I hope this blog post finds you and yours well?
I want to take this opportunity to wish you very lovely people a beautiful Christmas. I cannot believe that practicing yoga with the gorgeous yogis who come along to Emma’s Yoga Hut is my actual job! It is such a huge pleasure and privilege to meet and know those of you who have come to courses and workshops. So, please accept my sincerest best wishes for the festive season.
It has been a rollercoaster of a year and once again we are coming to the end of it with gathering clouds of uncertainty yet again, but we have made it to Christmas eve, and I am hoping you all have as good a festive period as possible, however that might be looking this year!
For Christmas I would like to leave you with two yamas and niyamas (yogas guiding principles) that we have covered in class to take with you into the festive period.
Firstly, the one I feel like I mention most weeks in class! Ahimsa, non violence, non harm. Take this into Christmas and apply it to yourself! Use it to remind yourself that you have done enough, and you are enough. Remember to revel in all you have done to make this festive period happen, rather than focus on all the things that you felt you “should have” done! In fact, delete the words “should have” from your vocabulary! Even if you have got to this time of year and have face planted onto the sofa and are refusing to move then that is perfectly valid. If your body, mind and soul needs that, then you are honouring yourself beautifully by doing it, the ultimate in Ahimsa! You have got this!
Secondly, I take you back to our class on Santosha (contentment) in the run up to Christmas. What you have and who you are is enough. If you can manage to focus on all the wonderful things that you have it can help to counterbalance the huge pressure to have more. If you are fortunate enough to have your health, a safe place to live and some love, in whatever form that takes – furry family, friends, the “traditional” family of Christmas advertisements, helping at a charity, distant loved ones who you think of, loved ones who are no longer with us whom you hold close at this time, whatever other forms love takes for you, then really, what else is there that you need? Gratitude is a word that gets bandied around a lot, but, it is worth taking a few minutes to sit back and recognise the good things in your life and really FEEL that gratitude within you.
Plus, in the spirit of Santosha; it is absolutely 100% ok to not be ok at Christmas, you are wonderful and you are doing a wonderful job no matter what. The words happy, merry, joyful are bandied around relentlessly this year (I’ve done it in this very blog post!) and if that is not how you are feeling then this language and expectation really highlights it, and can leave you feeling like you are doing Christmas wrong in some way. You are not. Feelings are like clouds in the sky, they come, they go, none of them last forever, so if you are not feeling ok, that is ok, you will do again at some point, it is a hard one to find Santosha with, but sitting with your feelings and letting them be there is a quicker way to move through them than plastering on a smile and burying them, they do have a habit of bubbling back up until they have been felt. And it is fine to not feel even remotely merry and bright.
So, settle in, enjoy your festive treat of choice (HELLO cheese mountain!) and see if you can practice presence in amongst the presents!
I am very much looking forward to seeing you in the new year (should the fates allow!)
Wishing you your best possible Christmas,
With love,
Emma x
(Emma runs Emma’s Yoga Hut in Earley. A tiny garden studio for small group and 1:1 yoga tuition. She is a yoga student and yoga teacher and has practiced yoga for 25 years. She trained with the Traditional Yoga Association right here in Reading between 2016 and 2018 to achieve her 500 hour yoga teaching accreditation. She has additional teaching qualifications in Yin Yoga and Yoga Nidra which she subsequently undertook online during the great lockdown of 2020. Emma tries her best to practice yoga every day, plus, escaping into the yoga hut gives her a bit of peace and quiet away from the family at Christmas!!)
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