Why do yoga at Christmas? “If you think you’re enlightened, spend a week with your family.”

It was Ram Dass once said, ‘If you think you’re enlightened, spend a week with your family.’

It’s something that Carolyn sometimes mentions in Kundalini Global workshops when exploring the stress system, and when discussion turns to triggers…

When mentioned, the room is guaranteed, always, to fill with knowing smiles, nods of agreement, bums shifting in seats, eyes glancing sideways… It is something we can all, by degree, relate to. 

Tricky times…

For this, and many other reasons, not least the sheer amount of fear and overwhelm many move through right now, this time of year is quite the challenge for many of us. 

Whilst our TVs and YouTube preroll ads endlessly show peculiarly shiny, happy, families gathered round a Christmas feast with enormous smiles, the reality is often very far from that.

Our awareness as teachers is that a huge number of people dread the festive period. Be that because it brings an experience of loneliness front and centre in our awareness (whether we are surrounded by family and friends or not) or because it’s all just extremely stressful/unnecessary/dull/offensive…

Of course, many of us also love this time of year and embrace it as a time to let go, unwind, reflect, hibernate, make change…

Whatever your experience is, or however you imagine the coming weeks will play out for you, for every single one of us, for at least a few days, life is a little different over the week of Christmas and New Year.

Kundalini Global believes that it is an especially potent time to come together to practise…

Why?

Presence over presents

Our practises will aid you in being present, rather than focusing on presents. Presence will make any experience of this time more bearable and, if you are surrounded by other people, having an ability to land in presence will likely make most interactions more measured and less likely to trip you into stress, anger, upset… 

Helps to minimise or soothe the physical effects of the period

Our experience is that there is little as impactful as a daily practise to put you off overindulgence, but over Christmas we are almost all susceptible to the invitation to change what we consume, be that in terms of food and drink or what we watch on TV.

We also often sleep in places where we aren’t so comfortable, visiting friends and relatives which has a physical impact on the body too.

Find solace, change how you feel…

Of course, this is not even mentioning the impact of the contractions of body and mind that come from spending so much time with family. Kundalini Global can help with ALL of this.

You can use classes to explore things you could take on as a daily commitment to yourself over coming weeks, you can release contractions in your body caused by tension, and you can combat some of the excess with the physical aspects of the strong posture work we do  (for this we would fully endorse taking on Carolyn Cowan’s Core Abdominals class!)

See for yourself, for free…

Whatever you experience will be of the coming month, to join the Kundalini Global community for a class can offer you respite, community, connection, solace and, potentially, awaken a belief that you can choose how you feel, respond, act, experience, this time of year.

And, most excellently, Carolyn Cowan has a number of completely free offerings coming up, so to give it a try and see how it lands is completely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and device (which, if you’re reading this, one may assume you have!)

Carolyn’s free offerings include: