Stress Buster
Your home practice should be your sanctuary from stress. Here's a sequence to ensure that it is.
By Andrea Ferretti
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As you gear up for the holidays, you probably have more to do and less time to do it. And that usually adds up to one thing: stress. That's when your home practice can come to the rescue-especially if you tailor it to accommodate your changing moods and energy levels. After all, stress doesn't manifest itself the same way every time you experience it. Sometimes it leaves you exhausted and desperate for a nap; other times it drives you to scour your kitchen from top to bottom until midnight.
If it's any consolation, the ancient yogis experienced similar fluctuations. We still reference the categories they had for different kinds of energy. Called the three gunas—rajas, tamas, and sattva—these energetic qualities are found in everything in nature.
Rajas is an active force often described as passion, desire, violence, determination, and drive; left unchecked, it can lead to feelings of restlessness and overstimulation. Tamas is passive—the pull of dullness, inertia, and sleep. Sattva is the quality of light, love, and peace. Although the gunas are always intertwined, once you tune in to them, you'll notice how one or two are likely to be dominant (and perhaps out of balance) at any point in your day.
The key to finding that sweet spot of sattvic balance is to adjust your practice appropriately. If you're anxious and jumpy, restorative poses might not be the way to start. "If you're feeling rajasic, try to occupy your mind by doing a good flow sequence for 20 minutes or so," says Baxter Bell, a physician and yoga teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. (To contact him, visit www.bellyoga.info.) "Go into longer holds when your mind is quiet enough to handle them. Or do just two or three restoratives for a shorter period of time." If you're feeling listless, Bell suggests taking a few minutes in a passive backbend before you begin.
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