUR FREE PRACTICE
Hibernation Somatics- can I do less?
Hibernation Somatics- can I do less?
This practice was part of our ongoing Slow Winter Morning series.
If anyone still wants to join the livestreams (held 8am on Thursday mornings in Dec and Jan) or have access to the downloadable recordings, get in touch!
PROPS: blanket over yoga mat, options bolster/folded blanket
I keep coming back, year after year, to something my Restorative Yoga teacher Judith Lasater said now over a decade ago:
"I know I can do more, but can I do less".
What if that is your guiding north star throughout the practice - how would you move, what would you choose, what would you leave out?
This session goes through a somatic movement that Tias Little coined "Unwinding". The rotational spiralling movements serve as a potent release and a way to unwind, but also a way to revitalise and hydrate our tissues.
At the end of the class, leading up to a meditation or restorative pose, I share parts of a quote by Frances Weller, but here is the whole thing:
"We have entered a prolonged season of descent, taking us down into the unknown. In the imagery of myth and fairy tales, we have left the ordinary world and have entered the underworld, a sightless terrain that is shadowy and strange. I have come to call this time of descent the Long Dark. It may be a few generations before we see the farther shore of this crisis if we make it. I say this not with a note of despair, or with an attitude of hopelessness, but, instead, recognizing and valuing the necessary work that takes place in the dark.
It is the realm of soul—of whispers and dreams, mystery and imagination, death and ancestors. It is an essential territory, both inevitable and required, offering a form of soul gestation that may gradually give shape to our deeper lives, personally and communally. Certain things can happen only in this grotto of darkness. Think of the wild network of roots and microbes, mycelium, and minerals, making possible all that we see in the day world, or the extensive networks within our own bodies, bringing blood, nutrients, oxygen, and thought to our corporeal lives. All of it happening in the darkness.
The requirements for this time are not the familiar ones of achievement and growth, clarity and power. No, this season is asking for a new rhythm, one that is more attuned to humility and listening, stillness and rest."
If anyone still wants to join the livestreams (held 8am on Thursday mornings in Dec and Jan) or have access to the downloadable recordings, get in touch!
PROPS: blanket over yoga mat, options bolster/folded blanket
I keep coming back, year after year, to something my Restorative Yoga teacher Judith Lasater said now over a decade ago:
"I know I can do more, but can I do less".
What if that is your guiding north star throughout the practice - how would you move, what would you choose, what would you leave out?
This session goes through a somatic movement that Tias Little coined "Unwinding". The rotational spiralling movements serve as a potent release and a way to unwind, but also a way to revitalise and hydrate our tissues.
At the end of the class, leading up to a meditation or restorative pose, I share parts of a quote by Frances Weller, but here is the whole thing:
"We have entered a prolonged season of descent, taking us down into the unknown. In the imagery of myth and fairy tales, we have left the ordinary world and have entered the underworld, a sightless terrain that is shadowy and strange. I have come to call this time of descent the Long Dark. It may be a few generations before we see the farther shore of this crisis if we make it. I say this not with a note of despair, or with an attitude of hopelessness, but, instead, recognizing and valuing the necessary work that takes place in the dark.
It is the realm of soul—of whispers and dreams, mystery and imagination, death and ancestors. It is an essential territory, both inevitable and required, offering a form of soul gestation that may gradually give shape to our deeper lives, personally and communally. Certain things can happen only in this grotto of darkness. Think of the wild network of roots and microbes, mycelium, and minerals, making possible all that we see in the day world, or the extensive networks within our own bodies, bringing blood, nutrients, oxygen, and thought to our corporeal lives. All of it happening in the darkness.
The requirements for this time are not the familiar ones of achievement and growth, clarity and power. No, this season is asking for a new rhythm, one that is more attuned to humility and listening, stillness and rest."