Winter Reflections 🤔
In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Winter is the season of the Water Element and the perfect time of the year to slow down, stop (hibernate), rest and RESTORE. With many of us feeling ‘too busy’ to even think about slowing down for a few moments, we really have to make a conscious effort - a regular ‘appointment’ with ourselves of even just a few daily minutes to simply pause and reflect - but not overthink.
How are we tracking? Which area of our life are we most neglecting? Work? Family? Diet? Physcial movement? Emotional fulfilment? Intellectual stimulation? Can improvements in any one of these be made? What are our priorities? Where should we start?
Oftentimes, the more we think about what’s best,
the more elusive a solution appears to be.
But what if a solution could appear without even trying? The eastern philosophies, including that of Yoga, have a lot to say on this topic. Relaxing, slowing down and creating the appropriate environment for self-reflection and self-discovery is a skill, like any other skill, that needs practise. We practise and practise in order to improve in tiny, almost unrecognisable increments, often only seeing the benefits in retrospect when we find ourselves in a very different place in the days, weeks and months ahead.
Relaxation can be both active and passive, engaged or DISengaged.
Most of us in the 21st Century Western World are sleep deprived, so making sure you’re depositing enough hours into the sleep bank - passive relaxation - is definitely something to address (being aware that regularly oversleeping can cause too).
Passive relaxation can be both engaged (receiving a massage) and DISengaged (regularly feeling like you’re passing out from exhaustion or collapsing into your bed night after night). It's really all relative. Active relaxation could include making the conscious choice to sleep more or take a nap every day, but is really the practice of actually doing something - whilst pressing pause - during your waking hours that produces a gentle, calming, restorative and rebalancing effect on our body, breath & mind.
'Active' & 'engaged passive' relaxation build on the process of simple relaxation, and begin the process of RESTORATION - no longer are we constantly feeling like we are barely holding it together, but rather we feel calm, clear and well rested for most of the time.
Lots of different activities can fall into this category. Having a bath, reading a book, gardening or going for a slow walk - i.e. doing something.
During these pastimes, answers appear. Rather than ‘wracking your brains’ to (often unsuccessfully) try working out the best course of action, distracting (and consequently quietening) the mind with a one-pointed focus; a sensation (like the feeling of sand between your toes, in a bath with water supporting the whole body, or simply connecting to your own breath) or more formal mindfulness practices such as Yoga or Meditation as well as engaged passive relaxation wellness modalities such as Shiatsu Acupressure or Thai (Remedial) Massage or Reflexology.
Please Contact Me anytime to find out more. Foot & Body Massage & Individual Yoga sessions are generally available Monday to Friday, up until 8pm for those of you that work 9-5. I'm currently also working the occasional Saturday (the next is 09.06). The next PoPuP Yoga Class is scheduled to run in Balaclava at 9:30am on Monday 04.06 - I will run it if I have enough interested students so if you’re keen to attend, please let me know ASAP.
I’m also running a Seasonal Saturday Yoga Workshop for Winter - in St Kilda from 11am on Saturday 23.06 and ultimately hoping to get another 7x Class Block of Yoga AllStars classes up and running again - either in Balaclava or perhaps again in Prahran (in the recently renovated studio where I first started teaching back in 2011) - from the first Monday or Tuesday morning in July, so follow the above links for the most up to date info on my website and get in touch if you’d like to come along.
Private Health Fund Rebates & Gift Vouchers are also available.
