Jade Lizzie

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Tag: balance

Why Yoga is Still Amazing (Even When You Don’t Do As Much)

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On May 11, 2016

In life, Teaching Yoga, yoga

Since I’ve been back in the UK, my life has changed a lot. I’ve been working in school again, teaching yoga classes around Nottingham, writing and catching up with friends and family. It’s been great. But I’ve gone from attending 90 minute yoga classes every morning before breakfast, plus more self-practice later in the day, to squeezing in a little movement and meditation before I go to work in the morning, and doing a longer practice about 3 times per week.

Initially I worried about this. I thought I wasn’t doing enough, and that my yoga practice would suffer. But I’ve realised that like everything, my yoga practice goes in waves. Sometimes I’ll practise more, sometimes less. Right now my priority isn’t to practise yoga for 3 hours every day and that’s ok. The lessons from my yoga mat are still having a huge impact on my life. Here’s how yoga is still amazing, even when you don’t do as much:

  1. It makes you more patient. I noticed this while I was reading with a student at school. It was a long session on a hot afternoon, and I know that prior to yoga this is exactly the kind of thing that would have had me clock-watching and counting down until the end of the day. But instead I was able to let myself get absorbed in the activity. I noticed my impatience, but chose not to engage with it, and as a result ended up really enjoying the lesson, rather than wishing it away.
  2. It helps you enjoy people’s company more. Instead of always rushing on to the next thing, I’ve found myself much more able to just relax and enjoy conversations and spending time with people. Before I would always be racing to do something “productive”, but now I’m valuing the time to talk to people. Yoga’s also taught me to be less judgemental, which again, helps with the whole liking being around people thing…
  3. It helps you to be less anxious. I’m naturally a very future-focused person, but at the moment I only have the vaguest, most flexible plans for my life beyond the next lot of yoga retreats I’m teaching. And I’m really happy about that. I’m trusting a lot more that the future holds great things, and that when things don’t work out as I might have hoped it’s because there’s something better in store. I’m finding that this less controlling, more open approach is letting me enjoy my life a lot more.
  4. It makes you happier. I really do credit my meditation and my yoga practice for the fact that day to day, I feel so much happier than I ever did before. I’m aware that I have negative and destructive thoughts sometimes, but I know I don’t have to give them any power over me.
  5. It helps you to find your balance. I’m so much more aware of the degree to which I need activity versus relaxation, freedom versus security and social time versus quiet time. My life right now is busy and varied, but I also have some of the stability and calm that I’d been craving in my last few months of travelling. And I’m much more confident in my own ability to regain balance when things get out of kilter.

Although I might not be spending as much time on my mat, the influence of my yoga practice has extended into all aspects of my life, and I think that’s a really good thing. I know I’ll be on my mat a lot more when I leave for my next yoga retreats, and for now I’m happy to let my priorities shift more towards my teaching and writing and connecting with the people around me.

Wishing you a lovely week, whether your yoga practice is a bit of mindful breathing, or a hardcore daily vinyasa class! Both can be amazing.

Love Jade xxx

How Much Yoga Do You Need?

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On March 2, 2016

In Mindfulness, Teaching Yoga, Uncategorized, yoga

how much yoga do you need

You might have come across the hashtag #yogaeverydamnday, which could seem funny, or inspiring or motivating. But if you’re new to yoga, or you’re very busy, the idea of practising yoga every day can be intimidating. So do we really need to do yoga every day? And how much yoga is enough to feel the benefits?

I’ve experimented a lot with this and I’ve tried everything from going weeks at a time without any yoga, to practising for more than 3 hours per day.

