Surrender your mind to your heart
I always start my yoga classes like this:
Sit in simple cross-legs. Ground your sit bones and create a nice long spine. Take a few deep breaths and get comfortable in your seated position.
Bring your hands in Namaste right at your heart space. Relax your shoulders and lift your chest toward your hands. Bow your head to your hands.
Bowing your head to your hands is a representation of surrendering the mind to your heart space.
To me it shows deep respect for my body. It reminds me to move through the world from my heart rather than from my head, where there lives WILD judgement.
For the first few years of my life I could not eat any foods except rice, bananas, and goats milk. I would throw all other foods up. At the age of 7 I began having chronic pain in my body. I couldn’t sit or stand for long periods of time. My mom took me to the doctor a few times and they couldn’t find anything wrong with me except mild scoliosis.
When I got to college, and was taking care of myself I realized very quickly that I needed to make some changes. Nutritional changes as well as physical changes. My digestion was terrible and my pain was more than annoying.
So I set off to make some changes. I found yoga and started learning about food.
What I realized very quickly was that food and yoga were going to be my initial steps to creating a healthy body. In just a few months, my pain subsided and my digestion was getting better.
I also found that my mind was changing. It was more present. I now know it as presence but at the time it felt as though I was paying attention to small things like brushing my teeth.
Yoga and many other physical practices build presence in the mind because you learn to concentrate. You cannot think about anything else but what your body is doing when you are holding yoga poses. You begin to witness your body and it takes you right out of your wild mind.
You start to pay close attention to your body and you truly take care of it. And when you are taking care of your body, EVERYTHING else it better.
Every time I sit in cross legs at the beginning of class and bow my head, I have deep gratitude for my body and what it has taught me and will continue to teach me.
I invite you to bring your hands to your heart space, bow your head, and listen within. What is your body telling you? What does it want from you? What does it need?
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This November, I am co-teaching a retreat with my dear friend Ali Schiller. We have been friends for many years and have witnessed each other’s Wild Minds no doubt.
We jokingly will say, there goes that wild mind again.
Together we have created a retreat like no other. One that is going to teach you all of our personal practices for witnessing and taming the wild mind. Giving you the opportunity to learn to witness and tame your own mind.
Yoga, dance, self-massage, nourishment, meditation, breathing, journaling, silence are some of the practices we will deliver with an open heart.
It is one that I am deeply honored to teach.