Earth.....a prescription for relaxation

Dear Yogis,

The energy of earth is the energy of relaxation.   So our ability to find it within ourselves presents us with a gift …the gift of walking this fabulous journey through life one relaxed moment at a time. 

If earth energy were bottled, it would take the place in your medicine chest of sedatives, sleeping pills, valium and the countless other pharmaceuticals taken to relax.   

One of the complaints I hear most often is the inability to relax.    How did we get to a place as a population where relaxation has to be bought?  Why is relaxation saved only for  our yearly vacations?  And how did relaxation become synonymous with laziness?  

We were born relaxed.  It is our natural state and our birth right.  This sense of peace and contentedness is in each and every one of us.  But it requires wanting it and peeling back some of the layers of life to bring it back out into the light. 

And to be clear – relaxation does not mean not “doing” anything.  It is not the image often portrayed of lying back with our feet up and a cold beverage in our hand.   Once we learn how to draw on that earth energy, we can choose to be completely relaxed throughout our busy day.  Not pulled from center by the activities around us. 

The first step is to practice being in this moment.  Let’s do a little exercise:

·         Sit up tall, aligning yourself to your center, which is the energy line that runs from the tip of the tailbone up to the crown – right in front of the spine. 

·         Feel the contact of your sit bones on the chair – your connection

·         Begin to notice your breath, letting it begin to slow

·         Become aware of the whole back of your body

·         Imagine every single thing that has happened up to this very moment behind the back of the body

·         Take a few big exhales through the back of the body – letting the past be “behind you”

·         Now become aware of the whole front of the body

·         Sense the wide open empty space in front of you;  The future;  Feel it with your inhales;  It is unlimited and free of form!

·         Now bring your awareness back to the center line in your body which lies between the past and the future

·         This where we find the present moment

·         Notice everything about it

The more you do this, the more you find that the present moment is filled with relaxation.  Very rarely are we anxious about the present moment.  Our worries tend to dwell on what has already occurred or our projections of what may come – neither of which are real.  Only the present moment is real.

So to all of you……I am writing a prescription for earth energy.  Practice being in the moment, slow down, walk barefoot, lie on the floor, get out into nature, drink nourishing herbal infusions (much more on that in my blog archives under September in 2012), get a massage – and most importantly of all – firmly believe that it is in you and visualize yourself as relaxed to your very core.

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh……………………….  I love earth.

Exhaling out anything that no longer serves me,

SARAH