Spring Awakening - busy and stressed? [re]start your yoga practice now!
by Zenevate Founder, Chereesca Bejasa
In my last blog post, I talked about working with the energy of the seasons and encouraged you to hold off on starting your New Year’s resolutions. Well, now spring is here, and it’s time to enlighten up!
You may be fully aware of the benefits of yoga. You’ve heard about studies demonstrating their extreme effectiveness at reducing stress, calming the mind, promoting sleep, and even in fighting many illnesses. You may even be familiar with that blissful feeling after a practice when your body feels vibrant and your mind is sharp. Yet, establishing a regular practice has evaded you. That’s because, until now, yoga has not been designed for you.
There’s a reason the word “yoga” makes you think about people with perfect bodies, traveling the world, discovering themselves, and definitely not holding full-time jobs. Somehow, yoga in the Western world has been geared toward those affluent in both time and money. Those of us that are super busy make serious trade-offs when attempting to maintain a yoga practice; dinner/sleep/dating vs yoga. This is exactly why Zenevate exists: to redesign yoga to be an achievable lifestyle for everyone, especially those of us that seem to have no time at all.
Why is this so important? We are in the middle of a stress epidemic, and some very stressed-out people are making decisions in their high-powered jobs that will affect us and our children for generations to come. Take a moment and think about how you operate in extreme stress. Are you positive, generous, and creative, or are you cut-throat and focused on the bottom line? It’s natural to be less compassionate when stressed because we are effectively operating in survival mode; willing to sacrifice things that were seemingly dear to us before our health and relationships were at stake.
If you’ve found any truth in these statements, now is the time, because this is the easiest time you will have all year to do something that can truly transform your life, health, and even your work.
So let’s dive in.
Why now?
Spring… even the word elicits energy. Maybe you feel it in your body - a faster pulse, excitement, a desire to stretch away the winter rigidity. Perhaps your mind is spinning with all of the new ideas you have. The northern hemisphere has begun it’s annual revival in its most prolific period for creating new life. All of that life force is in and around you quietly inspiring you to revive as well. With all of the season’s energy working in your favor, starting and keeping a practice is much easier. For those of you into astrology, our experts tell us that now is the perfect moment for creativity and the start of any new initiative while Jupiter is in Aquarius. This will be the case until May 14th. So on top of spring’s energetic support, there’s a super-charge of creativity to help with solving exactly how we will make these shifts in our lives.
Here’s a short and sweet Daoist Yoga practice that’s perfect for the spring. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the liver is the organ associated with this season. (Zenevate subscribers can click the image to go directly to the video)
What does yoga look like when redesigned for me?
If when you think of yoga, you are imagining expensive, tight, stretchy clothing, a mat, and at least an hour in your schedule, you’ve definitely been exposed to yoga as designed for rich Americans. Rather than taking loads of time to escape to a serene sanctuary, we teach you to bring yoga into your worst days. The Zen Buddhist teacher Maezumi Roshi said, “Your life is your practice.” So rather than escaping from life, we want to learn to live in our full potential and in a continuous state of balance.
Yoga designed for you is beginning your workday with a practice to get yourself in the mindset for whatever you are facing that day. It’s doing a 5-minute ego eradicator practice before a big presentation to get centered, sharp, and add power to your voice. It’s daily drops of 10-minute breath practices that prepare you to be calm and understanding with your family in situations that would otherwise have you enraged and reactive. Before writing this blog post, I followed this short practice for creativity and communication (Zenevate subscribers can click the image to go directly to the video):
Yoga designed in this manner trains you little by little to alleviate stress and deal with pressure. All the other benefits to your health, your clarity, your relationships are the bonus for this incredible work.
How do I fit yoga into my busy life?
Like most New Year’s resolutions, new initiatives focused on our wellness often fail very quickly. We’ve been researching and trying out methods to establish a practice that will fit your lifestyle rather than adding to your endless to-dos, and we’ve been designing it with you in mind.
To imagine you, the achiever, the go-getter, the award-winner also as a good friend, partner, parent, community leader, etc, etc, means you need to be constantly refilling your cup of energy. We also knew it had to be super simple and feel really good.
So how do you do this?
Know your “Why”; who would you be if you had clarity and balance everyday?
Initiate your important activities with a practice to get yourself in an optimal mindset
Start small and with easy wins
Get guidance
Do it with joy
If the above list seems more easily said than done, you’re right! In my original draft, those 5 bullet points were 4 pages long of explanation and techniques. Simplicity is borne from lots of knowledge and intentional work. You’re not here to get a degree, you’re here to live your life more optimally. So instead of bouncing around trying to figure it out yourself like I did for 20 years, get guidance. We offer individualized guidance with the Zenevate Move With Purpose plan and can get you on the road to success with our quarterly consultations.
Come Practice With Zenevate
The Zenevate team are just like you: hardworking go-getters who have never had the luxury of spending months or years “finding ourselves”. We have lived as pillars in our families and fully in the work world where accomplishments reign supreme. So that’s to say, we get it. We know there will always be obligations, deadlines, and even our own difficulties with the idea of self-care to contend with. We focus on user experience design for you, the busy person, and incorporate advancements in habit formation and neuroscience. We’re also real people who are put off by the perfect-bodied imagery of Instagram yogis performing crazy poses. We’re not about that. What we are about is designing yoga for the working single mom, the stressed students, the politician whose decisions will change the course of history.
Also, we are still very early in our product development. We don’t claim to have all the bells and whistles, but what we do have is individualized experiences. Our practitioners call or email us to ask for particular content, and we involve them in the evolution of our product. When it comes to your practice, our instructors and internal team work on ways to guide you so that you aren’t left alone to navigate the complexities of yoga. We aren’t just a website, but your community as you proceed on your journey.
Ready to get started? Subscribe to one of our membership plans or contact us to see if we are right for you. We can’t wait to know you and to guide you to your better self!
Written with love
by Chereesca Bejasa, Founder of Zenevate