LYT

Category: Monthly Motivation

  • 141 | Can we live without an agenda?

    141 | Can we live without an agenda?

    Can we live without an agenda? I started thinking about this after I was reading from a Buddhist book of philosophy released by Shambhala Pocket Classics. The text reads: 

    “Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space where we’re really not entirely certain about who’s right and who’s wrong? Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person? Not know what to say? Not make that person wrong or right? Could we see, here, feel other people as they really are? It’s powerful to practice this way. Because we’ll find ourselves continually rushing around to try to feel secure, again, to make ourselves or them either right or wrong. But true communication can happen only in that open space.”

     

    I think there’s a human need to want to feel like what we’re doing matters and that our opinions matter. But can you show up in life and freely give of your time and energy without expectation? Just giving because it feels good for you to give and because it makes your heart beat stronger. And being able to listen and not judge and not try to change anybody’s mind. I think that we can all benefit from holding your tongue and not saying what’s on your mind just because you want your opinion to be stated.

     

    When you’re on the right path, you don’t need to prove to somebody else what you’re doing. And you don’t need to prove to somebody else what they’re doing differently is wrong. Too many agendas are being bumped around and we can see what happens when those agendas are not all good or noble, or of service to all. So I think the point here is, if we have any agenda, it should be to do good in the world, to be our best selves and to notice when our need for security and validation in the form of the ego comes up. 

     

    Resources:

  • 139 | Change of seasons

    139 | Change of seasons

    Transitioning between seasons can be challenging. In the Northern Hemisphere we’re currently transitioning from summer to fall, and that can be really hard, especially for people who don’t like the cold. In this episode I cover some ways to make weathering the change in seasons easier.

     

    Visualizing the new season can help. Coming into fall, we can tap into fond memories and look forward to the leaves changing colors, pumpkins, Halloween and the feeling of Christmas in the air. But there’s also a liveliness and newness because fall is when the school year starts, so it’s like a new start. 

     

    Be grateful and enjoy the last moments of the current season then think about some of the things you like about the coming season. For example, how beautiful the trees look in winter when their branches are bare. 

     

    We’re somewhat detached a little from the seasons because most of us don’t grow our own food and we can keep our thermostat at the same temperature year round. So get out into nature and find the beauty in each season. Take a 15 minute walk or a two hour walk, however long you can afford, and that will really help you adjust to the change in seasons. 

     

    Resources:

  • 138 | Creating vitality

    138 | Creating vitality

    Today’s podcast is about creating more vitality in your life. I’ve come up with six words beginning with S to make my top tips for vitality easy to remember: sweat, shower, stillness, silly, sustenance and sleep.

     

    • Sweat
      Sweating every day will improve your vitality. Sweat is a way of cooling us down so when we sweat, that means we have heated our body enough and we’ve worked hard enough. If you can break a sweat in the morning, the rest of your day is going to be so much more productive. And if you can’t do it in the morning, do it when you can. 

     

     

    • Shower

     

    After you sweat, take a shower. Showering is metaphorically and literally cleansing and purifying. To get even more vitality, try a cold shower if you’re up for it. 

     

    • Stillness
      Find some stillness in your day and practice meditation or silent contemplation to stop the busyness of your mind. It can be for just a few minutes if that’s all you have or for a longer period of time, like an hour. Meditation has so many benefits including reducing anxiety, improving your sleep, improving your digestion and improving how your neurotransmitters work.

     

    • Silly
      Be silly. Do playful activities like rolling or crawling around on the grass, going on the monkey bars or skipping. Your brain loves doing different things and it’s also great for your movement patterns.

     

     

    • Sustenance

     

    Consume food and drinks that really sustain you like water, wholefoods and plant-based foods.

     

     

    • Sleep

     

    Sleep is so important. It is where we heal, where our immune system functions and where our brain recovers from the busyness of our day. Get good quality sleep by sleeping in a cool room with window shades and don’t have electronics in the room or the TV on. I have an Oura Ring which tracks things like how many steps I take a day, my heart rate and the duration and quality of my sleep. 

