Let us start by an all-encompassing definition of meditation given by Dr. Shauna Shapiro, PhD: “Meditation refers to a family of techniques which have in common a conscious attempt to focus attention in a non-analytical way, and then attempt not to dwell on ruminating thoughts. “

From this definition, we can see two important aspects – focussing attention and non- analysis or non-judgement.

Meditation Helps You to Focus

This may seem simple but it is actually more difficult than it seems. You see, since we were young, our brains have been constantly looking for where we should put our attention. To keep children calm it is well known to keep them distracted as well. Then when we are old enough to watch TV, the more the screen is changing and exciting, the more our brains are being trained to be distracted. And then come the portable phones, screens and laptops. Again, everything attempting to grab our attention.

While this has been many of our stories, you may wonder why is it so bad for us? This sequence of distraction places our nervous system into a constant state of flight or fight (sympathetic nervous system). We rarely calm it down getting into rest and digest (parasympathetic nervous system). Being in the state of fight or flight for long periods of time can create a whole host of health problems:

• Sleep disorders
• Anxiety
• Memory Loss
• Digestive issues
• Depression, etc.

just to name a few.

Meditation can place us into the rest and digest and will vastly improve (as well as prevent) the above health conditions.

Meditation Techniques

As for the meditation techniques, there are many. And science today says that it does not matter which technique you choose. You can even switch different techniques to keep it interesting. The important point is to be able to slip into that meditative “state”. Once you feel it, you know it. You will get good at slipping into the state whenever and wherever you want.

One of the most important points is to get the meditation benefits one must practice, and practice regularly. A good way to do this is to follow along in a class, a video or recorded mp4 at least once per week, then practicing the technique for the rest of the week whenever it is most convenient for you.

If you are interested in joining our meditation course, we meet online every Tuesday at 7am. We use 6 different meditation techniques each week and take new students throughout the year.

Visit our Meditation Discovery Course page to learn more now!

Namaste

AUTHOR: ANNE

Hi! I am Anne. I am a fitness and wellness coach with over 25 years of experience in the Swiss Romande area. I am a Yoga Alliance Certified Teacher for 500 hours and for Training Teachers in Continuing Education. I am passionate about helping individuals reach their highest potential and dedicated to attaining and maintaining fulfilment and happiness in every aspect of life.

About me

The post What is Meditation? appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

In Ayurveda, this part of winter is Vata season and it  brings cold, dry and rough qualities.  We need more warmth and softness through warmer water/tea/soups, spices, oils, and layers of clothes!

It is also a time for many people to set intentions, to start a healthier lifestyle, to quit or slow down on stimulants like coffee, alcohol and sugar. Even though it may seem cliche and many people find it difficult to keep up in the rest of the year, you may actually make it happen by following a daily routine.

Ayurvedic Healthy Daily Routine Tips

A healthy daily routine for winter is key to wellness as every season. This way you make sure that you are harmonized with the conditions around you and your nature is in synchronicity with the nature. It also helps you to engrave these habits into your life, making sure that you follow them as daily practices. A good way to make it happen is to apply them strictly for about one to three weeks and then make a realistic daily routine that you can keep up. You can apply the parts of a daily routine on several days of the week or weekends and that way you make sure that you are still incorporating these good habits in a month’s period.

Here are some suggestions for winter from Ayurveda, if you would like to reset your daily habits and start the year fresh.

• Start your day with warm water and a few drops of lemon or lime juice and 2 tbs of aloe vera. Please don’t  start your morning with coffee on empty stomach which creates so much acidity
• Try regular abhyangha (oiling-self massage) with warm sesame oil before showers and avoid keeping body too dry (this one can be done on weekends when you have more time)
• Go for exercises that give you rejuvenating energy like yoga, brisk walks, easy joggings rather than exhausting ones.
• In the mornings, eat cooked warm breakfasts like oatmeals, porridges or simply cooked apples with warming spices (see next) and do not start with cold cereals, dry and hard crackers, frozen smoothies, raw fruits (especially heavy ones like banana)
• Use warming spices like cinnamon, clove, cardamom, cumin, nutmeg, oregano, thyme, turneric, black pepper, fresh ginger. However do not over do the “spicy” as it creates too much fire and acidity.
• Make your lunch the biggest meal of the day and have light, cooked dinners with vegetable soups and stews. Use ghee or olive oil.  Avoid dinners with heavy, oily, fried and with animal protein and using cooling oils like coconut oil. 
• Try a cleansing period by avoiding gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol, cafein, meat and instead nourish your body with seasonal and easy to digest vegetables, plant based proteins, fruits and nuts. Your body will use the energy it normally uses to digest to replenish and rejuvenate itself. 
• Take it slow like nature. Slow down, rest more and get cozy with a blanket and a warming herbal tea like ginger-lemon-honey or golden milk! 
• Wrap yourself with layers and go out in nature to feel the season’s strength. Fresh air always refreshes the body and even your mood. 
• Sleep about 8 hours. Make sure not to exhaust yourself, running around, not sleeping 8 hours

Ayurvedic Tips for Winter Wellness

Enjoy this wonderful season and just make sure to be in synchronicity with Mother Nature

If you need a helping hand to go through these transitions and apply the daily routines, join our 10 Day Online Ayurvedic Winter Cleanse, where we guide you for every step and support you on your journey. 

Join the free webinar on Winter Wellness to learn more and ask your questions live on 12.01.2022 at CET 19:30, register from here!

Hi! I am a RYT 500hours Yoga Teacher, YACEP Trainer and a certified Integrative Nutrition Healthy Living Coach. I am passionate about empowering women to help them transform their mind, health and bodies through yoga, meditation and optimal nutrition, as well as guiding them to become the healthy confident role model for their children, family and community.

About me

The post Ayurvedic Tips for Winter Wellness appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

Self Myofascial Release – or SMR – is a form of tool-assisted, self-massage that is used to help with muscle and joint pain. Essentially, SMR requires you to self-massage your muscles with a foam roller, a firm massage ball or a massage stick / roll to help relieve certain areas of pain. 

Myofascial Release Benefits

• Reduces pain and anxiety levels
• Improves sleep quality
• Decreases fascia restrictions, or, tissue tightness
• Improves mobility
• Helps correct posture alignment issues
• Relieves lower back spasms
• Decompresses nerves

Myofascial Release Self- Massage

Join us for this first LIVE event!!  Get back into live yoga practice!

In this workshop we will work with a tennis ball (included in your inscription) as well as practicing a soft yoga practice to reap the full benefits of the full-body self massage.

Click to learn more & sign up!

The post Myofascial Release Benefits appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

These are signs that Vata is taking over,  which is all about the qualities of Air and Ether (Space) elements; cold, dry, mobile, airy, and rough. The best thing is to live according to the season and calm down your Vata, applying the opposite qualities like heavy, stable, smooth, wet, slow and regular. 

Eating food with the qualities of fire, water and earth will help you balance in the easiest way. Try to eat cooked, warm, heavy, hydrating and dense food like these baked sweet potatoes or apples on my website and Instagram! Try warm sesame oil self massage. 

 How about joining me in a guided 10 Day Ayurvedic Autumn Cleanse?

Here are the details of the online coaching program:

• Delicious Ayurvedic  autumn recipes
• Meal plan for 10 days
• Yoga, guided meditation live and recorded
• Daily routine and rituals guidance to make you feel the aligned and centered in autumn
• 3 Live Classes full of teachings, demos, sharing and connection:

—- 13.11.21 Saturday Morning – 9am CET

—- 17.11.21 Wednesday – 8pm CET

—- 23.11.21 Tuesday Evening 8 pm CET

• Online community group for motivation and support
• Private online members area where you will have access to all cleanse content for a year

 ALL For ONLY CHF 75! (Türkiye’den katılımcılar için özel fiyat: 350 TL. Bu indirimli fiyattan faydalanmak için Ceylan’a mesaj atmanız yeterli)

Click to sign up now: Ayurvedic Autumn Cleanse

Ayurvedic Cooking

This season and Ayurveda inspire my everyday cooking so much! All these beautiful warming colors, like an art exhibition made by mother nature, gives me that spark and energy I need to brighten up my meals. I can feel that connection of “you are what you eat” completelt in this season, taking in these colorful plants all the way to my cells and illumunating that energy from my eyes, skin, hair, nails, joints…all over me!

