Springtime is great time to revive yourself. As nature moves out of the cold winter toward spring. Nature seems to make it look very easy, but for us yogi’s it’s not so easy to transition from one season to the next, especially from winter to spring. More often we find ourselves feeling a little bit heavy and like things have taken a little bit more of a slower pace.

Ayurveda,the world’s oldest surviving system of healing, teaches us that the key to feeling in step with the seasons is to harmonize with nature. The rishis (the ancient mystical “seers” who founded the yoga tradition) created rituals and festivals to honor each season and to remind us of our connection to the natural world.

The great yoga teacher Krishnamacharya adjusted his approach to practicing and teaching yoga to correspond with the time of year. You may not have a spring festival or an Indian yoga master to guide you, but by weaving some simple Ayurvedic principles into your life, you can weather this seasonal transition smoothly and emerge feeling transformed and ready to feel springy in Springtime.

Put some Spring into your step

To enjoy a healthy spring, you need to understand the kapha (pronounced CUP-pa) dosha and bring it into balance. Of the three doshas—vata, pitta, and kapha— it’s kapha that endows your body with its earthy-watery qualities. It provides lubrication for joints, it also protects the sensitive tissues of the sinuses, lungs, and stomach; it also determines the size, strength, and suppleness of your muscles.

When kapha is in balance, you feel strong, composed, and stable. When it’s out of balance, you might feel sleepy, mentally dull, or depressed. It’s especially important to balance kapha in the spring, because kapha accumulates during winter and can create diseases by the time spring arrives. As the world becomes colder and wetter in winter, your body mirrors these kapha-like changes. You tend to eat, sleep, and stay inside more during winter, which can result in a “winter coat” of insulation. In spring, you need to shed this excess kapha or risk becoming vulnerable to seasonal allergies or head colds.

Put a bit of spring in your step by developing a rhythm and routine that helps you gradually lighten up without disturbing the stable virtues of kapha. The best approach is multidimensional and includes eating lighter foods, adding certain herbs to your diet, and practicing asana, pranayama and meditation.

So many people ask me about how to relieve shoulder, neck or back pain when they are at work. They can’t exactly get down on their trusty Agoy mat mid spreadsheet and come into down facing dog. So I have scoured the internet for a short sequence that would give you a bit of a mid day boost. Don’t worry you can still fit in your elevenses complete with hob nobs and tea. Take a look below for some yoga desk stretches.

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Arm Stretch

1. Bring your arms behind your back, clasping your hands. Or, hold a tie, sweater, or scarf between your hands.

2. Lift your arms as high as you can. Lift your sternum.

3. Hold for 30 to 45 seconds, relax for a moment, then repeat.

Shoulder Stretch

1. Interlock your fingers and extend your arms outward, straight in front of your shoulders. Your palms should be facing outward.

2. Slowly raise your hands overhead, stretching all the way from the waist. Work on straightening your elbows. Hold for 30 to 45 seconds, relax, and try again.

Chair Twist

1. Sit on the edge of your chair, sideways with your left side facing the chair back.

2. Throughout the pose, keep your feet and knees together and even.

3. Place your hands on the chair as shown.

4. Inhale while straightening your spine. As you exhale, twist toward the back of the chair, twisting from the very bottom of your spine — pushing with your left hand and pulling with your right hand.

5. Repeat the inhalation/straighten, exhalation/twist series several times.

6. Release and change sides.

Deeper Chair Twist

1. Sit in the middle of your chair, sideways with your left side facing the chair back.

2. Repeat the same routine as in Chair Twist 1.

3. Do you feel the twist in the spine at a slightly different place?

4. If you need to, place a book under your feet to keep them flat.

When I set out on my travelling wander around the world I had to continually remind myself to stay in the present moment. We have noted a couple of ideas below to help you stay in the present.

Set an intention, lose the itinerary Commit to staying open during your journey, regardless of what happens. An agenda represents control, which isn’t always possible. Travel guide Elizabeth Medgyesy goes to New York City without knowing where she’ll stay or what she’ll do. Openness to novel experiences lets you attain spiritual insights, she says.

Commune with locals Take a crowded bus, talk with people, observe, learn about local customs and culture. When you talk with people, you get to see how diverse the human race is and how we’re all connected.

Get quiet Your internal experience affects how you see another land. Reserve time for your practice. Pack travel candles, inspirational texts, a picture of a loved one— even a travel altar—so you can reflect and connect with your essential Self.

