Vagus Nerve Yoga: Centering

This practice emphasizes twists to rinse your spine and digestive organs, the key to safely adding twists to your practice is to find the edge of sensation…and back off from any pain or excess tension.
Twists allow us to rotate around our midline, reinforce a sense of alignment, and felt sense of centering within yourself.
Most importantly, I this is an intentional and attentional practice that invites you to turn your awareness to the internal experience of your Self…
When our awareness is focused on the outer world for extended periods of time…we can start to feel fatigued, it depletes our resources.
The antidote is to nourish your body and mind by turning the lens of your attention inside…This is pratyahara:
From my book, Therapeutic yoga for trauma recovery:
“From a yogic perspective, you can think of this process as directing your life-force energy toward yourself. Ideally, this provides a respite from the outer world and is a way to nourish yourself with self-awareness.” Dr. Arielle Schwartz
Quotes:
M.C. Richards on Centering:
“Centering is a verb… an ongoing process… a way of balancing, a spiritual resource in times of conflict, an imagination… an alchemical vessel, a retort, which bears an integration of purposes, an integration of levels of consciousness.”
Derek Walcott
Love after Love:
The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other's welcome,
And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you
All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Rupi Kaur (From Home Body)
today i saw myself for the first time
when I dusted off the mirror of my mind
and the woman looking back took my breath away
who was this beautiful beastling, this extra-celestial earthling
i touched my reflection, touched the woman of my dreams
all her gorgeousness smirking back at me
my knees surrendered to the earth
as i wept and sighed at how
i’d gone my whole life being myself but not seeing myself
spent decades living inside my body, never left it once
yet managed to miss all its miracles
isn’t it funny how you can occupy a space without being in touch with it
how it took so long for me to open the eyes of my eyes
embrace the heart of my heart
kiss the soles of my swollen feet
and hear them whisper
thank you, thank you, thank you for noticing

[@cleydecss]

Thank you very much Dr. Arielle Schwartz!!

[@franny4465]

This practise is perfect, thank you 😊

[@urska5080]

Lovely, thank you!

[@tnt01]

Thank you for this. Hugs. :)