Get Fired Up With A Mandala Flow
I hope you're ready for a great workout and way to unplug from the day and focus.
If you're new to my page and online classes, a mandala is a circular diagram with a spiritual and ritual significance. In Sanskrit it means “essence”, “having” or “containing”. It can also be translated as “circle-circumference” or “completion”. In yoga, Mandalas are used to help focus attention and target a specific area in the body.
Mandala yoga is a great way to aid meditation, and when we practice a Mandala Vinyasa Flow sequence, we make a circle or travel 360 degrees around the mat through a four part opening sequence. The sequence usually has a single focus that ties to one of the elements (Earth, Air, Water, or Fire) and each element ties to a chakra and a target area in the body.
- Muladhara Chakra, grounding focusing on hamstrings
- Air- Anahata Chakra, opening focusing on opening up the chest
- Water- Svadhishthana Chakra, emotions/fluidity focusing on the hips & groin
- Fire- Manipura Chakra Will power/ Motivation focusing on twisting
In today's practice will focus on the element of Fire and creating a whole practice around twisting.
It's a great way to warm up the body, stretch your spine, reduce back pain, build strength and lose weight. It's also a great practice to do if you experience back pain (this one works wonders for me and my broken L5), are feeling unmotivated, lacking initiative, or just want a good workout.
Manipura chakra is represented by the color Yellow, the element of Fire and is located in our soalr plexus. It is associated with:
- Will, personal power
- Taking responsibility for one’s life, taking control
- Mental abilities, the intellect
- Forming personal opinions and beliefs
- Making decisions, setting the direction
- Clarity of judgments
- Personal identity, personality
- Self-assurance, confidence
- Self-discipline
- Independence
So why is it important to work on our Manipura Chakra? When this chakra is balanced, it's easy for us to align to the attributes above; however, if it's out of balance we can often lose the will to push forward, make decisions and feel independent or on the other side of it, we can become too controlling and overbearing. By having a regular yoga practice, and taking time to work through your chakras we can bring ourselves back into balance.
More to come on chakras and how to tell if you're balanced, excessive, or deficient soon. In the meantime there is a great book you can read Eastern Body Western Mind that will give you everything you'd ever want to know and more about the chakra system. It's a big book, but a great read.
Please let me know what you think in the comments below. If you're looking for an Earth Mandala I have just posted a video on that too! And stay tuned as I will have a more Mandala sequences soon!
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