And now Ayurveda teaches me how to adjust these ingredients, cooking methods and lifestyle in a way that suits my body and mind better. 

I never knew that green juices, fresh salads, dried nuts, wholegrain crackers, cafein are NOT made for me (Vata-Pitta) and kept eating them all my life, ending up with gas spasms and pains, dried skin, restless mind! 

Now my kitchen is my playground and pharmacy, my inner body-mind wisdom is my “check-up” method and all the nature’s offerings are my medicine. 

I know  well that we tend to ignore and not wanting to hear some of the changes that your body-mind needs, that is why most people reading these sentences will turn-off and stop reading it by now.

But if you are still reading and curious about how you can make these changes, first of all know that it is possible. If I could make it, you can make, too.

• Just go out there! Connect with nature, understand its language and messages. 
• Visit a local market, grow your own herbs, buy abd cook fresh-local-organic.
• Even only these will start to transform your energy, health and vitality.

What inspires you most when it comes to healthy living and cooking? Please share!

The post Ayurvedic Tips for Vata Season: November! appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

“Meditation is an essential part of the yoga tradition…. Through meditation, the mind becomes silent, the illusory impressions fall away and the truth of our being naturally rises to the surface of the consciousness.” (Yogalife, Yoga Teacher Training Manual 2017).

Thousand of years ago meditation was identified as the path to ultimate enlightenment and those yogis who could stay in meditation for long looong periods (along side with other abilities), could reach the “Samadhi” the ultimate enlightenment. These developed meditation techniques take the practitioners to a higher state of awareness and a state of no-thought in order to gain spiritual mastery and intimacy with the Self.

Meditation Can Help You

You don’t have to go that far, lets start with 5 minutes!! But first, as I know we modern humans need some justifications and solid reasons to motivate ourselves, let me give you a few that helped me:

• Increase your concentration in your daily life which many of us suffer
• Support willpower that can help you in your weight loss, healthier living, quit smoking, etc efforts
• Increase your patience, to deal with everyday issues especially with your children or at work!
• Reduction of stress, improved focus and memory
• Achieve emotional balance and happiness
• Regular practice strengthens the immune system, helps you to build strength against ageing and diseases

If these are good enough reasons for you too, then lets start!

Visit Ceylan’s blog to read the full article: How to Start Meditation and How Can It Help You?

Hi! I am a RYT 500hours Yoga Teacher, YACEP Trainer and a certified Integrative Nutrition Healthy Living Coach. I am passionate about empowering women to help them transform their mind, health and bodies through yoga, meditation and optimal nutrition, as well as guiding them to become the healthy confident role model for their children, family and community.

About me

The post Why Meditation? appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

However, we also do not want to downgrade the health and wellness or ruin our digestive system, or regain the weight you lost maybe during the lockdown days. And some of you might want to use summer to go back to a healthier and more fit version of yourselves.

Here are 5 tips to apply during summer days, to keep us in balance and especially help our digestion -cause if that works well, our energy-weight-mood works well, too!

Summer is the Pitta season in Ayurveda with qualities of fire which are hot, sharp, sour, pungent, penetrating, and spreading. So we need to balance it with the application of opposites, that are Cool, Wet, Soft, Slow, and Relaxed – sounds like a holiday, right?

Below are some suggestions for your digestion, keeping the fire alive. If you apply these simple principles, in addition to being healthier, your tummy will look flatter in your swimming suits!!

Enjoy sunny summer days, remember to relax a lot whenever you can. 

At the end of this summer, Ceylan Ayik  will be guiding a group online 10 day Cleanse program. Join the free webinar on the 25th of August and then the 10 day cleanse program as of 28th of August.

All details of the End Of Summer CLeanse are here:

How to Keep Agni-Digestive Fire-Alive during summer?