Three key points about how much yoga you need

  1. It depends on your goals. This means working out what you want from your yoga practice. For example, if you want to learn to handstand, you need to put the time in. It takes consistent practice and training drills to strengthen and open your body, and increase your body awareness and balance. Having a go as part of your weekly yoga class will help, but if you’re doing nothing in between, it’s going to take a long time to progress. On the other hand, if you have a very active lifestyle and you use yoga to reconnect with your body and mind, your needs will be different. Spending just 5 minutes at the end of the day doing a restorative posture like legs up the wall pose followed by meditation will have a huge impact.
  2. Daily practice is a non-negotiable. I appreciate this is a controversial one, but for me, to function at my best, I need some kind of yoga every single day. If we think of yoga as a tool we use to checking with our bodies and be present, then I would argue it probably is something we all need every day. However, this doesn’t have to be a vigorous hardcore yoga practice. Some days my self practice is just finding 5 minutes to meditate. I can even do this on the plane if I’m travelling. Other days I might do 10 sun salutations, some core strengthening work or some joint mobilisation exercises.
  3. Fluctuations are normal, and natural. One thing I’ve learned is that my own yoga practice ebbs and flows, depending how I’m feeling and what I’m doing in the rest of my life. I used to panic if I couldn’t fit in an hour to practise every day, but now I try to be more responsive to my situation. During my Advanced Yoga Teacher Training, I practised yoga for 3 hours every day (at least!) and meditated for 1 hour. I felt amazing, but that amount of practice isn’t realistic for me most of the time. That’s ok. The way I think of it is I still carry with me all the benefits of having spent that amount of time practising yoga. So now, even when I just do a mini yoga practice, or a short meditation, I know I’m reconnecting with all the good that I cultivated during that time of intensive practice.

It’s worth saying that the more I’ve practised yoga, the more I realised that yoga is everything. From noticing my impatience while I wait in a supermarket queue to remembering to relax my shoulders when I run, it’s all about mindfulness, and it’s all good yoga practice. But I still prefer to have some dedicated part of each day where I consciously and deliberately set aside the time and space to do yoga.

How much yoga is the minimum?

For me, I’ve found the lowest I can let it go is 5 minutes per day. I feel like I miss out if I don’t spend at least 5 minutes per day connecting with myself. Usually if time is as tight as this, I don’t do yoga postures at all, I just sit and meditate for the 5 minutes, because I find that’s the most effective way to drop into the mindful awareness I am looking for in such a short space of time. 

I’d love to know what you think of this and how much yoga you need? What works for you? Let me know in the comments below!

Have a great week lovely yogis and yoginis.

Jade xxx

How to fall in love with Savasana

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On November 12, 2015

In Mindfulness, Teaching Yoga, yoga, yoga class

“Savasana is the most important posture.”

Accepted Yoga teacher wisdom

When I began yoga, I didn’t believe this. I’ve seen the T-Shirts saying “I’m just here for savasana,” which make me smile. For me, savasana, or corpse pose (i.e. lying flat on your back and relaxing completely) was definitely not what I was there for….

Strong, flexible body? Yes please.

Physical and mental balance? Absolutely.

Inner peace and harmony? I’ll take that too…

But I have to lie still and do nothing? No, that sounds hard.

This isn’t that surprising. Much of western culture is built around notions of productivity, busy-ness and being always ‘on the go’, so it can be unsettling at first to consider doing the opposite.

But over time, I’ve made friends with savasana, and I think you can too. Here’s why it’s worth a try, and how to go about it…

Shows yoga students lying in savsana in the Om Dome at Suryalila
Students enjoying savasana in the beautiful Om Dome at Suryalila Retreat Centre

Four reasons to fall in love with Savasana

  1. It allows you to notice and absorb the benefits of the practice. A lot can happen physically, mentally and emotionally during yoga. Yoga meets you where you are, but it does not leave you where it found you. You need time to let yourself catch up with that and to enjoy the differences.
  2. It rests the body after physical practice. In yoga, you are seeking balance between effort and ease, between strength and surrender. By its very nature, physical practice requires strength and effort. Savasana gives you chance to balance that by seeking complete relaxation, allowing the body to recover and rest.
  3. You learn the skill of relaxation. And it is a skill. When you scan through the body in savasana, you have a final opportunity to find any remaining tension, physical or mental and let it go. You learn how to consciously relax.
  4. It marks the end of your practice, creating space before you re-enter the rest of the world. If you rush out straight after the last posture, it’s too easy to immediately lose all the mindful connection with yourself you cultivated through your yoga. Savasana gives you chance to take stock, which helps you to sustain that connection afterwards.

