The sensory awareness that yoga cultivates has been such a blessing to me, providing me great stress relief every time I practice and helping me to become a more relaxed, resilient person over time. As I learn to more fully focus on my body and breath, I more often enter that deep meditative state that relaxed focus brings.
Today as I finished my yoga practice it dawned on me that the healing sensory immersion that being in nature brings is much the same as my yogic focus on the sensations of the body and the breath. Both are deeply relaxing, replenishing and healing.
I teach yoga several times a week and usually practice one other time on my own or subbing. Even after doing yoga for more than a decade I find that it continues to take me to new places in awareness.
While the deepest relaxation states are ones when I am sensing rather than thinking, both immersion in nature and yoga periodically give rise to relaxed thoughts and free associations. I typically let these flow for a while as I gain insights and ideas. Then, as I remember, I shift my focus back to my senses.
Sometimes if I'm caught up in worry, sensory awareness is a bit more difficult. But I often feel better after gently trying again and again to come back to physical sensations whether it be listening to the song of a mourning dove or filling my lungs. During times of serious upset walking, exercising or otherwise moving help me get back to a place I can more successfully focus on sensations.
When I teach yoga, I start with the breath. I direct my students to begin slowing and deepening the breath, cultivating a relaxed diaphragmatic breath. I remind participants to come back to the sensations of the breath and body throughout the practice. By noticing the various nuances of physical sensation and how they change throughout the practice, we learn ever more about the embodied part of ourselves.
The journey within truly is a nature journey. A journey to myself. Instead of focusing on the movements, sounds and appearance of birds and beasts, grass, trees, bodies of water and sky, I'm concentrating on the shifting sensations in my connective tissue and where I am in space. I notice filling my lungs, and the release of the slow exhale. This is the nature of my body and my breath. My embodied self changes not only from day to day, but also from moment to moment.
Practicing yoga outdoors, where the environment is more unpredictable than a quiet studio, is also worthwhile. It offers a broader range of available sensations to attend to. When I hunt sitting still, I sometimes refresh myself with bouts of slow, deep breaths. I focus on the sensation of the breath as well as the sensations of sitting, listening and watching in the woods.
Nothing is so real or precious to me as the sensory flow of present moments as I direct my focus outward and/or inward.
Small lake during the golden hour. By Kathy Hagood