Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~ Rumi

It seems that every time February comes around, I feel a little flutter in my heart. Anyone? December is so full of holiday, lights, crammed schedules, activity. January brings the new year and then goes a bit dark.
But February.
Pulls up with a bit of je ne sais quoi. Extended daylight? Check. Some early spring bulbs pushing through winter's crust? Check. Fresh strawberries in the grocery stores? Check. Maybe the natural world awakens us to our very own hearts and our spirits are lifted. Energy wheel 4 - the heart.

For the month of February, we'll be spending time working energy in and around our hearts. We'll be exploring expansion and softening and connecting to the very center of our bodies. Opening the heart to expansion and joy allows us yet another step to the essential meaning of yoga, union. Opening the heart involves taking down our defenses are bodies are hardwired for in order to protect but can also become permanent body armor. This rigidifies the upper back, chest and shoulders. It constricts the breath and can even shorten the connective tissue in the front of the body, drawing our shoulders forward and collapsing the chest. Then it becomes more difficult to breathe well and to align posture and the heart feels depleted.


"Love is a natural state of being, not only within your inner temple but through all creation - myriad interconnecting relationships, the exchange of energy and information, singing together, vibrating, sparkling. Even though love is the universal force of connection and healing, we simultaneously fear it and long for it, and this creates blockages in the heart."
excerpt taken from Chakra Yoga, Anodea Judith

I hope you will join me for our theme of heart softening and expansion through February. We'll be using our postures and breath to move energy in a way that creates invitation to softening and spaciousness. When you create space inside yourself, as well as spaciousness inside your life you have room to unblock and truly enter your heart. Spaciousness can mean free time, peace and quiet, relaxation in body and mind or even physical space that is expansive, like being outside.

When we stimulate our heart space, our spirits are lifted.

"Mind-body integration is more than a personal health strategy. It is a movement of consciousness that can change the world." Matthew Sanford