1. Replace ice cold drinks and any form of ice (smoothies, smoothie bowls, water/drinks with ice) with room temperature. I know it feels refreshing at first but when you have “ice cold” of anything, you kill your digestive fire. Think of this, when you cut or bruise a part in your body, you put ice to block the bleeding. Same thing happens in your belly, ice cold of anything cutting the blood flow in your digestive track. 
2. To refresh, add cucumber, mint or basil leaves into your waterer drinks. Try my rose-hibiscus tea, recipe here on instagram and website, enjoy that at room temperature. I keep a thermos of that in my fridge and mix it with hot water when I drink. 
3. Summer is the Pitta season in Ayurveda and too much hot of anything aggravates your Pitta dosha, and interestingly enough, this accumulation creates emotions like anger, irritation and restlessness. Especially for women pre or menopause stage, with hot flashes bothering them enough, you do not want more hot flashes! To avoid that, use coconut all over, inside out! In your cooking and  as coconut water or milk,  and on your skin before your shower. 
4. Avoid using pungent tastes too much like garlic, ginger, onion, chillies, any hot and spicy food on hot summer days. Pungent taste has elements of fire and air and so you do not want to add these more into your body and mind!
5. Instead go for cooling ingredients like herbs (parsley, mint, dill, basil, coriander), spices like fennel, coriander, turmeric (in moderation)

Tips to Support Digestion in Summer

A key factor for keeping your Pitta dosha under control in summer is to relax and slow down. So after these summer parties or events, make sure to relax during the day, even for 20 minutes, lie down and listen to a yoga nidra or body relaxation meditation. You will see that this cooling down is much more effective than a glass of ice cold water! 

Hi! I am a RYT 500hours Yoga Teacher, YACEP Trainer and a certified Integrative Nutrition Healthy Living Coach. I am passionate about empowering women to help them transform their mind, health and bodies through yoga, meditation and optimal nutrition, as well as guiding them to become the healthy confident role model for their children, family and community.

About me

The post Top 5 Tips to Support Digestion in Summer appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

In my recent group, one of the clients (we will call her Freida) complained that she has tried and tried to be perfect in her diet and exercise regimen.  This created high stress and no results.  We started on a different path, working with small changes, easily accessible, the 1% rule of habit change.  Freida was skeptical. She felt that she was not going to make any progress. However, Freida was brilliant at doing small steps.  Everyone is brilliant at making small changes. Freida felt so good and relaxed for the first week of the proposed changes – even though it was a heavy week at work and she had just moved apartments.  The big surprise at the end of the 7 days is that she lost 1 kg, had more energy than the week before and saw the difference on her skin.

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.  A small habit—when repeated consistently—grows into something significant.” James Clear

She let go of the idea of being “perfect”.  Making the small easy changes she got results.

Freida’s story is not extraordinary.  When we make small steps, tiny and  easy changes, they add up to make a big difference.

Start How You Want to Go On, Forever!

Taking steps to improve the way you eat is not just for a short period – it should be for life.  So when choosing to change, pick a style of eating that you can maintain forever.  This was excellent advice I got from a baby nurse, who was helping me to create habits for my newborn.  Start the way you want to go on forever.  And this is relatable in all areas of my life – and yours.

When most people want to change their eating habits, the main reasons are:

1.  To get control of their eating
2. To feel good around food
3. To lose weight
4. To raise energy levels

All of these points are short-lived if we use quick-fix diets, ones that we don’t have enough time or motivation to continue forever.

In the long-run, the people who succeed are the ones who want to live the lifestyle that precedes the results.  Stop asking, “What results do I want to have?  Start asking, “What lifestyle do I want to live?”

Enjoy Your Life

Ultimately, every day is a gift, and we want to live every being and becoming the person we want to be with the life we want and desire to live.  Why waste a day being on a restrictive and unsatisfying diet?

Let’s find the right fit for you, where you feel your best, get control of your eating habits and feel fantastic!

AUTHOR: ANNE

Hi! I am Anne. I am a fitness and wellness coach with over 25 years of experience in the Swiss Romande area. I am a Yoga Alliance Certified Teacher for 500 hours and for Training Teachers in Continuing Education. I am passionate about helping individuals reach their highest potential and dedicated to attaining and maintaining fulfilment and happiness in every aspect of life.

