10 Ways to Rest, Digest, and Enjoy

Stoke your inner power to thrive through the holiday season.

Prana is our experience of life. Prana is life force, it is our perspective and our individuality. It is an energy that we all have yet we each move with, or against, the currents differently. Our physical bodies take form over the patterns created by the inner currents beneath them. Prana is divided into five different currents that circulate within the body, the Prana Vayus. Each vayu, or wind, has different hydrological tendencies and creates different imprints and patterns on our surrounding tissue, emotions, and actions.

Sutra 3.41
“By mastery over samana, the prana flowing in the navel area, there comes effulgence, radiance, or fire.” – Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati

Samana vayu is all about digestion and assimilation. On a physical level this is actually eating and digesting food. On an energetic and emotional level, samana vayu is how we make life experience fruitful. This sutra reminds us to tap into our innate ability to glean the nutrients out of life and sift out the toxins. We don’t need to run from experience, or to experience; in order to glow giddy we need to learn how to process and use experience to thrive.

Samana vayu exists everywhere, but its primary forces are in the belly. The belly center not only breaks down and reorganizes the food we eat into energy for our cells, it also has a high density of vagus nerve ganglia (nerve receptors). The vagus nerve is responsible for the majority of the parasympathetic nervous system responses in of our body. The sympathetic nervous system is fight, flight, or freeze and it is the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) that is the rest, digest, and enjoy state of being. The PNS is the lower heart rate, lower pulse, smooth even breathing, easy smooth digestion, relaxed, comfortable, warm, safe experience of ourselves. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for a state of peace.

Digestion is how we intake and process the world around us, like worms in a good compost bin. Samana vayu is our ability to digest and our ability to energetically and emotionally digest experience and sensation. It’s one of the reasons that parts of me like the darkness of winter, it’s time to digest life. Ayurvedic wisdom tells us to do less this time of year. It’s a similar process to literally needing to be still after a very large meal. We literally need to chill out after all the activity of summer; there is a lot to digest. During the holiday season, there is a lot to digest! Successful and complete digestion doesn’t happen unless we activate the parasympathetic nervous system

Stoke your inner power to thrive through the holiday season. Sutra 3.41 reminds us to tap into our own resources to cultivate our inner glow and thrive.

10 ways to rest, digest, participate, be present and enjoy this holiday season.

Physically

1. Pause!

Sit for at least three full breaths after eating a meal or snack before getting up to do the next thing or thinking about what you’ll do next. Better yet, indulge in a 10 minute siesta resting completely or engaging in light reading (not social media). Digestion doesn’t happen when we’re doing! When we’re doing, blood supply gets moved to the area of activity, either skeletal muscles or brain activity, and blood is diverted from the digestive organs.

2. Sleep more and create a regular schedule

3. Add an extra rest day or intention of rest into exercise, physical activity, or training

Do a more restorative yoga practice

Make your exercise more about fun, play, or curiosity for a day then about a goal of speed or reps

Go outside and get your movement and activity in with intention to explore

Of course, the first thought upon reading what helps to lighten us up physically is that we feel we don’t have time or energy for what would give us more time and energy. Try the techniques below to help you cultivate the energy and motivation to tap into yourself.

Energetically

4. Let go of one thing

When we are overwhelmed we must decide on one to two things that we can be okay with it not getting done so that balance and success in other areas are possible. Have everything ‘fail’, or chose something that is of the least importance? For me this month, practicing monitoring my energy was being late for this full moon blog ;-). I needed to recognize that this blog is an optional offering and is totally nonessential. It’s a full moon reminder about the light we spread, but it isn’t a correlation with a gravitational force that must truly exist in one moment. I appreciated the full moon by being out and playing in it.

5. Breathe

This is a soft intention rather than a strong muscular action and it activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Over time, with practice and patience the energetic effect will hone. Don’t over exert with this practice, invite and wait.

