Peaceful Body
I believe that loving, respecting, appreciating and caring for our bodies is essential if we want to experience the inner peace that comes from feeling true love and respect for ourselves. These are a few of the resources that I’ve found helpful in cultivating love and respect for my body.
Yoga
When I moved to a new home in a new location in 2014, I joined a local yoga class in an effort to meet new people, to do something physically active, and to calm my turbulent emotions and mind. I didn’t find the pace or format of the class especially calming but the experience gave me a taste for the far-reaching benefits of yoga and led me to discovering the joy of ‘At Home Yoga Practice’…
Option 1 – Yoga with Adriene
At the time I was searching for free yoga videos on YouTube and came across ‘Yoga with Adriene (YWA)‘, created by a young musical theatre actress (Adriene Mishler) and her entrepreneurial, film-making friend (Chris Sharpe) who believed that yoga classes should be made accessible to anyone and everyone who wanted to take part in them, in the privacy of their own homes, free of charge. They offered 30-day programmes and Adriene’s informal, chatty, encouraging style appealed to me. I continued to practice yoga using YWA videos for the next 10 years.
YWA’s YouTube channel provides an extensive library of introductory videos on each yoga pose (for complete beginners); full-length, individual yoga sessions targeting different parts of the body; as well as ten tailor-made, 30-day, progressive programmes, all accessible and down-loadable, free-of-charge, from YouTube. Its principal philosophy is to ‘Find What Feels Good‘ for you on the mat, so that you gradually develop the inner strength and confidence to do the same in each area of your life, off the mat.
Selection of Yoga with Adriene (YWA) Videos
‘Synchronise‘ practice
I could just have easily added this video to the ‘Peaceful Balance’ section of this website, because it is a perfect yoga practice to demonstrate how truly connected our Minds, Bodies and Spirits really are, and how lack of balance in one area will always show up in the others too. Enjoy…
‘Yoga for the Future’ practice
This is a lovely practice for setting a new intention, embarking on a new project or beginning a new phase in your life…
Introductory Video to YWA’s First 30-Day Programme Series
If you feel like trying out a whole 30-day programme, this is a quirky one to start with and will also give you some insight into how Adriene herself has matured and developed her practice over the last 10 years.
(Each year since 2015 a new 30-day Programme has been launched each January)
Option 2 – Yoga with Charlie Follows
Although I’ve always liked Adriene’s chatty, informal style of teaching yoga, this year I found myself wanting something a bit calmer, more structured and with less talking and ‘ad-libbing’ during the practice. This led me to finding Charlie Follows’ videos, which I love for their beautiful, peaceful settings; Charlie’s calm and clear instructions; and the different levels of practice that are offered. Charlie’s site provides individual yoga videos and also 28-day programmes for ‘Beginners‘ and ‘Improvers‘. Going back to basics with her, I found that both my focus and my postures improved.
La Casa de Paz 