Go with the flow Turn travel hassles into opportunities. When Phoenix, Arizona, yoga instructor Desirée Rumbaugh had a 10-hour stop in Los Angeles, she met up with a friend she hadn’t seen in years, finding a way to nurture an important connection. The point of travel is to enjoy your time wherever you are.

Just about everyone I come into contact with in London, it seems, share a similar sense of time deprivation. Of course, most of us, most of the time, have goals; having a job, going to school, raising children, all require us to get things to be done. There’s nothing wrong with drive but we live in a culture that prizes productivity and speed. Before we know it, we’re embroiled in a perpetual battle with time, missing out on our connections.

Is there a way to live that frees us from the cycle of longing for more time, misusing the time we do have, and then blaming a lack of time for our discontent? The answer is yes. I’ve worked with people on improving their relationship with time. Happily, doing so doesn’t require withdrawing from the world. Nor do you need to focus on timesaving tips for scheduling yourself with ever-greater efficiency. Instead, you bring greater awareness to the way you experience time by building small steps into your daily routine that help you savor your life.

To experience time differently, you need to cultivate and practice a new relationship with it, just as you’d nurture a yoga or meditation practice. At first, you may feel as though you’re swimming against the current of cultural cues that push you to do more and move faster. It may not be easy to change, but the rewards are great. This approach can bring you into a deeper harmony with time, allowing you to engage more fully with every moment.

Your first step is  self-study, one of the ethical principles of yoga. This asks you to look inward and get to know yourself better. It teaches you to feel the difference between your own natural rhythms and the world around you. It can teach you what’s practical and healthy to focus on, and what you may need to delegate or drop.

In much the same way that those who struggle with food issues may be unaware of what and how they’re eating, you may not have examined the behaviors and assumptions that shape your relationship with time. Taking a time inventory gives you a window into the values that underlie your time-spending habits. Begin your self-study by asking yourself questions like these: Besides eating and sleeping, how do I allocate my time in 24-hours? Do the activities on which I spend most of my time nourish me, or do they feel obligatory? When I long for more time, what do I imagine doing with it?

Do you feel time starved? Has your yoga or meditation practice helped you deal with any time issues?

Detoxification means the removal of toxins from the body. Humans absorb toxins—preservatives, pesticides, stimulants, and heavy metalsthrough food, water, and air. Your own body produces toxins, called metabolic waste products, as a natural result of processes like digestion and respiration. Luckily, your digestive, endocrine, and circulatory systems come equipped with a complex set of mechanisms designed to eliminate these toxins through your mouth, eyes, skin, colon and even your breath. The trouble is that too much sugar, caffeine, and processed foods, little to no exercise, and stress can slow the body’s natural detox function to a sluggish pace.

The result is a buildup of toxins that can leave you fatigued and suffering from poor digestion, and that may even lead to disease. You can help boost your innate detox functions by practicing cleansing yoga sequences and following a simple plant-based diet during a multiday detox plan. Most people need to detoxify to get these things out of their systems in order to feel healthier. Some benefits of an occasional detox,  include having a lowered heart rate, clearer eyes and skin, better memory and concentration, and improved digestion. Good health invites a calm, clear mind that is free of many of the habits that often lead to toxin buildup.

While there are many approaches to detoxing—including the asana and food guidelines presented on these pages— they aim for one simple thing: to help the body do what it’s already trying to do. Your body is always getting rid of toxins but you can aid that natural process by making detoxing a practice.

A yoga sequence like the one suggested here can support the natural detoxification process by increasing circulation, compressing and twisting internal organs, and encouraging relaxation, says Weill. Inverted poses like Viparita Karani (Legs-up-the-Wall Pose) use gravity to stimulate lymph and blood circulation. Inversions help to drain lymphatic and venous fluids from the legs and pelvis, and so enhance detoxification.

Do you detox regularly or would like to give it a go?

The tension headache, also called a muscle-contraction headache, is by far the most common form of headache. Unlike the migraine, the tension headache is described as a dull ache that encircles the head.

Although they’re not completely understood, tension headaches are linked to muscle tension in the head, neck, scalp, and face. They can be triggered by stress-related habits, such as teeth grinding, or by poor posture and fatigue. Sitting hunched over a desk with the head hanging forward of the shoulders can create a constant contraction of the muscles of the neck , upper back, and shoulders. Repetitive motion—like typing or using a computer mouse—can also result in chronic shoulder and neck tension that can lead to headache pain.