About me

The post It Is Ok To Be Imperfect! appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

The late physician swami Sivananda considered sight the most abused of our five senses. The first chapter in his treatise, Yoga Asanas, describes an extensive series of eye exercises. As with any yogic practice, the purpose of these exercises isn’t just health. According to Swami Sitaramananda, director of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center of San Francisco, “The fastest way to bring the mind into concentration is through the eyes.”

Though it may seem fanciful, this correlation between eyes and mind has a profound physiological basis. Vision occupies about 40 percent of the brain’s capacity; that’s why we close our eyes to relax and fall asleep. And four of our 12 cranial nerves are dedicated exclusively to vision, while two other nerves are vision-related. Contrast this with the cardiac and digestive functions, which require just one cranial nerve to control both.

While insight may be the ultimate purpose of eye asanas, vision improvement is also an important benefit. Surprisingly, it’s not the muscle stretching and contracting that seems to have the greatest effect. Relaxation appears to be the single most important element of eye health. 

Eye Yoga Exercises

Eye exercises, including eye yoga, may work to help with eye strain as well as a decrease in stress. Feeling less stress can help you focus better, so while you may not be “healing” or fixing your eyesight, you may be better able to see and recognize what’s going on around you. 

The best time to do yoga for the eyes is on days when you have been looking at a screen for several hours to see if they help relieve discomfort. If you wear contact lenses or glasses, you’ll want to remove them before the exercises. There’s more science to support the practice of eye yoga than you might expect. Eye yoga involves focusing on objects both close at hand and far away. It also involves moving your eyes from the left, upward, to the right, and downward. These focusing movements and muscle training serve two purposes: 

First, tending to small, purposeful movements through any kind of yogic practice calms your body down. Bringing peace to your body through healthy stress coping mechanisms helps treat hypertension, which is linked to glaucoma, headache, and anxiety, all of which can make eye strain and other optical conditions aggravated. 

Second, practicing focus may help improve your brain’s response to the way it interprets what you see, even if your eyes tend to send what’s called “refraction errors” that make images difficult to make out. You might not actually be seeing better, but you might be becoming more attentive to what you see. 

That could be why, in one study, no improvement in eyesight could be objectively measured but participants felt like they were seeing more clearly. In another study in 2013, 60 participants noted that simple eye exercises improved response time to what the study group was seeing. In other words, eye exercises helped them to more quickly identify what they were looking at.

Yoga Eye Exercises

Some simple yoga for the eye exercises are mapped out below:

1. The clock: With your eyes open, imagine your face being a clock face and look up to 12h00.  Close your eyes then open again and look to 3h00.  Close the eyes again and open to look to 6h00.  Close your eyes again and open and look to 9h00.   Close the eyes for a breath in and a breath out and start again at 12h00 and move in the opposite direction.  Repeat this exercise up to three times.
2. Look close, Look far: With your eyes open, look at an object about one meter away from your eyes. Study the details of the object for five seconds.  Then look as far away as possible – preferably through a window and even kilometers away. Find a point in this distance and study the details that you can see for five seconds.  Now bring your eyes back to the close object, studying the details.  Then back to the object far away.  Then close your eyes to relax them completely with deep breaths.
3. Palming: With the palms of the hand, cover your eyes completely to block out all light.  Breathe deeply to relax your eyes and face.

Best Ways to Keep Your Eyes Healthy

Beyond trying out eye yoga, there are many research-backed ways to keep your eyes healthy. 

1. Get regular eye exams. This is essential for the early detection of conditions like cataracts and glaucoma. It also gives you the opportunity to talk to your doctor about any concerns you have about your vision. After age 60, you should go to the eye doctor every year, even if you have 20/20 vision
2. Protect your eyes from ultraviolet light by wearing sunglasses
3. If you work at your computer or use screens often, take stock of your screen time and take 5-minute breaks every hour or so
4. Drink plenty of water to keep your eyes (and the rest of you) lubricated
5. Eat green leafy vegetables, such as spinach, and kale, as well as oranges and carrots
6. Don’t smoke or vape and avoid cigarette smoke

AUTHOR: ANNE

Hi! I am Anne. I am a fitness and wellness coach with over 25 years of experience in the Swiss Romande area. I am a Yoga Alliance Certified Teacher for 500 hours and for Training Teachers in Continuing Education. I am passionate about helping individuals reach their highest potential and dedicated to attaining and maintaining fulfilment and happiness in every aspect of life.

