How to adjust your yoga and sleep/wake rituals for your constitution this Spring

Spring season begins just ahead of the Equinox about March 15th and is celebrated with Holi in India, a festival of color celebrating the renewal of light. This celebration is accompanied by Homa, a fire ritual burning herbs, including sandalwood, tulsi and neem, which are immune strengthening when inhaled.

How the growing light, moisture and warmth change our bodies’ processes

With more daylight, and a general trend of warming (though it may not feel like it on any given day!), our bodies make less melatonin, favoring “build” processes over “cleanup” processes. You might feel more “spring in your step” - or you might feel a little extra energy, but not be able to break through a foggy, hazy feeling. If you’re finding that, adjusting your wake up time and when you get sunlight, moving some breath and movement practices to the morning can help tremendously to clear the haze. The first morning or two can be difficult, but it does get easier as the pieces fall into place.

In general, for a Spring pick-me-up:

• Wake with the sun (around 7am right now)

• Practice warming breaths like Bellows Breath

• Get direct sunlight on your eyeballs (Bellows Breath outside! Bundle up, bring your warm mug!)

• Practice Sun Salutations and Twists

• Savasna in a warm, well lit place

• Go to sleep at a time that allows enough rest; try moving sleep time back 15 minutes a week if need be

• Eat seasonally: in Spring eat light, less fat as it gets warmer, include lots of spring greens

• Consider a monodiet of kitchari for a week to rev your digestion back up

• Take some time for quiet journaling, inquiry and meditation to set your course for the rest of the year

As the spring greens emerge, our bodies respond just like the roots and begin to move our energy and manifestation outward. During the Spring, the kapha elements of our bodies - structural and immune - that were built up over the winter are mobilized, or renewed. Our bodies have both build and clean processes, which is familiar to most of us from high school biology: we have osteoclasts and ~blasts: clasts breaking down and reabsorbing bone and blasts enabling mineralization and building new, strong bone. This pairing happens in all of our tissues. Build processes are favored in the Early and Late Winter with rife melatonin due to the lengthened darkness. As we enjoy longer daylight and the higher angle of the sun in the sky, resulting in more warmth and different weather patterns, the equally necessary processes of identifying, resorbing and excreting the cells that are no longer functioning properly are increasingly supported. This process of renewal is vital to our overall health and longevity.

Nutritive and Flavor Shifts

Spring is time to begin or return to longer fasts and simpler meals with the flavors of bitter, astringent and pungent (or spicey), decreasing unctuous or fatty foods and sweet flavors. Fasting 13 hours between dinner and breakfast is encouraged all year. If you'd like to lengthen to a longer interval or explore 24 hour fasts, it's safe to do so. The increasing warmth (pitta) will support your body in eliminating what is no longer needed: cells that have begun to malfunction, toxins accumulated in fat cells, excess fat, metabolic waste. 

Yoga Asana and Pranayama Renewal

With spring comes the addition of more twists, more warming breaths, more active and challenging practices. Twists support the fundamental activity of the digestive tract, keeping it lubricated and mobile. Sun Salutations continue to be supportive, especially when done more rapidly than we may do them in the Early Summer. Sun Salutations evenly strengthen and mobilize the muscles in the front and back of the spine while waking the core, lymphatic system and breath. Twists are particularly helpful first thing in the morning on a stomach empty except for water. This is also a fruitful time for your pranayama (breath practice), chanting and meditations.

Warming practices are more and more welcome especially balanced with grounding ones. I love kapalabhati in low squat pose at this time. Kapalabhati is a breath practice consisting in rapid, forceful exhalations from the pelvic floor and transverse abdominus below your navel, with passive inhalations after each exhale. You can support your heels on a blanket or sandbag in low squat, or use the wall for half squat if that's better for your knees. Another alternative is Fierce Pose, grounding and structure building, warming and challenging. 

We’ll be practicing and learning a forceful version of Alternate Nostril Breath in all classes this spring. The same as simply alternating nostrils as you may have been doing, except drawing the breath in more rapidly and a little more forcefully than the quiet, nighttime version. We’ll do a limited version in the evening classes, so you can learn and practice and consider adding it into your morning routine.

