Divas That Care Network

Give Yourself Grace

• Divas That Care Network • Season 15 • Episode 49

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Come and listen to our Host, Gia-Raquel Rose for our “End of Year, Beginning of Me” Podcast Series.
A powerfully themed mini-series helping women close the year with clarity and step into the next one with grounded self-love and vision.

Gia-Raquel Rose, owner of Airs Above Yoga, LLC and a real estate sales associate in Tewksbury, New Jersey has had a love for horses stemming from early childhood. Growing up in “horse country” afforded her the privilege of beginning to ride from the tender age of four. It was a childhood illness, which brought her riding aspirations to an abrupt halt. It took twenty years before she was able to reunite with her long lost passion for horses and their ability to heal. In that time, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Corporate Communication from Arcadia University and became a twice two hundred hour certified yoga instructor in both Hatha and Vinyasa. It was the loss of her mother, Rose, to breast cancer, which ultimately shifted her trajectory from the corporate world to the internal work for which yoga, as a practice, is renowned.

We return from a short break with a gentle, grounded guide to giving yourself grace. A closing yoga sequence—bridge, fish, reclined twist, happy baby—becomes a map from effort to ease, and a practice of forgiveness during a busy gratitude season.

• why November themes of gratitude and grace matter
• how breaks, balance, and self-forgiveness strengthen practice
• why closing sequences shift the nervous system
• bridge pose as heart and hip opener for release
• fish pose to clear the throat and speak truth
• reclined twists to rebalance energy and reduce tension
• happy baby to reconnect with simple joy
• meeting your body where it is, not where it was
• carrying lessons off the mat into daily cycles

For more Divas That Care Network Episodes visit www.divasthatcare.com

SPEAKER_00:

It's Divas that Care Radio. Stories, strategies, and ideas to inspire positive change. Welcome to Divas That Care, a network of women committed to making our world a better place for everyone. This is a global movement for women, by women, engaged in a collaborative effort to create a better world for future generations. To find out more about the movement, visit divasletcare.com after the show. Right now, though, stay tuned for another jaunt of inspiration.

SPEAKER_01:

