yoga

Three Reasons to Integrate Ayurvedic Wisdom into your Yoga Practice

If you have found your yoga practice has plateaued or become rote, disconnected from the rest of your world, lacks context, feels rigid, and is relegated to the yoga mat at best, or if you feel lost in a home practice without your teacher giving instructions, there are many reasons why the basic study of Ayurveda might re-inspire you and support your continual growth. Here are just three:

1. To learn the language of your body

What do you feel when your yoga instructor says “listen to your body”? It’s a vague statement that often requires the practitioner to be honest about their level of comfort in a pose at best, but what if I told you that there is a whole palette of colorful experience we can notice at any given moment beyond musculature and that this awareness becomes the entrance into deeper healing. At the start of most subtle practices, and frankly at any moment, it is possible to pay attention signs of health, disease, and quality of life that show up in our skin, nails, hair, tongue, weight, digestive system, organs, energy level patterns, sleep/waking cycles, and to adjust our foods, daily rhythms, poses, breath, nourishing and cleansing practices to meet the needs of this time in our lives, whether these needs are driven by a current health condition or season. By learning the language of the body, we are able to choose and attract qualities found in natural substances into our lives to meet our needs. We make small and meaningful choices, everyday, that add up to greater health and wellbeing. Scroll down for the Ayurvedic Self Care and Nourishment course.

2. To Tailor Yoga Practices

Therapeutic yoga has become all the rage as modern practitioners find the need to move beyond cookie cutter styles, to make asana more adaptable to everyday folks, and to emphasize the mental and spiritual benefits. However, what we so often fail to recognize is that this is not a novel effort. Yoga, that has been taught alongside Ayurveda or within communities steeped in Ayurvedic traditions, has always given attention to the subtler practices of mantra, mudra, pranayama, and meditation, as well as nutrition and disciplined daily rhythms, with a built-in understanding that human beings are…