Exhale draw energetically into your center (anywhere that feels comfortable in belly region from navel up). Inhale to expand out from this center. Exhale back into the center. Note the moment at the end of the end of exhale.

Begin small for the first several breaths and slowly over several different practices expand as far as you’d like in all directions. As far as you expand out from your starting point, exhale back into this feeling of center and further inward. Be sure that as far as you expand out you contract back inwards, as much as you contract inwards, you allow expansion. Being stuck in either direction will dampen or burn out your fire.

Practice for 1-3 breath cycles or no more than a few minutes before returning to normal breathing with no intention. It is valuable to invite an intention into our currents and then let the winds readjust and find their new equilibrium..

6. Relaxation Techiques

There are hundreds of relaxation techniques. Getting a massage, taking a bath, listening to music are just a few. Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep, is a relaxation technique that provides deep rest to all levels of the body. There are zillions of aps and online resources for Yoga Nidra sessions of varying lengths. Below is a free unedited version of the community Yoga Nidra class I lead Valentine’s Day 2018.

Emotionally

The Holiday season, family, friend and work relationships can bring up a special type of social reckoning that arises as we try to identify how you fit into our community and realize what types of relationship patterns there are in our lives. Like mitochondria in the cells creating power to move and live, by mastering how we take in the world’s experiences, we can allow our inner light embers to dance and radiate light.

Whether we like it or not, we all subconsciously mix up reality with our own biases and perceptions to experience life as we do and primarily out of our control. If we’re going to brainwash ourselves, why not do it on purpose to make us happier? It is a magic power that we all have to ability to spin our reality of how we perceive and receive life.

We can use some of the energetic tips above to make enough space for us to emotionally digest situations and sensations as they arise, and then twist our perception around.

7. Appreciation

Appreciation loss for the lessons learned from experiences. This is not a no pain no gain mentality. It is simply gleaning whatever goodness you can out of an apparently painful experience.

Examples may include: 

I learned how to express myself better or I learned I want to be able to express myself better.

I made my best effort, or I at least started caring. I have the ability to love.

It was a lot of fun. I learned how to laugh and play more.

8. Notice What We Have

Focusing on what we have instead of what we don’t.

Examples may include:

I have time, resources, or motivation, to read something for self-betterment or pleasure.

I have caring _____________.

My body functions well, or this part of my body functions well.

I feel connected to this person otherwise I wouldn’t be so easily hurt, offended, exasperated or confused by them. I allow myself to feel connected.

9. Focus On What We Did Get Done

Focusing on what we did do as opposed to what we didn’t do.

Examples may include:

I tidied and cleaned even though I didn’t organize. I piled and hid objects to be dealt with later. I did what was absolutely necessary and did what I could and it worked.

I reacted better than I have in the past. I had a little more compassion, passion, or humor.

I spent time with _______ even though I didn’t ______

I went to the party even though I didn’t stay late or I didn’t force myself to go to the party.

10. When All Else Fails – SMILE

When thinking about something difficult or something that causes us suffering, we can force a smile. A smile changes the chemical environment of the body and allows space for some good aspect of the situation to bubble up into our awareness. Eventually, some positive perspective will become clear and we’ll find some way to twist the experience around to be beneficial. We always gotta start where we are, which isn’t always where we think we want to be.

Samana vayu is the ability to process experiences, food, ideas, and energy into useable and accessible sustenance.

This sutra is all about being stable in constant instability. Digesting is transforming food and experience into a useable form.

Transformation by its very definition is change.

We sustain ourselves and grow by allowing life to come in, experience it, and soaking up every morsel of goodness out of life. Like the mitochondria of a cell, when we gain the ability to process life’s building blocks, our powerhouse fires and we glow from the inside out. We radiate both with an innate calm and experience more and more energy to engage in life.

By cultivating and freeing samana vayu we begin to thrive and glow.

I’m very excited to be offering a workshop tapping into all of the vayus again. It’s been so fun revising this workshop from last year. A few spots remain! Join me in January in Panama 2019. Check out the super discounts available.

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