Welcome to Nourish November
This month is about feeding your body, energy and spirit with what you need right now.
As we step into November, a cooler, darker month, I encourage you to start identifying ways to nourish yourself. Giving yourself a little extra self-care, attention and support.
Nourish means to provide yourself with whatever it is you need for growth and health. Essentially, building your tool kit for ongoing positive movement towards a balanced and happy life.
This month, in addition to the weekly classes, I will be providing a recipe that I’ve created or a favorite of mine. See Recipe Page Here.
Let’s jump in!
A quick intro into the theme of this month.
Week 1: Root
We talk about rooting and grounding in my yoga classes often. I don’t always tie it back to self-care, but getting grounding is one of the best things you can do for yourself. The more secure you feel in your body and your home, the more you can relax and the more you can grow. Our bodies are know how to take care of ourselves first. If the nervous system is anxious, worried, on high alert, it’s hard to truly rest and take care.
Grounding techniques can bring grounding into your daily life, and help create a restful and comfortable home base. These techniques include: directional breath (sending your exhales downward), attention to the ground underneath you, awareness of feet and legs, and moving slower throughout your day.
To make this connection to nourishment through food, eating roots, especially in the fall and winter months can help you feel grounded. Even more significant is cooking these meals yourself, ideally without rush.
This flow yoga class helps you connect to ground and use its support when things get challenging.
Week 2: Warm
This week is about giving yourself warmth and care. Warmth could mean something cozy, like a warm blanket and a bowl of soup. Warmth could also mean to activate and to move.
I’m someone who runs cold. One of the most important lessons I've learned, is how to warm myself up. And by warming up I feel a complete shake up of stale energy. Other people might need to use this same awareness to cool themselves down using breath and intention. That, is the crux of an ongoing yoga practice; using the tools in the way you need them.
I've found that the biggest roadblock to shifting energy, is the first step. If I feel cold or tired, it’s easy to mentally reframe and skip it. Here are some tips for getting going: 1) Envision how you will feel after moving, actually feel the heat in your body. 2) Choose a short movement, 10 minutes or less and start there. Even a couple minutes can provide an energetic shift. 3) Pair an active movement with a cozy rest for maximum warmth. For example: Do a couple slow sun salutations in your jammies and then rest under a blanket with some tea and feel your ability to create heat.
No matter what, don’t forget that we are here to nourish ourselves. And by that I mean fill in pieces that you need for care and growth. So listen to what it is you need to feel warm, motivated and cozy as this week continues on and provide it for yourself.
This yoga flow with keep you moving, the intention to bring warmth into the body and shift your energy to lighter and more energized. Let's do this!
This week we are calling in our reinforcements. Focusing on enhancing the strength you already have, and fortifying it with intention. Envision your structure, energy, and abilities and consider what supports already exist, and where you could add more.
In yoga and movement this week, we focus on stability and foundation over strength and intensity. If thing get intense, be aware of your mental endurance to stay focused and intentional. The hope is that after the practices this week, you will feel more supported both physically and energetically than when you arrived.
Off the mat, bring awareness to what your reinforcements are. Loved ones? Self-care techniques? Or delicious food and water to keep you going. What can you do to strengthen the relationship between you and these reinforcements?
This fitness-style slow flow is intended to fortify your already strong structure through repetition and mobility. This is a great class for people who want to build strength but are looking for lower intensity movements.
Week 4: Balance
This week is about pulling all the elements of the month together - with special attention on rest. Yoga is about understanding what energy you have in excess, what you need, and balancing the two with appropriate movement and rest. This can get tricky.
Sometimes when you feel tired, you need to rest! But sometimes, you need more activity to bring heat and energy into your body to get going. This means there is no ‘one solution for all.’ And this is the true heart of a regular yoga practice.
In a nutshell through yoga you can:
Become more aware of what supports you and what depletes you.
Understand how your unique system responds.
Listen to what your system needs to return to balance.
Learn the tools that support your ongoing balance best.
This is easy and hard at the same time. But you can do it. As we transition to the holiday season, turn up your senses and start noticing how you can implement balance little by little, each day.
Enjoy this week’s balance in the form of a not-too-sweet dessert.
This class incorporates elements of rooting, warming, fortifying and REST. Bringing what you need into this balanced yoga flow.