Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign hello and welcome to another episode of Deepen youn Yoga Practice. I am your host, Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. And today we're going to be talking about tips to help you you feel refreshed and renewed for the season of spring. And primarily we'll be using Ayurveda as the basis for these tips in balancing and supporting your lifestyle with the seasonal shift. And a few yoga tips as well. So welcome. I don't know about you, but for me it feels so good to welcome in the spring. It's my birthday season. It feels like the new year and in Kansas City our winter was harsh. This year I tried to embrace it. I have an episode on winter Ayurveda and embracing this season. But I'm not gonna lie, it does feel good to be welcoming in some new fresh energy and growth. If you're unfamiliar, Ayurveda is the sister science of yoga. It's called the science of life. And while yoga deals with philosophy, posture, breath, energy management, etc. With Ayurveda we're looking at more lifestyle practices. So your daily schedule, what you eat and when, your health in general. And Ayurveda deals with different elements and constitutions that manifest differently and in different quantities in our own beings through the seasons, through time of day, etc. You don't have to have a deep understanding of this system to get a lot out of this episode, so don't worry about that. But what I will focus on is the particular constitution that really starts to shine this season of spring, which is called kapha. And kapha is a mixture of earth and water, mostly earth. It's a heavy and slow energy. As we get later into the season, we start to feel a bit more pitta, which is the constitution of fire in a little bit of water. But for now, it's a lot of kapha. We need the earth, we need the water for the new life. So as we move into this season, adjustments in diet and and movement and even mindset can be really important so that you don't feel bogged down with the kapha dosha and instead are working with it and finding balance with it. So here are a few Kapha balancing Ayurvedic tips for spring. The first one is all about food, so we're invited to eat light and warming foods in this season. So in Ayurveda that means bitter, pungent and astringent tastes. Some examples might be greens, ginger, turmeric sprouts, Ayurveda really promotes seasonal eating. So you can think of the different fruits and veggies that grow in this season. So we live in a modern world where we have access to food from all over the world and from different hemispheres, which is awesome, but it can be a little bit confusing to our bodies, according to Ayurveda. So eating like local seasonal foods is also going to be awesome. So for me, in the early spring, what we're looking at in the garden are things like broccoli and cauliflower, spinach and kale, maybe some spring carrots, definitely onions, and in general, a lot of greens. What Ayurveda asks us to reduce in this season, to reduce kapha are our heavy and damp foods, for example, dairy, fried foods, and excess sweets, which is definitely a shift from the winter, where we're looking at more of the vata, or air and ether element coming in, or dosha coming in, where we actually want to eat a little bit heavier to balance that out. So now we're looking for things that help us feel light and fresh. They also recommend starting the morning with warm lemon water, which, according to Ayurveda, aids in digestion. Water is just so important in general, and if lemon helps you drink it, great. So those are a few of the diet tips for the spring. Ayurveda also looks at what activities we're doing at different times of day, as well as our movement practices. So kapha energy creates this feeling of sluggishness, that's that feeling of earth, of slowness, of density. So they recommend balancing that out first by getting up before sunrise, perhaps around 6am, which if you're not a morning person, can definitely be really difficult. But getting up, getting that first sunlight can feel so good. And it's proven to have all kinds of benefits. And it also recommends morning movement. So that might mean a brisk walk outside, some dancing, maybe some sun salutations, or energizing yoga to break up some of that stagnation and build some momentum for your day. Other Ayurvedic tips would include using spring detox rituals. I know our bodies are really smart and they know how to remove toxins. But Ayurveda has for a long time included these practices, and they do help you feel refreshed and renewed. The first would be dry brushing or garshana, which stimulates circulation. So you could do that before you take a shower, brushing your skin and then brushing the joints in circular motions. Another ritual would be neti pot cleansing. So if you're familiar, you put saline in Warm filtered water, pour it through one nostril and it comes out the other. I'll be honest, it's not something that I personally enjoy. The water seems to get stuck in my sinuses