Breath Easy Through The Season: And above all dance flamenco!

Thanksgiving is surely a time to be thankful for all the good graces that are in our lives, but truth be told it can also be a stressful time. All ages, kids to adult, have to combat overeating, stress, sadness, lack of exercise and imbalance.

I like to make sure my students have a few good things  in their tool box of way to cope with these feelings.

Remember if things do get stressful:

1. Breath: inhale though your nose and out through your nose. Try to elongate the exhale to calm you.

2. Do a simple inversion: forward bends, which can be done leaning forward onto a chair if the floor is just too far away. Yoga poses like forward bend and downward facing dog raise your blood pressure enough to trigger the body's natural calming mechanisms (do not do inversions if you have high blood pressure-the best thing here to do would be to sit and rest your head on a table).

3. Do heart opening poses to combat depression: cobra, bridge, bow, wheel, locust, fish, camel. Simply you can sit on a chair, place your hands by your sides, lift up your chest and feel you back arching up.

4. You can tame feelings of fear and instability by doing twists, hip openers and side bends. These will help balance your emotions: butterfly, child's pose, 1/2 lord of the fishes, simple lying twist and dimple seated twist (on the floor or in a chair).

5. DANCE FLAMENCO! Above all let your hearts be free, it will help you digest your food and you will feel great!

Here is a past post of mine called "Smell The Roses In Your Poses" 

http://alwaysbdancing.blogspot.com/2012/11/smell-roses-in-your-poses-thanksgiving.html

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

¡Ole! ¡Namaste!