3 Tips for a Sustainable Holiday Practice

yoga christmas asmy yoga asanas habit holiday festive health wellness lifestyle fitness salute to the moon gold coast australia

Yoga at Christmas time, is there a place for it?

Here in Australia Christmas time brings hot, hot summer days and nights, full tummies and days filled with family and friends. Many studios close down for the holidays and our yoga fix is on hold for 2 or 3 weeks. But life doesn’t need to become yoga-less.  In fact it’s a great time to start a sustainable practice that you can do at home starting now and continuing throughout the coming year.

To create a sustainable yoga habit what works best for me is a session that is simple and short. Something that lets me go into autopilot so I’m not trying to think about which poses I should do. I simply enjoy the same poses day after day with the flexibility of adding more in if I ever want to. That way it is easy to stick to. Practices which are difficult and take a long time have a tendency to drop away after their initial buzz when the going gets rough. So treat these complicated practices as you would a raspberry cheesecake (vegan version of course!) – luxuries that we don’t have every day.

For myself, being a morning person, I find the best time to do my yoga asanas and meditation is in the morning before all the busy-ness of the day sets in.  I have a couple of morning practices that I like to do – one to strengthen for the days when I have a bit of oomph and a calming one that gently stretches away my night time tightness and helps my energy to flow freely. Sometimes if I have time I do both. I do my energizing sequence first and then finish with my calming sequence.  The key thing is to make sure to do it every day because as with all habits, unless we feed our habit it drops away.

For those with families, whose mornings are a crazy rush, your best bet is to get up a teensy bit earlier to fit it in. It’s well worth it especially if you can include some meditation into the session.

My latest go to yoga habit is an adaptation of Salute to the Moon – try it out with my friend Jamuna, and see if it becomes your Christmas holiday yoga and sustainable habit for the rest of the year.

Namaste,

Margaret (Vrindavan dasi)

Veda Yoga Teacher Training