     

    Resources:

  • 137 | How to build a new HABIT

    137 | How to build a new HABIT

    Today’s podcast is about how to create a new habit. Habits are an action we have done so many times that it becomes unconscious. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. It could be a good or a bad habit, but the thing about habits is that they never truly go away. So creating new habits is really about creating better habits rather than entirely getting rid of the old ones. 

     

    To make them easy to remember, I’ve made an acronym out of the word HABIT.

     

    H stands for hook onto an already existing habit. For example, I’m working on creating a habit to take supplements every day so I’m putting the pill container near my coffee press so I remember my supplements when I refill my coffee.

     

    A stands for attach a reminder to it. This could be a sticky note or a phone reminder.

     

    B stands for build slowly. We get frustrated when a habit doesn’t stick right away, but it takes time. Charles Duhigg has done a lot of work on habit formation. And he says, if you want to try running, don’t just start running. Start by putting your shoes by the door for a week first.

     

    I stands for include others. Tell someone or a few people what you’re working on so that you have a sense of accountability. Even better if you can get someone involved with you. But even just saying it out loud to someone helps implant the habit in your brain and also you’ll have another person who knows about your habit and can remind you.

     

    T stands for train as if it’s for life. Every single habit creates your life and your future, so train as if it really matters.

     

    Connect with Lara Heimann, The Redefining Yoga Podcast, and LYT Daily:

  • 135 | How ahimsa changes everything

    135 | How ahimsa changes everything

    Ahimsa means non-harm. This is one of the first principles in yoga philosophy and where my mission stems from. My impact on the world starts with every single choice I make. And it’s not just about being nice or kind to others. It’s also about the impact we have on the other beings that we’re sharing this planet with. 

     

    Early in my career I began to bridge my neuro physical therapy knowledge with my yoga teaching and practice. At the same time I became vegan after years of being vegetarian. While I had assumed I was doing the least harm by not eating meat, I was unaware of the egregious treatment of dairy cows and chickens. It makes sense to me that as I connected more in my teaching and practice to the integrated core strength of the body that I became more connected to my core values of kindness and compassion.

     

    The body is the quickest and most successful vehicle of transformation. When we feel strong and connected to our bodies, we feel more productive, patient, resilient, enthusiastic, spirited and compassionate. My mission is to help everyone move in a safe, sustainable and empowered way so that we can work together to improve the world for all beings. In my many years of teaching I’ve seen how small shifts in the awareness of movement patterns and connection to core strength results in profound shifts in our personal lives and spiritual development. 

     

    My job is to provide the tools and encouragement and ask the question, if we can be more aligned in our bodies, can we take that into other aspects of our lives? At first, some people think my yoga method is just a physical practice, but if they stay long enough, they come to realize that it’s so much more. It is an open invitation to change your movement and behavioral patterns, to be awake in your body and spirit and to spread more compassion to all beings. And while my mission is committed to veganism, I invite everyone to discover what pulls on their heartstrings. The message is to be aligned, feel your power and use your passion for your own calling. 

     

    When my husband and I biked across the country in 1999, I sensed a new chapter in my life. I left a wonderful and stable job as a physical therapist. But once I crossed this threshold of creating my own destiny, there was no turning back. I gained a fierce desire to choose the path less known and design a life that was truly in line with my values. On this 3-month journey across the United States, we mostly lived with what we could carry and it was easy to see what we actually needed to be happy. From our bikes, we witnessed much more of our surroundings than we would have from a car. We felt connected to nature in a profound way as we journeyed through so much beauty in our nation and literally slept on the earth every night. We also saw some of the factory farms that are hidden in the vastness of the middle part of our country. And my husband and I both thought about what we would do in our lives to bring more awareness to the realities of the animal agriculture. We even rescued a kitten who had been dumped by the side of a road. 