Getting the most out of savasana

Know that there is no “wrong way” to do savasana. Whether you are able to relax or your mind races, allow that to be. Trust that the experience you have is enough, and is what you need right at that moment.

The biggest barrier to relaxing in savasana is likely to be your mind, and more specifically your thoughts. It’s important to begin to recognise when you are having thoughts that are holding you back – this is something meditation can help you with. Once you spot them,acknowledge them, and gently answer them with something kinder. For instance:

Negative thoughtPositive and kind alternative

It’s pointless just lying here.

Lying here allows me to absorb all the benefits of my practice.
I should be doing something more productive. I deserve this time to relax and let go after my practice.
I’m too busy for this. Savasana helps me balance the busy-ness of the rest of my life.

If you examine them, so many negative thoughts come from an underlying belief that you are not good enough as you are. Let that go. It won’t be serving you in your yoga, and it certainly won’t be serving you in your life.

See whether you can allow yourself to dare to believe that what you are already enough. Whatever you think of savasana…

Happy relaxing lovely people!

Jade xxx

2021 edit:

I thought I’d revisit this post in order to recommend this soothing guided savasana on Youtube. It’s ideal if you want to incorporate savasana into your home practice, but struggle with ‘just lying there’!

To be alive is to be vulnerable

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On October 11, 2015

In life, yoga

Be Vulnerable“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.”

― Madeleine L’Engle

I’d like to know whether other people find their experiences on their yoga mats echo their experiences in life as often as mine seem to? This morning, in yoga class, I was practising wide-legged standing forward fold. This is a posture I am used to, and when the teacher gave us the option to lift up into tripod headstand, I moved my hands to lift up in the way I always do. She came over to me.

“No, keep your hands where they were.” She then held my hips clearly expecting me to lift into headstand from this strange position.

I panicked. Is she crazy? I can’t lift from here. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never even seen someone do a headstand like this. What if I fall? And so on.

But somehow, my body ignored my mind’s agitation, and I felt my legs lift into the strangest, most exhilarating headstand I’ve ever done. My teacher stayed with me the whole time, letting me find my balance, and the more I surrendered and trusted her, the safer I felt. When my feet made it back safely to the ground, I was buzzing. I felt like I could take on the world.

It reminded me of a similar experience earlier this week. I rode on the back of a friend’s motorbike for the first time. I hadn’t expected to find this scary – I’ve been on the back of scooters lots of times. It turns out I’d slightly underestimated the difference between motorbikes and scooters. As the speed picked up, I went from casually holding on to clinging on as if my life depended on it. Which to be fair, it did. I felt terrifyingly vulnerable. In that moment I hated my friend for their confidence and speed.

But then I remembered something. I remembered that people love this. That they get a thrill from it. I was on the most beautiful road, with nothing separating me from the view, going so fast it felt like I was flying. I didn’t even have to worry about riding. I could literally relax and enjoy it, if I chose to. All I had to do was surrender my need to be in control and trust my friend.

And so I did. I mentally (not physically – I’m not stupid) let go and surrendered control. I chose to enjoy the experience instead of fighting it. I realised how rarely I do this. How hard I find it to put my trust in someone else and hand over control to them.

Because it means being vulnerable. To trust someone is to give them the power to hurt you. But I know that by refusing to let myself be vulnerable I hold myself back. I miss out on beautiful new experiences that I can’t have on my own.

Just as importantly, I’m not giving others the trust and credit they deserve. My yoga teacher would not encourage me to try something unless she knew she could stop me from falling. Similarly my friend would not risk my life for the sake of a motorbike ride.

Just because someone can hurt you doesn’t mean they will. In fact, it’s most likely they won’t. And I think life is considerably better – richer, more beautiful, more exciting and fulfilling when you let yourself to be vulnerable. I just need to keep remembering that.  I’ll take it one headstand at a time…

Love, Jade

P.S. For more on how to be vulnerable, and why it’s worth it, check out this fantastic TED talk from Brene Brown.

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