Create a Steadfast Routine this Vata Season

Join Unify Mind Body as we explore ways to enliven your practice and bring vitality back into the cold, sometimes overwhelming end-of-year time. Yoga is a great ritual to incorporate in your daily or weekly routine to bring stability and balance, both mentally and physically.

So what are some key things to invite into your own personal yoga ritual as we travel deeper into autumn and approach winter?

With the overflow of ether and air present, the focus throughout this season should be on grounding yourself. It’s best to invite aspects of the other elements–fire, earth, and water–into your practice in order to balance out the influence of vata. To cultivate these aspects, try exploring movements that are steady, slow, and fluid, and turn your attention to your foundations.

Remember to always be aware of your energy levels! Don’t overextend yourself; your practice should be strengthening, not draining.

Here Are Some Tips for Your Practice:

• Incorporate fluid, flowing movements. Spinal and pelvic waves, joint rotation, counter-poses, and flexion and extension are all ways to bring aspects of water into your practice. Hold postures for a short time, but do multiple repetitions.

• Move your energy focus to your lower chakras–root, sacral, and solar plexus.

• Focus on your foundation to create stability and invite aspects of earth to your practice. Strengthen these foundations by pressing into the outer edges of your legs and distributing equal pressure to both feet.

• Keep your gaze low– at or below the horizon line

• Crank up the heat! Practice yoga in a warm environment to invite the fire element to your routine.

• Practice strengthening stances.

• Work to lengthen your inhales. This helps cultivate a sense of being rooted in your body.

Try Out These Poses and Postures

Inversions: These are postures that place your hips and heart above your head, bringing clarity through increased blood flow to your brain. We recommend incorporating these throughout your practice.

• Downward dog

• Legs up the wall

• Forward folds (wide legged, seated, or traditional)

• Child’s pose

Supine Postures: These are poses you hold on your back in a lying down position. Frequently used in restorative yoga, these poses help relieve tension and calm the mind. We recommend adding these to the end of your practice, as a way to wind down and focus more deeply inward.

• Pigeon on your back

• Supine twists

• Bridge pose

• Plow pose

• Happy baby

• Supine bound ankle

Stability postures: These poses help to build strength and cultivate a sense of grounding.

• Warrior I & II

• Mountain pose

• Hero pose

Spinal stretches: These postures help to release tension stored in your body. Through stretching the spine, your body is prepared to distribute the work to other muscle groups in your body, which helps you to stay balanced and remove unnecessary strain!

• Cobra pose

• Cat cow stretch

Styles to Practice

• Yin Yoga: Release long-held tension and encourage tranquility of the mind through yin yoga. By holding poses for a longer duration–one to five minutes–you’ll find the connection between your mind and body. This style works deep into the body, melting tension in the connective tissue. Its primary area of focus is the lower body–your hips, pelvis, inner thighs, and lower spine.

• Root, Sacral, and Solar Plexus-Focused Routines: Get back to your foundations by turning attention to the three lower chakras.

At the conclusion of your practice, explore an extended savasana. This is the perfect way to invite meditation into your practice! Affirmations–”I am grounded”, “I am present and mindful” –can be added, as can chants (“So Hum”) for the chakras. Know that you can return to these affirmations whenever you feel flighty, airy, or out of balance.

Take the Ayurvedic Energy Alignment Quiz to define your unique energy type and begin implementing rituals that return you to your rhythm and power!

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