Nicole Field’s Reviews > Yoga Through the Year: A Seasonal Approach to Your Practice > Status Update

One way to invest your actions with meaning is to be clear in your heart what your values are. What really matters to you? What do you care about? What are your guiding principles? Who’s important to you and how will you show them you care?

Make a list of all the things you love doing and that bring you pleasure. This might seem a bit scary if you are out of the habit of taking time for yourself. Start small, choose something from your list that’s easy to do, and do it! This will build your confidence, and you will be able to build on your successes. Reignite those hidden passions and dare to dream the life you want to live.

Whereas it’s true that yoga can help us maintain our youthful vigor, it becomes an unhealthy pursuit when it morphs into clinging to something that all of us must ultimately surrender.

In many traditions this point, when we enter the darkest phase of the year, is seen as a new beginning rather than an ending. We pass through the darkness only to be reborn into the light at the winter solstice. You and I, before being born into the light of the world, began our lives in the darkness of our mother’s womb.

The aim of yoga is to create a state of balanced perfection by uniting complimentary opposites in harmonious union. The tree marries earth to sky and stands balanced between the two. A tree is Mother Earth made visible and tangible to us. Where tree meets sky is the spaciousness of yoga. Where tree connects with earth is the groundedness of yoga. Where tree stands in space is the peaceful centeredness of yoga.

Learn how to align your own energy with the prevalent energy of the season and know which time favors contemplation or action. Use your knowledge of the seasonal energy to balance periods of activity and rest.

Like the moon, the year also has periods of waxing and waning. An awareness of this ebb and flow of the year can help us know when it is a good time to push forward and take action and when it is better to take a more contemplative approach. It also helps us feel connected to and supported by the earth.

To create an authentic united yoga we must reunite heaven and earth, and then once again we will rediscover the spiritual within our everyday lives. Spirit no longer transcends the everyday world; rather, it is immanent and to be found to be within all living things.