HiYo - High Intensity Interval Yoga - is a wonderful practice to create the heat, mobility and lubrication perfect for our spring practice, too. HiYo uses Tabata style intervals and yoga moves. This safe, aligned, breath inspired practice is scientifically proven to drive epigenetic changes necessary for healing, changing tissue structure (building cartilage, something priorly thought impossible, the Journal of Arthritis and the professional organization for arthritis physicians acknowledged is possible through epigenetic changes in late 2017). The intervals we use are accessible, modifiable for all levels and short! We alternate 20 seconds of intense movement alternating with 10 seconds of active rest, 8 times for a total of only 4 minutes. “Intense” is relative, so you go at your pace.

Constitution and General Practice Guidelines

Remembering that your own dominant constitution, is important for how you practice, here are a few pointers - book a private session to receive an analysis and personal suggestions:

• Vata constitutions (think air, movement, when out of balance in need of tethering) benefit from slow, steady practices focused on core in every pose and multiple repetitions in a practice with regularity, rhythm and routine. Focus on transitions.

• Kappha constitutions (think solid, muscular, substantial, when out of balance foggy or heavy) benefit from more warming practices with great attention to alignment, challenge and staying in poses one more breath than is always comfortable.

• Pitta constitutions (think quick minded, fiery, when out of balance a little extra Type A) benefit from twists and a downward gaze and finding that special place of 75% effort - not 110% and not 0%.

Remember that most of us are combination doshas, like Pitta-Kapha, Vata-Pitta &c. You also have an original constitution as well as a current one and the practice is to bring current constitution toward your original. It's a good idea to check in with this every 6 weeks or so and make tiny adjustments to support your mind-body in balance. 

If you would like a personal analysis and recommendations, schedule a private yoga session for lifestyle recommendations including yoga poses, breath practices, chants, mudras, fueling, meditations, daily routines for circadian living.

General Seasonal Guidelines for Differing Constitutions

Vata in Spring Rx: Extra grounding, belly compression (the bodily home of vata is in the colon) direct the movement toward transformative processes. Think air feeding fire - but not burning out of control. Extra fuel is present so extra containment is needed. Vata time of day is 2-6 am and pm and you’ll feel more energized then - rise before 6am. Favor earthy flavors and cooked fresh fruits and veg, with ghee or other light fats. Go easy on dairy and sweets, though occasional warm milk may be soothing. Consider Golden Milk - not just for the holidays!  Need help rising earlier? Don’t go too fast - try getting up just 15 minutes earlier each week. Take 2 weeks if necessary.

Kapha in Spring: Kapha people can experience more than usual obstacles in Spring. Useful antidotes include play and laughter, rise around 6am, or with the sun (kapha time is 6-10 am and pm, so bed before 10) and favor pungent, bitter and astringent flavors. Minimize or even eliminate for a while sweets, fats and watery fruits. Focus on warming practices, remain in poses for a breath longer than is comfortable, backbends are favored. The bodily home of kapha is in the chest.

Pitta in Spring: Favor bitter and astringent flavors for spring, present in salads, beans and vegetables. Some spices will feed the inner fire: cumin, coriander, fennel; cinnamon, cardamom and coriander; fresh ginger (not dried) - minimize sour flavors and drying ones like dried ginger and cayenne, citrus and nuts - sunflower seed would be wonderful, though. Try sunflower oil for your daily oil massage (abhyanga) and eat your biggest meal between 10a and 2p, the pitta time of day. Be in bed by 10, rise as close to the sun as practical. Standing poses are strengthening and directive of the inner fire, twists call pitta to its bodily home in the stomach (think HCl and digestive enzymes being cultivated and used).

Conclusion

Changing the intensity, focus and balance of our yoga practices, food intake and wake-sleep routines with the Seasons and with the phases of the day keeps us in synch with natural rhythms that underlie our health and well being. Yogis have been practicing these habits for years and science is just now learning how and why they work. In fact, a 2017 Nobel Prize was awarded to the scientists who discovered the first pathway that underlies our circadian rhythms. These are real rhythms that underlie the biochemistry of being a human being. Cooperating with these universal patterns allows us to more effortlessly remove the obstacles to our bodies’ natural, healing responses.