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Kicking off your day with an energizing morning yoga practice can be a beautiful way to find focus and feel more balanced and empowered in any season. That’s especially true in kapha season (aka spring), as we shake off winter’s doldrums and feel our creativity firing up.
This kapha-balancing sequence offered by yoga teacher, author, and Ayurvedist Claire Raggozzino focuses on dynamic movement with longer holds, chest openers, and twists to cleanse and strengthen the body. Back-bending and twisting encourage opening the heart to help you relax and release attachments.
While practicing this sequence on an empty stomach in the morning is optimal, you can also flow through it in the afternoon, several hours after eating. As you move through this practice, ask yourself, “Where can I create more space in my life? How can I soften my inner resistance to change?”
3 Beginner tips
Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Anything that comes up while you practice isn’t wrong it’s information.
Aim for progress, not perfection. Simply being willing to try helps you become more embodied.
Build body awareness incrementally. The ultimate goal of yoga asana is to develop a deeper, more mindful and attuned relationship with yourself which takes time and practice. Photo: Ian Spanier
1. Anjaneyasana (Low Lunge)
From Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward–Facing Dog Pose), step your right foot forward, outside of your right hand. Keep your torso and both arms inside of your front leg. Bend your elbows and bring your forearms to the floor. Scoop your tailbone toward your ribs, lengthen your spine, and lift your abdomen. Press your left heel back. To decrease the left hip flexor stretch, release your back knee to the floor. Hold for 5–8 breaths. Repeat on the other side.
For many of us, life’s stress and tightness makes a beeline for our heads and necks. This is particularly true for those of us who spend a lot of time sitting at a computer. This tension can cause pain, headaches, and limited mobility in the shoulders and head. In this sequence, yoga teacher Gabrielle Marchese guides you through a gentle series of postures that offer quick, soothing relief from this all-too-common discomfort.
Photo: Gabrielle Marchese
Head Rolls
Find a comfortable seat. Begin to deepen your breath. Drop your right ear toward your right shoulder. Slowly roll your head through center, then over to the left. Keep your eyes closed and gaze fixed inward toward your third eye center as you move. Keep moving your head in gentle, slow circles for about 5 rounds before switching directions.
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You can use Ayurvedic practices to help rebalance your pitta and keep your cool. Photo: iStock
In Ayurveda, the three doshas, or constitutions, are vata, kapha, and pitta. Certain doshas are more predominant during certain seasons, which can aggravate the dosha and cause imbalance in the body. Pitta drives transformation and governs digestion, body temperature, and more. A imbalance in the pitta dosha can manifest itself in unhealthy physical and emotional patterns.
What is pitta?
Imagine a bubbling pot of steaming hot, sour, and spicy soup that’s the nature of pitta. Each dosha is associated with two different elements. Pitta is made up of the primal elements fire (mainly) and water (secondarily). Pitta has hot, oily, sharp, light, sour, fluid, and pungent attributes many of the same sensory qualities that surrounds us during summer. Of the three doshas, pitta has the most in common with summer, says Ayurvedic practitioner Niika Quistgard.