and then I'll do like a forward fold later on in the day and it just comes pouring out. But one of the practices I did do, really love and enjoy is nausea oil. So nacia oil is oiling the insides of your nostrils and even pouring a couple drops of oil and letting it drip down the sinuses, which helps with sinus health and clearing seasonal allergies. I particularly love it when I'm feeling really dry in my nose. It just provides that lubrication that makes it easier to breathe. And another spring detox ritual according to Ayurveda would be tongue scraping. I like a copper tongue scraper, personally, in the morning and at night to remove all that gunk from your tongue and to support digestion and remove toxins. And that's something you can absolutely do all year round. I want to shift a little bit more to yoga now and different ways you can adapt your yoga practice for this spring according to these Ayurvedic principles. And one is to create a little bit more heat in your yoga practice, so inviting in more pitta energy. So you could do that through things like sun salutations, like I mentioned earlier, which are so good first thing in the morning, really any time of day, to warm the body and create some heat. I love twists. They don't detoxify the body like people used to say in old school yoga, but they do provide this sense of clearing and cleansing and refreshing that I love. I talk more about that a few episodes ago from spring. Myofascial release. I love backbends to open the lungs, open the heart, to all of the kind of curling up and almost fetal positioning that we tend to do in the cold of the winter to keep ourselves warm and definitely strong Standing poses and balancing poses. Think warrior poses, chair pose, Tree Warrior 3 for strength and for grounding. And I love incorporating all of those into a dynamic flow. As far as pranayama goes or breath work, anything that promotes more energy and lightness is really appropriate for this season. So I love Kapalabhati Pranayama or skull shining breath. You also might know it as breath of Fire, which really clears the energy quickly and brings your mind to a focused state. I love Bastrika breath, which is really similar to Breath of Fire, but the inhale is conscious, unlike Breath of Fire. So Breath of Fire, Kapalabhati Think of forced exhale. Belly snaps back Bhastrika. It's an equal inhale and exhale. That's, that's fairly forceful. And then we have nadi shodhana. I love nadi shodhana for any season, really. But it's alternate nostril breathing and it helps balance out the energy channels, clearing any stagnant energy that might have built up during the winter season. My last tips revolve around meditation and mindset for this time of year. Gratitude practices can be really powerful, really embracing new growth, noticing even things like the blades of grass coming up brand new or the new plants, or maybe seeing different animals come out, maybe just feeling a different sense of energy. Also, any visualization meditations that focus on setting intentions are wonderful. Like I said earlier, this is more like the new year to me than January. It has this sense of birth and freshness and renewal. So visualizing yourself, planting seeds of intention for this season, knowing that you don't need to force them to happen or to grow, but you do need to tend to these seeds of intention throughout the season to create growth in life. And you might also consider some journaling prompts like what am I ready to let go of? And what am I calling in this spring? And those are so simple, but they can be so incredibly helpful. Sometimes we don't even realize that we're holding on to things that aren't serving us anymore and that could run the gamut of what that might be in your life. But it's so nice to acknowledge that, maybe to strategize on how we're letting go of those things and then to set those new intentions, to plant those new seeds for growth of what we want our lives to look like, what we want our communities to look like, what we want our world to look like. So to close up, I talked about different Ayurvedic tips for spring, such as different things to eat, when to rise, what kind of movement to take on, what kind of detoxing practices Ayurveda offers, as well as different ways to use asana, pranayama, meditation and mindset for this new season, for this sense of renewal, for the birth of new things. And I'd love it if you tried one or two of these shifts and let me know how they feel. So feel free to reach out laurenrueloveyogakc.com or find me on Instagram at Iamlauren Leduc. I'd love to know how these are working for you and the classes I teach at True Love Yoga are always aligned with the seasons. They might have different themes and stuff within that, but if you want to experience a nice pitta inducing Kapha balancing yoga practice, you can join me in person or online Sundays at 10:30. Just join @True Loveyogacasey.com. i'd love to see you in class. I thank you so much for listening. Have a beautiful spring. Om Shanti Om. Peace.