About me

The post Yoga for the Eyes appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

However, there are times where our Agni gets weakened, and so the digestion is incomplete, creating an accumulation of toxic residue known as Ama. When Ama accumulates, allergies, congestion, headaches, fatigue, chronic pain, low energy, brain fog, moodiness are some of the indications.

Can you relate to these symptoms? 

For thousands of years, Ayurveda evolved time-tested, effective protocols for increasing your digestive fire, cleansing, repairing and restoring the body-mind system to its optimum functions. 

All diseases occur due to imbalance in digestion.

THE CHARAKA SAMHITA

Metabolic Fire: Agni

When Agni is not functioning properly, the food that you eat can not be metabolised properly and they become “ama” which are metabolic wastes and toxins that have built up in your tissues. Due to this accumulated cellular waste, symptoms like gas, bloating, joint pains, chronic sinus congestions, night sweats, fatigue, constipation, stiffness, brain fog, muscle soreness. If ama is not treated, it will turn into blockages and eventually diseases in the areas where it accumulates the most. 

A blockage of this nature also disrupts the nutrition and hormone carriage to the cells.. According to Dr.Nancy Lonsdorf, from her book The Ageless Women, Natural health and Beauty After Forty with Mahariji Ayurveda, “ This blocking of hormone delivery and nutrients is an important way in which ama creates extreme symptoms of menopause and degenerative conditions in later life. Your hormones can not reach and bind with the appropriate cells”. 

It is therefore very critical to have strong agni which determines the health and longevity for us.

Agni is the metabolic fire which breaks down and converts your food into energy which fuels your cells and tissues.

Agni Name Meaning

The Importance of Digestion Well

If we can digest and turn food and all experiences into healthy, vibrant cells, we will become healthy and vibrant people! What we need is to tender our Agni fire, not too much and too weak. Women over 40, have additional challenges in digestion as this particular stage in their lives are governed by Vata Dosha, which can disturb and aggravate your digestive fire, just like a wind blowing over the fire. This leads to accumulation of ama, and the ups and downs in digestion, irregularity, heartburn, gas, bloating or excess winds in your intestines. This in return also may lead to severe hot flashes and sweats, weight gains and sleep disturbances. 

Entering your midlife with a strong and healthy agni or correcting it while you are menopausing, will help you to transition to the next phase of your life with vibrant health.

You are not what you eat, you are what you digest!

Agni Ayurveda Guide: Suggestions for Firing Up Your Agni!

Imagine your agni-digestive fire like a large fire. What you need is not too much and not too little wood in order to not to overwhelm and extinguish the fire. The wood should not be too wet, heavy or hard so that the fire can be alive. Some simple suggestions for a healthy “fire” in you are as follows:

• Follow the sun and eat your biggest meal at lunch time when you digestive fire matches the energy of the sun. 
• Eat warm cooked foods like porridges for morning and soups for evening
• Limit your raw food consumption mostly to lunch time and only as a side dish (no salads as main meal) and cook the bigger portion of your meal 
• Pay attention to combinations like, not mixing your proteins, not consuming dairy with other proteins like beans, fish, meat, etc, eat fruits on their own.
• Do not snack between meals to help digestion to finish its process properly without disruption
• Drink lemon and ginger tea with meals and throughout the day
• Add ginger to your food while cooking and eat a little piece of ginger with lemon juice and pink salt about 15 minutes before your meal.
• Eat fresh, home cooked food and avoid frozen and ready made food or left overs
• Eat only up to ⅔’s of your stomach’s capacity, to leave space for efficient digestion
• Adjust your food’s spices and oils according to your dosha (check out an online quiz to learn your personal constitution – Dosha)
• Skip a meal per week or drink light vegetable soup or broths for an evening or if your dosha allows for a day – fasting to clear any clogging due to sticky toxins. 
• Sip Cumin-Coriander-Fennel tea after meals and warm water throughout the day Remember the simple guidance of Ayurveda, healing by using the opposite qualities. A weak Agni can be strengthened by hot and light food and can get weaker by cool or heavy food. For Example, eating a frozen smoothie may not be a good idea, even if they look so pretty, for someone with a weak Agni.

Creative Ayurvedic Cooking MasterClass

There are more suggestions for eating, cooking and living that Ayurveda can help you to regain the energy in your fire and support your digestion of food and all experiences in life. 

You can join us for our creative Ayurvedic Cooking MasterClass on 23.06.2021 and also join us with the Seasonal Cleanses to reset, restore and renew your Agni. Every cleanse involves meal plans, lifestyle suggestions, seasonal recipes + new creative, easy to prepare meals and shopping list, a 30min Yoga practice, a guided meditation, a breathing practice, 3 Zoom calls and Private Facebook Group to teach, share, and connect live, and an online community group for Q&A and motivation. First group starts on 22.08.2021, more details are on our website.

AUTHOR: CEYLAN

Hi! I am a RYT 500hours Yoga Teacher, YACEP Trainer and a certified Integrative Nutrition Healthy Living Coach. I am passionate about empowering women to help them transform their mind, health and bodies through yoga, meditation and optimal nutrition, as well as guiding them to become the healthy confident role model for their children, family and community.

About me

The post Fire Up Your Agni For a Healthy Midlife & Menopause appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.

The practice of Yoga creates the space for us to reconnect with our innermost being, our true nature. As our mind calms, we hear the whispers from the depths of our core without being distracted by external voices or even our inner critic. We know what aspect of our core we need to bring forward, to strengthen, what attitude we need to cultivate, to deal with whatever we need to deal with. As we get clear of our need, we are ready to set our Sankalpa or Intention. A Sanskrit word, where “San” means to connect with our highest truth, and “kalpa” means a vow. Setting a Sankalpa, is sowing the seeds of change. A Sankalpa resonates with our entire being. It feels right, it excites our soul and we feel the faith and conviction to manifest it. It also guides our actions, if we allow it too.

Sankalpa

Let’s take an example, this week for me continues to be about “being in service”. Given Covid crisis in India, a lot of my time daily is spent talking to my friends and family, finding ways to alleviate suffering there. And now with my Labrador dog going for her operation tomorrow, this week is focussed on her healing and comfort. My Sankalpa of “being in service” is inspiring my actions, where my time is spent and when I am distracted. It guides me back to where I should be channelling my energy. Nothing else matters right now but being in service. My energy goes where my attention goes.

Every Yoga practice generally starts with an intention setting. The act of listening to our inner self and being able to articulate our intention is not easy. It requires the mind to be calm, to have courage to accept our need and the faith that it is possible. It’s not easy but practice makes perfect.

Set Your Intentions Step by Step

So, I encourage you to get better at setting your intentions. Few steps to follow whilst setting your intention:

1. The Sankalpa or intention is like an affirmation, it is in the present tense as if it is already true. E,g, I am strong, or I am feeling stronger day by day.
2. You can set your intention daily or have the same intention for a period of time. The most important thing is that it should resonate with you. 
3. Keep reminding yourself of your intention, repeat it like a mantra till it is ingrained into your sub conscious mind
4. When you practice Yoga on the mat, we bring it forward in every asana (posture) you do, every breath you take, practice your intention on the mat, so that when you step off the mat, you carry this energy into your day. 

The Power of Intentions!

Your intention will be the seeds of change you will sow to shape your life. So as you step on your mat tomorrow, be ready to set your intention, when you wake up in the morning set your intention. Find your best moment, when you can quiet your mind and listen to your soul. Set your intention and let it inspire your thoughts, words and actions.

To set your intentions, reflect on:

• What aspects of your inner being you wish to bring forward?
• Which attitude do you need to cultivate for the life situations you face?
• What will serve you the most?

I challenge you to commit to setting your intention for the next 7 days and observe what happens next.

AUTHOR: ANITA

Having grown up in India, I encountered yoga very early on joining morning walkers in the neighbourhood for yoga or later as a teen being stretched by a long bearded, white robed Indian yogi. However, I truly fell in love with Yoga in Switzerland, when my inquisitiveness and curiosity led to a teacher’s certificate in my hands.

The post Sankalpa: The Power of Intention appeared first on Beyond Yoga Academy.