10 Essentials for Spring

10 Essentials for Spring is a fresh, new opportunity to practice actualizing your intention. Connecting with your intention, practicing different strategies… this is yoga!

This course is self-directed. You decide when and where to engage. We recommend a commitment for a minimum of one week (you’ll find a “one week” worksheet in the Course Materials.) You can build from there and extend to one month or even to the whole spring season! We also have worksheets that correspond to those timeframes.

The course includes:

• posture (5 categories to prioritize with LOTS of options)
• mindset (5 powerful practices to help organize and direct your energy)
• worksheets to track your efforts
• videos
• articles
• links
• option for 1:1 support throughout the course

At Yoga for Mental Health we use the Eight Limbs of Yoga framework. You will see it weave throughout our 10 Essentials for Spring Course. This framework offers us many ways to apply and develop our skills. This framework includes instructions about how to take care of ourselves and each other. There are physical practices to manage our movement, breath, and senses. And, there are the subtle ways to direct the mind and heart to the ultimate realization of our full potential.

As we move through our lives from childhood to adulthood, we pass through many days and nights and many seasons. These phases all effect our experience. As you move through the 10 Essentials for Spring course you will see this happen.

When the framework and potential for integration meet the forces that move within and around us, we are truly connecting. This is yoga!

10 Essentials for Spring course components and strategy

Our 10 Essentials for Spring course offers you an opportunity to ride the rising tide of energy that comes with the season and (re)commit to practice. It includes both subtle and obvious elements. Mindset, posture, and strategies for practice are offered.

You will find video and accompanying text for each of the 10 Essentials for Spring lessons. You can move them at your own pace. You can skip around from one lesson to another and let your curiosity guide you. We hope that our course will help you to see what is possible and to feel more connected.

We realize that things change. We change. Our bodies, our energy levels, our motivation, and our priorities change. Our desire to to be happy, that doesn’t change.

The steadiness of our practice and our ability to adjust to changing circumstances is where we will find happiness. In our bodies, in the midst of our perfectly messy experience, this is where we find happiness. It is not in the future, or in the past, it is here, now.

The first (and most important) of the yoga sutras tells us this. Here, now, is the connection that we seek.

Reflection

It is both the intention and desire to practice, and the reflection that comes after, that will help you to refine your efforts. It is the poise between effort and ease that we’re aiming for.

Therefore, it is important that you build in some time for feedback. You can use a journal, our worksheets, a spreadsheet, a focused meditation, or any other method for focusing attention on reflection. Without it thought, you will miss the opportunity to fully digest and synthesize the wisdom embedded in your practice. It can be as simple at a +/- note to indicate that the experience was pleasant or unpleasant. It matters.

Elevating your subconscious awareness to consciousness gives you the ability to respond more thoughtfully, lovingly, compassionately. The brilliant and devoted subconscious will take care of you if you don’t. It can just get pretty messy. Intention to evolve happens with conscious intervention.

10 Essentials for Spring schedule

It takes time to build habits. It takes time for neurological and fascial change to occur and to become more steady. Therefore, we recommend that you prioritize consistency over intensity in this course.

If you know that you tend to start off strong and lose steam after a while (like most of us,) you may benefit from having a little extra accountability built in to the course. That could be something as simple as printing out a worksheet and putting it somewhere visible. It could be inviting someone to practice with you, or, asking someone to check-in with you about how the course is going. Who are your people?

Yoga for Mental Health Members get Marco Polo and/or email support from our founder, Margi Clifford, included in the 10 Essentials for Spring course. Non-members can purchase this option as an add-on. This is a great way to see how it feels to get 1:1 support if you’re considering individual therapy, or, to make sure that you are practicing appropriate versions of postures to support healing and protect vulnerability.

Margi is not only a longtime experienced yoga teacher and trainer, and licensed professional counselor but is also a certified yoga therapist. It’s a trifecta of credentials and a commitment to the therapeutic potential of these practices. Let us help you to see how the 10 Essentials for Spring can clear the way for what is to come!