Yoga, Ayurveda, and Seasonal Living & Practice (Season 7, Episode 13)

This month brings seasonal change no matter what hemisphere you live in. So to prepare, in this conversation I’m talking about what Yoga and Ayurveda have to teach us. This is a great episode if you’ve been curious to learn more about different ways Yoga can expand off the mat to meet us in our everyday lives!

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Transcript

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(00:04):

Welcome to Love, Curvy Yoga, the podcast where we believe living and practicing at the pace of your life matters. Now let’s get into it.

(00:21):

Hi, Anna here. How are you? Before we get into our main segment, I just wanted to take a minute to send some love to all of our listeners, students, friends in Nashville where there was a devastating tornado this week. As you probably know, we lived in Nashville for many years and Nashville was the home base starting place of Curvy Yoga and we are really just holding you all in our thoughts and in our hearts and hoping that you and your loved ones are okay.

(00:56):

All right, in just a moment, our main segment

(00:59):

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All right. If you have been listening for a while, then you probably know that seasonality is one of my favorite topics and that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about yoga, Ayurveda and seasonal living and practice. And the reason this is one of my favorite topics is that it has just been so instrumental in my own thinking and approach to basically everything. I was thinking about what areas of my life it does not apply to. And I don’t think there are any, it’s really relevant in my life, work, my relationship with my body, my relationship with other people, pretty much everything. And I see things as having seasons and natural ebbs and flows.

(01:52):

So as you may know this month in our online studio, our theme is seasonal check-in. And this is the perfect time to do one because later this month we have the spring, or fall depending on where you live, Equinox. So in the studio we’re checking in with different parts of our bodies and our beings each week. And next week here on the podcast, I’m going to dig more into how you can do a seasonal check-in in different parts of your life. So as we get going with all of this, I wanted to lay some foundations based on what yoga and Ayurveda have to say about this. If you’re not familiar with Ayurveda, it’s often referred to as the sister science of yoga. The systems evolved together for a long time even though in the West today there are often more separate. And Ayurveda is often translated as the science of life. In some ways it helps give us a structure for the off the mat part of yoga with things like daily routine, seasonal routine, and other more medicinal type support from Ayurvedic practitioners.

(03:00):

So what I want to focus on today is seasonal routine, which is called ritucharya. And in Ayurveda, there’s a principle that says as in the microcosm, so in the macrocosm, and if I had to boil that down, I would say that it means that we don’t exist in a vacuum. What’s happening in the larger world, the macrocosm, affects us in our individual bodies, the microcosm. And this is particularly true for what’s happening environmentally, though it certainly has resonance on lots of different levels. And maybe you have heard before that we are made up of the same Stardust as the universe. And that’s another example of this principle.

(03:45):

So as the seasons change in the environment, they’re changing in you too. Even though many of us, probably most of us listening live in a, in a house or wherever where you have electricity, you can kind of control the light day and night around you, the temperature around you that so that things are relatively steady throughout the year. But we’re still affected by these things that are happening in the outer environment. And I’m sure that you have noticed how things shift as we make the transition, for example, from winter to spring. So during that transition you start to see plants flowering, things are greening up, the days are getting longer. Maybe you see more people out and about. It’s funny, I walk Henry and Hazel at least once a day, every day. And I see so many more neighbors now than I have in the past few months because the weather is starting to get a bit nicer. So temperatures also increase at this time of year. And you can just see from that description of this little handful of things that we just talked about, that the underlying energy is really rooted in growth and light and heat.

(05:01):

So if you think about that, how might those qualities affect you? Ayurveda, and yoga, but definitely Ayurveda is very much about meeting people where they are. So the answer is going to be individual. So how that affects me is going to be different than how it affects you. But in general you might notice more of a desire or tendency to be outside, maybe to be a little bit more social, to take on new projects. There’s just generally more movement than there tends to be in the winter, and I don’t only mean physical movement. So when you think just about the visual representation of winter, you can think about the contrast. So what do we usually see? Yes, there’s definitely things like skiing or other activities that people do outdoors in the winter. But a lot of times when you think about a visual representation of winter, it’s more like blankets and coziness and staying indoors.

(06:01):

So I bring all of this in to consider it in the context of your yoga practice. I have talked about this a little bit before in season five so we had a couple episodes, one the seasons and cycles of yoga and another one about what season you’re in. So I will link to those so that you can check them out. But what I invite you to consider today is how you might bring in the energy of the coming season to support your practice. So for me, thinking about utilizing this kind of upward energy, I am planning to bring in some more active and standing poses. I am also planning to balance that with some longer periods of meditation because my constitution personally is easily carried away by growth, also by light and definitely by heat. So I kind of have to watch it and not get too carried away. And this is like to the max for me in the summer. So I really have to kind of start laying that groundwork right now.

(07:10):

So I invite you to consider how you can utilize as well as balance this energy moving forward, both in your on the mat and off the mat life and just see what it’s like to consider this kind of thing. Whether you’ve done that before or not. It can be an interesting way to play with seasonality. So if you have any practice insights as you consider this, I would definitely love to hear about it and we will keep talking about it more here too. Okay, up next, a couple of reminders.

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(07:53):

All right. Reminders. Studio members, this week in our seasonal check-in we have been checking in with our backs and next week is hips and legs, so I will link that in the show notes and as always, if you’re not yet a member, we would love to have you join us. You can join at curvyyoga.studio. I will link that in the show notes. If you have questions, comments, ideas, I would love to hear it. You can email me at podcast@curvyyoga.com, text at (615) 852-8789 or reach out on Instagram. I am @curvyyoga there. Okay. Let’s close with one breath together. We’ll inhale and exhale. The light in me honors the light in you. Namaste.

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Stay tuned next week where I will be sharing how to do a seasonal check-in.

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