     

    Political and community leaders can do so much to improve things in our lives. People need to move daily and physical wellness should be prioritized in schools and at work. Inactivity saps our energy and makes us grumpy and less inspired to do things for others. Better food choices are needed everywhere too. When we eat plants we vibrate at a higher frequency. Eating a hamburger is dead energy whereas a robust green salad makes you feel vibrant. We should be putting more money into producing and subsidizing vegetables because a plant-based diet is the healthiest for our bodies and the best choice for our planet’s survival. 

     

    What I would ask of you today is, what changes – big or small – can you make to live with ahimsa? What are some things that you can do in your daily life that can be from this place of non-harm? An example could be not buying the cheapest t-shirt because you know it’s made in a factory where the factory workers are not treated well. When butterfly wings flap, there is an impact on every part of the environment. And so little tiny changes that we do individually can make a huge impact. 

     

    My movement is about empowered compassion. And I would love to help you in any way. I’m literally here for you. So please write me at lara@movementbylara.com if you have any suggestions, need any tips or if you’d like to share something that you’re doing. 

     

    Resources:

  • 130 | What’s the deal with the red shirts?

    130 | What’s the deal with the red shirts?

    The color red is a key part of my logo and branding. This represents the first chakra, the root chakra. This episode is all about the root chakra, why it’s so important and how we can strengthen it. 

     

    Chakras are energy channels that run along the spine and they correspond to bundles of nerve ganglia and are known as the energetic part of the body. We sometimes don’t trust what we don’t see, but we do know from our life experiences when we feel really clear, or when we feel really unclear or unsafe, and a lot of that is spoken to us through our energy.

     

    The root chakra is located at the base of your spine, right where the tailbone is. And the deepest connection we have with our physical body, with the earth, the environment, is through this area. Energy from the earth comes up through the legs, and goes into the base of the spine. 

     

    The root chakra is also the most instinctive of chakras. Our fight or flight responses are initiated from this energetic station. It’s where we adapt and adopt some of the energies from our past and even our ancestry. It is what grounds us and what balances us and if the root chakra is not strong, it really does have an effect on the rest of the energetic body. 

     

    To strengthen your root chakra, firstly pick out something red (it could be a red shirt or a red painting or picture – I’m actually recording this with red microphones) as a reminder of your power, your grounded stability, who you are and who you want to be and what you’re capable of.

     

    Secondly, check in with how you are sitting or standing. Can you find that neutral pelvis? 

     

    Thirdly, get on the ground every once in a while and do a bridge pose. If you’re unfamiliar with bridge, you lie on your back and bend your knees. Your feet are not too close to your butt, but you want to feel them press into the floor and lift your hips up. Don’t lift too high because you want to maintain that length in your spine. Then get your glutes working and feel like you are this charge of energy that’s coming from the ground, up into the root chakra, this first place of power. 

     

    Some powerful affirmations that connect us to our root chakra are:

    • I feel rooted
    • I am connected to my body
    • I am safe
    • I’m grounded and stable
    • I trust myself
    • I trust in the goodness of life
    • l make choices that are healthy for me
    • I have all that I need
    • I stand for my values, for my truth and for justice for all

     

    Resources:

  • 129 | What’s my purpose?

    Today’s podcast is called, what’s my purpose? Everyone is searching for their purpose. But how do we find it? Is it only one thing? What happens to people who don’t think they have a purpose?

     

    I don’t think there’s just one answer, but from my position as a movement teacher and getting to work with people and observe their troubles and triumphs, the way someone moves has a lot to do with whether they have clarity around their purpose.

     

    For some people finding their purpose is a pretty clear path. Other people struggle finding the one thing they were born to do.