Not surprisingly, yoga can help to release tension and ease the symptoms of a headache. If you have a headache, or feel one coming on, skip the challenging asana practice and try out the postures below.

Yoga can help relieve headaches

PALMING: To relieve an aching head, rub your hands together until warm and then place them over the eyes. Breathe deeply and invite the eyes to soften and relax.

Sukhasana (Easy Pose)

Gentle poses soothe headache pain.

Neck rolls: Sit tall in Sukhasana. Moving with the breath, drop your right ear toward the right shoulder and roll your chin to your chest. From center, drop your left ear to your left shoulder, bring your head back up to center. Reverse, starting on the left side. Shoulder rolls: Lift the shoulders up and back on an inhalation; then, on the exhalation, move them down and forward. Then reverse the motion.

Garudasana (Eagle Pose)

In Savasana, count the breath or mentally recite a mantra, making your exhalation last twice as long as your inhalation.

Sitting tall in a chair or on your mat, inhale as you extend your arms out to the sides. Exhale into Eagle Pose, with the right arm on top. Inhale again as you extend your arms out to the sides. Exhale into Eagle Pose with the left arm on top. Repeat several times, moving with the breath.

Eating can also be considered a practice in which you seek balance. Like yoga, eating is a highly personal activity-you learn to adapt your needs to the many popular nutritional systems and diets. Developing a mindful eating practice can provide a ground that truly supports and nurtures your yoga. But in developing this kind of supportive nutritional practice, one of the joys and challenges is understanding that  there is no easy solution for finding the right foods.

For better or worse, within the yoga community there are endless myths asserting what foods help your yoga practice. You’ve probably heard at least some of this yogic eating folklore before: “Feeling stiff? Eat more sweets, have only fruit before you practice. Remember that if you’re practicing in the morning, don’t eat dinner before you go to bed!” To understand the truth that may lie at the heart of these and other food myths which are so prevalent in yoga communities, we could begin by tracing their roots. Many theories stem from yogic scriptures, and others are theories found in Ayurveda, the ancient Indian science of preventative health and healing. To understand the relevancy of these yogic food myths to your diet, it’s essential to examine them in their original context.

Yoga from its earliest inception has been integrally tied with Ayurveda. Central to Ayurveda is the concept of varying body types, each of which thrives on different kinds of foods. Vata types, for example, need grounding foods like oils and grains. Pitta types are supported by cooling foods, such as salads and sweet fruits. Kapha types benefit from heating and invigorating foods, such as hot peppers. A classic premise of Ayurveda is that few people are strictly one type, and most in fact are a blend of at least two types. Each individual must therefore find a personal balance of foods to fit his or her own unique consitution.

Just as certain yoga poses are appropriate for certain people or at particular times, so it is with what you choose to eat. Food should provide energy and clarity. A “good” diet may appear very different from one person to the next, but you will know your diet is working well for you when you feel healthy, sleep well, have strong digestion, and feel your system is supported rather than depleted by your yoga practice.

Do you feel like you create balance through your yoga practice? Which body type do you believe you have?

Spend some time in silence. Silence is one of the best ways of cultivating self-awareness. When you’re talking, you don’t realize how noisy your mind is. When you’re practicing silence. you’re trying to step back from your reactivity to your mind. That atone is a profound insight. Practicing silence can also be a way of conserving prana, or ‘life force. When you speak a lot, you are using up prana. So unplug your Pod, hide your BlackBerry, and commit to a period of silence—as short as a 10-minute tea break or as luxurious as a whole day. Initially. being quiet can feel agitating, but simply notice your urge to speak or to take in other people’s words or ideas. See if you can appreciate all the ambient noises: the sounds of birds, wind in the trees, the movements of other people, even traffic. soon, you’ll likely find the respite from speech to be deeply restful. After a period of silence, my students find that they are more alert and even need less sleep.

Bake bread, knit a cap, build a birdhouse, design your own thank-you notes. Creating something may feel like a small way of enriching the world, but making something with your hands can be an active meditation, an opportunity to take a break from conscious thought and allow yourself to freely engage with your creative side. By simply creating a quiet state of being, you begin to notice—notice your thoughts, notice your feelings, and notice the workings of your mind and experience.” Like the practice of yoga, creative acts are about the process, not the result; your sense of satisfaction when you pull on a warm hat you made yourself, mail a beautiful card to a friend, or bite into a sandwich on homemade bread is lust an added benefit.

