Reset with a body scan

Y'all! Thanks for your patience with this week's video. I got back from my lovely family reunion vacay late Saturday afternoon and decided I was wiped and I'd record Sunday morning. Well let me tell ya the technical difficulty gremlins were out in full force and after THREE failed attempts (two video, a desperate last attempt just audio) and unsuccessful troubleshooting, I threw in the towel. I figured I'd rather wait a day and be nice and refreshed than record a video to get it out yesterday while I was feeling frustrated AF. And you my friends really win because my pup Theo had FOMO and wanted to be up on the big bed when I recorded today, so I let him and was dyyyying watching the playback- he's hesitantly settling in as he tries to figure who on earth I am talking to 🤣

On to this week's practice article! I used to wrap up my yoga practices with whatever the last movement stretch was, unless the video I was watching or the class I was in at a studio included savasana (shuh-VASS-uh-nah) at the end. At some point I came across someone saying to always include even a few minutes to integrate your practice before you go about your day. Recently in my yoga therapy training, one of my faculty said savasana is like "hitting the save button for your yoga practice"!

But I totally get it...what do you do, like just lie there for five minutes?? That's a lot of time to do nothing. While doing nothing is the entire point- to let all the biochemical processes you got going during your practice to synthesize and get back to homeostasis- it can be a lot to just lie there. Our minds wander- salivary glands secrete saliva, minds secrete thoughts- which is why lying down with nothing to do can be a bit of a thought factory explosion situation. And that is where the body scan comes in!

A body scan, done lying down or even seated, is a lot of work for your brain- it is a task so it activates your executive network, which is responsible for decision-making and task execution. It also involves honing in on the senses, which activates your salience network, which is responsible for filtering external stimuli as well as switching between major brain networks. With all this activation in these two networks, it is pretty difficult for your default mode network - the network responsible for self-referential rumination, to come online. The default mode network is also where creativity and day-dreaming happen, but let's be real- when the mind wanders away from a task for most people, it's not for fun stuff.

All this is why simply taking a break to do a lying down body scan can be an amazing reset in and of itself. You give your default mode network a breather - it only comes online in the absence of a task- and give extra awareness to consciously noting what's going on in your body, and have the opportunity to consciously relax what you may not have noticed you've been tensing.

So here it is, yogis! A ten-minute guided body scan. I'd love to hear your thoughts, so please just reply to this email with any feedback or requests for anything you'd like some yoga for 🥰 And if the neuroscience tidbits I shared piqued your interest, check out the 2-Minute Neuroscience series on YouTube. Fantastic resource for learning in little chunks, which is ideal (for me at least!) because it is a whole lot of complex, fascinating shit going on in the brain and their succinct lessons and great visuals are excellent.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for practicing with me whenever you have some time to check out the video!!

In deepest gratitude,

💕Carly