     

    I have always loved working with animals and for a long time I thought that might be my  purpose. Then I discovered that working directly with animals wasn’t actually what I wanted to do. I knew from a young age that I did not want to sit at a desk. I wanted to work with people and I wanted to work in health. So I followed that and my path became clear. As a yoga teacher, I get to combine my love for animals with my interest in helping people move better. Firstly because yoga teaches the principle of living without harming other beings, secondly because when people move better, they feel better about themselves. And then they often are more open-minded and more open-hearted to extend the compassion to other beings.

     

    If you need more clarity about your purpose, ask questions like:

    • What lights you up? 
    • What are you doing when you lose track of time because you’re so fully absorbed in the activity?
    • Who do you want to be in your life in a big way?
    • What is it that you love to do? 
    • When do you feel your best and your most clear?
    • What puts you in that that flow where you can work really hard but it doesn’t feel like arduous work?

     

    Start writing those down, start journaling about them. And don’t let anything else or anyone else get in the way of that. Don’t let other people tell you you need a back-up plan. Go full throttle. Because when you’re finding that purpose, and when you’re capitalizing on the thing that you really love doing and are good at, everything else will start to just organize itself around that. 

    Resources:

  • 127 | Life Training

    This podcast is about how movement practice can be seen as a preparation for life. Movement has to do with life and transitions. Life itself is one movement after the other. We move through stages. And even within the cycle of a day, we’re moving. Our movement patterns can offer us a unique opportunity to pay attention and improve the way we respond to and interact with situations in our life.

     

    From a young age, we move and we don’t think about it. Our movements are fun, joyful and functional, all the things that movement is supposed to be. But then we go to school, and unless you go to a school that specifically lets you move around the classroom and stand up and take lots of breaks and go outside with nature, our movement becomes limited. To be still for long periods of time and to sit at a desk in a way isn’t sustainable for our hips and our back. So we have to learn to tap back into our body’s intelligence system for our physical, mental and spiritual health.

     

    To use movement as a preparation for life, first learn to observe using all your senses. This will help you to avoid situations leading down a path of discomfort or misery, whether that’s in the form of movement or interactions with others. Observe your movement, as if looking down on yourself from above and think, how am I moving right now? How am I standing or sitting? How am I holding my energy? Am I leaking my energy? Am I cramming in my energy? Am I clenching my jaw? 

     

    Movement also helps us respond to situations better, to be adaptable and to take steps to correct problems. Examples of ways you can respond movement wise are by tightening your core or deepening your breath. By really paying attention, you will respond to the things that your body needs. And then you’re more likely to respond better to things that are in your life. So at work or at home, you can have that kind of cultivated pause that is needed for a more intelligent response. 

     

    A great exercise for movement practice as a preparation for life is a hip hinge. Start by standing tall. Feel your feet on the floor, tighten your core, tighten all the muscles that surround your pelvis, your spine, your ribs, all the way up to the scapula and the shoulders. Draw the skull back in space so that you’re truly aligned over your shoulders. 

     

    Then cultivate this sense of connection everywhere and see what that feels like. Tune into the difference when you hold yourself up purposely as opposed to just working with the things around you, like gravity and the floor. Can you hold yourself from your core? And get a sense of how different that feels rather than just collapsing. And then from here, slide your hands down your legs, bending your knees until your hands come to your lower legs. Keep that tightness, that firmness around your core, so you’re not rounding in your spine, sticking out your ribs or jutting your chin. Then slide your hands back up. And do that a few times.

     

    When you’ve done that a few times, slide your hands down and hold them on the shins, then draw the belly in and hover the hands away from the body. But keep your position, almost like you’re a downhill skier. And then observe where the energy is being moved  or held. Perhaps it feels like it is being crunched or compressed. Imagine that area getting more expansive. 

     

    Think about that feeling of pausing, observing, shifting and expanding when you feel something that’s uncomfortable. Don’t ignore it. Don’t react by getting angry about it. But give it the attention and space that you need to respond in the best way possible.

     

    Resources: