Hawaii is paradise. For most of us that live here, the outdoor component was a major reason for calling the islands home. Fresh air (freshest in the nation), beautiful beaches, mountain trails, and parks around every corner make nature accesible. However, so many of us get caught in the day today patterns of moving from one indoor space to the next with a little glance out the window at the green palms and sunny skies. I love that my daily commute includes majestic mountain vistas, I look up at them with a sigh and a promise that someday I will climb every peak, but for now I drive along in the same road to the same destination.
There is a term in yoga for this repetitive, rutted, unconscious patterned movement through our lives - samaskara. In some ways, the ease and familiarity of repetition traps us into limiting beliefs, health patterns, and social interactions. Certainly as creatures of comfort, we are grateful for some predictability and patterns in our life to stay grounded and clam AND yoga invites us to inspect them with an invitaiton for growth.
This month, as yoga teachers, we inspected even our patterns of where and when we practice yoga.
As a practictioner, it is easy to profess from personal experience that yoga practice outdoors has a certain magical quality. Anecdotal evidence is valid (and your own personal knowing is enough), coupled with some recent research, the reasoning and rational to be even more intentional about an outdoor practice became evern clearer.
In 2013 a group of 5 science students in Essex asked the question "why is doing exercise outside better than if you do the same thing inside?" They collected some meta data analysis and came up with a list, a long list, of reasons why being outdoors is massively more beneficial than maintainig our predominantley indoor patterns. Here are some highlights that were even news to me (you can read the full published article here ):
We are predisposed to connect with nature and therefore choosing activities that include being outdoors we are more likely to change behaviors as well as reap the socio-biological benefits of 'green exercises.'
Doing activities outdoors are more entertaining for our senses and thus create more motivation to continue becuase it is percieved as more enjoyable and easier.
Exposure to nature increases immune function (a particular favorite of mine as a an antidote to my several auto-immune diseases).
Those are three new-to-me reasons to be outdoors more. So when I inspect my own patterns, when and where I practice yoga, creating a new pattern of teaching yoga outdoors became more and more clear. After Complete Yoga's first Pop-up Yoga in the Park and all the good feels and positive feedback, we are naturally predisposed to keep it going! We will keep the schedule updated, but you can count on regular 'green exercises' to be entertaining, motivating, and immune boosting fun!
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