Adapt, Adjust, Accommodate.

“Adapt, Adjust, Accommodate, if you can do that everything will be ok.” The words of Swami Sivananda. I have really been thinking about this over the past few weeks, especially being a yoga teacher, watching your student’s progress into the practice and over coming their difficulties as they are physically adapting, adjusting into the posture and accommodating within it, or accepting it. I feel a sense of wonder when I see a student really accepting and surrendering, especially when they may be having difficulty and once they have done this, the progress starts, they are an inspiration to me. We can’t fight the postures, we improve in yoga by that acceptance and relaxing into the asnas, both physically and mentally, not by pushing or forcing the muscles and joints when they aren’t ready, learning to use the breath to control the mind into adjusting correctly, accepting where we are on a daily basis and accommodating to what is going on around us. Then the magic starts to happen. As I think about Swami Sivananda’s words, he didn’t just mean from a yoga asna point of view, but from a whole life point of view. So many times when we would like something to happen and we try and force it, it just goes against us, but when we accept the position we are in and try to adjust to that instead of the other way around, things seem to go much more smoothly. We are bound by karma to our life situations here on this planet, but by tuning into those 3 little words from Swami Sivananda we can make what might seem like not such a good situation, into one where maybe we will end up blossoming, as he said if you can do that then everything will be ok!

A Winter Warmer, Almond Milk

10 almonds
1 cup of fresh warm milk or Soya milk
1 teaspoon honey
Pinch of cardamom powder
Pinch of fresh ground black pepper

Soak the almonds overnight, remove the skins after soaking, put all ingredients in a blender, blend on high speed and drink right away. If you don’t have a blender the almonds can be bashed quite easily with a pestle and mortar, and this is better for the environment- no electricity needed!!
This is a really tasty drink that is great in the mornings after meditation and before practice; it improves general energy and ojas (spiritual force or life energy.)

Om shanti shanti shanti :-)