This was a special day for me. After lunch my husband went to grocery with the girls and to visit grandparents. I could be on the island alone for the whole afternoon. Luxury!
I cleaned our boat and went to the beach to do something that I had dreamed to do many times during the winter.
My ashtanga yoga practice outdoors. In nature.
The weather was perfect for practicing yoga outdoors. Warm, cloudy and calm.
Warm enough to enjoy the yoga in nature. Cloudy so the sunshine didn´t bother me in asanas that required good balance. And calm, which help me to add extra concentration to my practice.
It was peaceful and quiet. The only things that I could hear were the singing birds in the forest, tiny waves coming to the shore and my breathing.
Nature´s tranquility caught me unnoticed. I was immersed in my practice.
Then it happened. The beautiful thing that happens every now and then during the yoga practice. You achieve a deep relaxed state of the body and mind. Your body starts to stretch better. Your mind quiets down. You feel how tensions fade away and are replaced by the warmth of the endorphin flow.
You feel calm and good. Energetic and strong.
And you feel that you´re good and everything will be ok.
Yoga is all about patience. If you try to hurry in yoga, you won´t make any progress. You may even take steps back. But if you practice slowly and patiently, have courage to trust to the practice and yourself, you will grow. Practice by practice.
And the deeper you can breathe, the better your body and mind give in, the more you grow.
This day the calm pace of nature came to me. It helped me to deepen my yoga practice.
It made all those good feelings to linger longer in my body and mind. That tells me that I had a quality practice.
Because of the weather yoga outdoors includes a lot of challenges. However, when the weather is good and you´re in a right place I warmly recommend to use nature as your yoga studio.
You may experience something similar that I did this day.
A deep state of relaxed body and mind with the help of nature´s tranquility.