As an antidote to striving for success in all that you do (including asana), devote one practice a week to poses that quiet, nourish, and center. Begin your restorative practice by sitting quietly for a few moments and connecting with your breath. Next, warm up movement that gently stretches your muscles, such as Cat-Cow Pose and Happy flab Pose. Move into postures like Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclining Bound Angle Pose) Padangusthasana (Reclining Hand-to—Big-Toe Pose), and Viparita Karani, followed by an extended Savasana (Corpse Pose). If doing a restorative practice on your own sounds daunting, try a restorative class and it will take no time to lead you into a more positive state of mind.

Your balancing confldently in half moon pose and the pose feels firm and steady There’s onlyone problem: You’re hyperextending the knee of your standing leg. When you extend, or straighten, your knee beyond a straight line, it’s called hyperextension, which can injure the knee and other parts of your body It’s quite common among yoga students at all levels, and certain asanas can exacerbate the condition ifyou repeatedly do them incorrectly Fortunately you can learn to practice in a way that both aligns and protects your knees and makes them stronger and healthier.

WHATS MY LINE?

When a knee that isn’t prone to hyperextension extends, its ligaments—the cords of connective tissue that join the thighbone to the shinbone —pull taut and stop the two bones at the pointwhere they lie directly in line with each other. If your knee hyperextends, that means its ligaments are too long, and so theydon’t stop the bones untilyour leg has moved beyonda straight line. If you’re uncertain about whether your knees hyperextend, stand sideways in front of a full—length mirror, gently press your knees backward until you are unable to move them back any further, and envision an imaginary line running down the side of your leg from your hip joint to your ankle. If the center of your knee ends up behind that line, it is hyperextended.
Standing with your knees locked back in hyperextension can cause a host ofproblems inyour knees and also inyour legs, hips, and spine. In addition to overstretching the ligaments, hyperextension stresses the front of the knee joint surfaces and weakens the quadriceps muscles. Over time, this misalignment may create deeper hyperextesision, ligament strains or tears, cartilage degeneration, and arthritis of the knee joint or kneecap. What’s more, ifyou push the knee back with enough force, you can tear a ligament, most likely the anterior cruciate. Standingin hyperextensionputs excess pressure on your heels and the front of your shins, which can lead to inflammation.

The act of going upside down, whether for a few breaths in a pose like Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand) or for several minutes in a pose like Sirsasana (Headstand), can feel tremendously liberating. Inversions provide myriad physical, mental, and emotional benefits. But they also require strength, flexibility and confidence about reversingyour normal relationship to gravity and those can take time to develop. If your body or your mind is not yet prepared to do a fill inversion, you’ll benefit from trying a multifaceted posture called Dolphin.

Dolphin both opens and strengthens the upper body, making it a great preparation for inversions or a nice substitute posture when you’re not ready to fly your legs above your head. Whether you practice Dolphin to get comfortable with the idea of turning upside down or you practice it as a prelude to Pincha Mayurasana (Forearm Balance), Dolphin’s virtues are numerous. With continued practice, you’ll experience greater range of motion in your spine and shoulders and build strength in your arms and core. Befriend Dolphin and you’ll open the door to a world in which the cartwheels of your youth no longer seem like a distant memory.

PRESS DOWN TO LIFT UP

For the first Dolphin use the arm position associated with a classic Headstand, but keep your head off the floor. This will help you stretch and strengthen your shoulders and open your middle and upper back, areas that are chronically tight in many students. Begin kneeling at the center of your mat and interlace your fingers, slipping one pinkie inside the opposite palm so you have a flat surface from your outer hands to your wrists. Place your hands on the floor, with your forearms creating a V shape. Your elbows will be shoulder- distance apart and a couple of inches in front of your shoulders. Keep your inner wrists stacked directly over your outer wrists (so that your hands don’t fall open) and press down firmly from your outer hands to your elbows. Perform a quasi “karate chop” in this position to ensure that you really are making strong contact with the floor— the ability to forcefully root down gives Dolphin its integrity andvitality Pressing down enables you to lift up. Consider a tennis ball: Tfyou simply drop it, it doesn’t bounce very high. If, on the other hand, you throw it down with some force, it bounces up much higher. Actively press