New Year Flow

Well here we are at the end of the year and what a year this has been. Events in the media, out in the world and events in my personal life have thrown me at times, but always brought me back to a deeper understanding of myself and my relationship to the people in my life and to the world at large. And my yoga practice has always worked as a catalyst for me, helping me transform difficulties into life lessons, helping create flow where I’m feeling stuck.

At this turning of the year, I’ve prepared a special somatic yoga class with this in mind, as a way of reflecting back over the year that has passed, a way of working to loosen its tendrils and create an easy flow forwards, without even bringing to mind a single thing that has happened.  

Somatic yoga is a fantastic way to work with the events of the past. Because the past is written into the very fabric of our bodies. We cannot grasp or change the past itself, but we can feel its echoes still with us here now.

And through our yoga movements, we can acknowledge and accept these echoes, these subtle sensations of the nervous system, these patterns of tightness and tension that we hold.

With gently guided movements, we can flow with these echoes and be flowed by them, dance with them, moving their rhythms through the body, transforming them with the alchemy of this moment, with our compassionate gaze, into a thing of beauty.

Beauty can be sadness, anger, joy, passion, fear even. It can be a nameless flow of sensations, refusing to be defined. Everything that we bring, that we carry with us. Each emotion, each pattern, whatever we hold, can be allowed space to unfold in its own beautiful way, through gently guided yoga movements, with invitations to open, hold and explore as much or as little as feels right in the moment.

As we notice our rhythms and textures at this time and flow with them, we can bring a sense of kindly recognition, of acceptance, and more than anything else, as we notice the beauty of what is there, we can bring loving kindness to all that we are, to all that we carry from this year that has passed.

And we can look forwards to the future, as we gaze now from one year to the next. We can simply stand, poised. A loving pause in the glorious dance that is our life, ready to embrace the beauty of whatever movements are yet to come.

So this is how I plan to start my year and I'm really looking forward to sharing this class. If you’d like to join me, my Year’s End Class is on Monday 29^th December, 12-1.00 at Jenna Blair Yoga Studio.

Or join me weekly, for my upcoming somatic yoga class series this Winter, where we will be exploring this further, with themes including deep rest, quiet fluidity and gentle playfulness. Find me in class on Mondays in Church Stretton, Shrewsbury and Picklescott.