Namaste and welcome to the Divas That Care Network. I'm your host, G. Raquel Rose, owner of Airs Above Yoga, and you are listening to Above the Ground Podcast. If this is your first time tuning in, our network is in its 15th year and listened to in over 30 countries. I want to personally thank you for sharing the gift of your time with me. As always, it is my honor to hold space with you. And as you may have noticed, I have taken a little bit of a hiatus as some life things had come up in flux, we'll say in flux, all about trying to maintain balance and all good things, nothing, nothing bad, but just taking some time to make those adjustments, which I think we all need to give ourselves that gift of grace, especially as we embark on the holiday seasons, which are upcoming. That being said, November seems to be some sort of theme for this podcast, and maybe for me at life in general, Scorpio season, depending on it's my rising, depending on how you want to look at it. But what I want to touch on is that I tried to launch this podcast many years ago. Well, not many, a couple of years ago now. And then I took almost a year hiatus. And when I came back to it, it was again in November. Um, and now I had a much shorter hiatus uh because I really wanted to make sure that I maintained the commitment not only to myself, but to anyone who took the time and so generously gave it to me and listened and hopefully took some benefit from the things that I share and speak about. And so as we're coming back again in November, third times of charm is what I'm gonna say. Um, and just talk a little bit about this season of I'm gonna, it's typically a season of gratitude, right? November is associated with Thanksgiving for those of us in the United States. Um, and it's it's my favorite holiday because it's um, well, it's my favorite holiday more for the food aspect. I'll be completely honest with you, uh, for someone who has given up uh grain in mass, uh stuffing is my favorite carbohydrate, my favorite guilty pleasure. Um, and so the Thanksgiving table has always been all of my favorite foods and always just brought, you know, happiness and just being with family and being with friends and loved ones and not necessarily, while I love Christmas and whatever holidays you may celebrate, that may not be a part of my personal routine, but that may share some parallels for any and all denominations around that giving time of year. Uh, it does seem to take on a life of its own where it gets a little bit more about the giving and the shopping and the prepping, and a little bit less about the just being with the ones that you love and enjoying time with them. And so I've always likesgiving a little bit better because it's a little bit less pressure, focused on you know, food, warmth, and family in my mind. And then it all goes downhill on Black Friday because I've always I've always kind of abhorred the fact that um they they pirated the idea of thanks to to sell wares at low prices to drive people from their families into their wallets. And that's just a personal soapbox message that I will now stand off. Um, but to that end, talking a little bit about forgiveness and a little bit about um releasing and letting go. And, you know, this as fate and luck and you know destiny would have it, you know, when it comes to taking these brief hiatuses and giving yourself you're forgiving yourself, essentially, right? Um, and as this episode is dedicated to our asanas, I wanted to talk about the sequence of postures that close a practice. Um, and every instructor is different, every class is different, different um alignments in yoga all can be all can have different variations. But the way that I was taught and the way that I believe is a lovely way to settle into your mat as you start to enter Shivasana. I believe last time I brought this podcast back to life above the ground, aptly named, um, it was with Shivasana, it was beginning at the end. And so we're kind of doing that again a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but this time talking about the the the forgiveness aspect and the release aspect. And um forgiveness of self is a huge, huge theme, I think, throughout not just yoga, but the spiritual journey in and of itself, because in essence, we talk we can often find difficulty forgiving others who have potentially wronged us. We can also often find ourselves engaged in in anger, rage, hate, all of these very negative, low by lower vibrational emotions that draw us into our ego and out of our upper, upper connection or divine connection to our highest self. And and so having forgiveness ultimately for another, but but ultimately for yourself. Um, sometimes it's harder to forgive yourself than to forgive someone who wronged you, depending on the slight, uh, right. But just that idea of, you know, I knew that I had to take this time and I didn't want to take this time. And for the past month, I've kind of beat myself up for not being able to get to this and to get to you. And um saying on the phone to someone said, you know, I just I have to give myself some grace. I have to give myself some grace. And I think that in this season of gratitude, sometimes it's easier to give yourself grace than to forgive yourself. And I think that that's a good place to start. I think that that is going to be the title of this episode, Give Yourself Grace. And I think that it's very, very important when we talk about releasing and letting go, when you go through an asana practice, especially the more rigorous the practice, the more challenging the practice, the more you need that time to go from the kind of switching, switching eastern denominational language, um, going from the yin to the yang, right? Or the yang to the yin in this case, um, and going from that masculine aspect of the heated postures and the the workout, if you will, in air quotes, um, of the practice to the stillness of the practice ultimately in Shvasana. And that transition is so, so important. So we all know, you know, that that cue from the yoga instructor to come back to your mat, to come back to the floor, to gracefully make your way down onto your mat. Um, and it and you know, I definitely use the term gracefully when I when I say that, because sometimes it's a flop, sometimes it's less graceful than you want it to be. Sometimes you're exhausted and you just fall onto your mat, hopefully not out of a balanced posture, but you just, you know, you let go and it's not pretty. Um and oftentimes the forgiveness and letting go is not necessarily pretty. It can be an ugly, ugly transition when you have to face yourself and the part of yourself that maybe you, your shadow side, that part that you don't love or that part that deserves love, I should say, even more than what you choose to withhold from it. And so when you do decide to come back down onto your mat, there is a somewhat, I'll call it a somewhat traditional sequence, but the sequence that I always kind of go through in some variation of itself begins with the bridge pose. And it's a heart opener and it's a hip opener. And I know I've talked about it at length before, so we're not going to go into too much detail other than it is a laying down posture where you put pressure on the upper shoulders and neck area and the back of the head. So you do want to be mindful. I've always said with a neck injury, when you're in bridge pose, you want to make very, very sure that you don't start to roll your head side to side once you elevate your hips. Um, you know, a lot of people are familiar with it from like a gym mentality or a workout mentality of a glute upper press kind of a situation. But essentially, you can do a restorative bridge where you rest your hips and your pelvis, your sacrum technically on top of a block or some stacked a bolster potentially or stacked blocks. Um, and the idea here is that after you've gone through the practice, this begins to bring that blood flow up towards your head. And for people that don't have a shoulder stand practice, traditionally in some, especially vinyasa classes, shoulder stand is practiced at the end of the class, and it is it is just before bridge, generally speaking. Um I suppose you could go vice versa and prepare for shoulder stand by doing bridge. Um, that is another way to go about it because some people have have that prep work, um, but I don't practice shoulder stand anymore due to my neck injury, and I certainly don't lead a class into shoulder stand. So I just want to acknowledge shoulder stand for the wonderful pose that it is. It used to be one of my favorite postures pre-cervical vertebrae injury. Um, but for now I'm going to use bridge posture as the as it as the as the posture that um replaces uh shoulder stand for anyone who's coming out of their out of their challenging aspect of the practice and into that subtle restorative releasing aspect. So bridge does a couple things. Again, it opens our heart, it opens our hips. So that opens all of those places where we hang on to things, especially for women. And again, I won't, I won't, we're not talking gender, but for the female body, carrying things in our heart, we tend to round our shoulders, we tend to tend to hunch over our hips if we carry tension or tightness, or we've had any sort of unfortunate, but has to be said sexual traumas, we store those in our sacrum, um, in our solar just below our solar plexus in our sacral chakra area, which is just you know in the pelvic bowl. And so getting that area open and free, opening your heart center, that is a way to start to release. Um, and you may find people that you know have experience of emotional release if they're new to the practice and they find themselves in in that it is a vulnerable position, right? Um we are on we are extending our bellies up towards the sky, our pelvis up towards the sky. And when you come out of bridge, you want to make sure that you gently roll down vertebrae by vertebrae to the best of your ability, and then ending gently on the sacrum and tailbone. So knees for this posture are stacked over the heels, and a lot of times people bring their heels too close into their buttocks. So make sure that you keep your heels out a little bit so that you have that lovely angle of knee over angle. Um, and then just on the we're going backwards again. So when you raise up into it, you draw the lower abdominals and engage the inner thighs towards each other and press those hips up towards the ceiling. You can roll the shoulders open, extend the arms, and interlace the fingers underneath your hips if you have the mobility in your shoulders, or you can just allow your shoulders to tuck under or ground into the floor, pressing the palms down for a little bit of extra stability and support. There are lots of variations to this posture, but it is generally one of the go-to transitions between being upright and coming down onto your mat. When you finish exiting from bridge posture, what I generally like to do is having that harp opener. And again, the same counterpoint to shoulder stand is fish pose. And we've talked about fish pose as well. But fish pose again, heart opener, throat chakra opener. So when we're talking about releasing, while you are able always to release things from your body, your body will store the trauma and tension, but you are always able to use the body to release that stored trauma intention as well. Sometimes it needs to come from the voice, sometimes you need to air your release, sometimes you need to, even if it's not to the other person, even if it's to you, even if it's to yourself, you just need to say it, speak it out loud and let it go that way. And so fish pose will be wonderful to open that throat chakra and really open through the neck, open through the shoulders, and kind of is the counterpose for the bridge posture. And so for fish pose, you take your, I prefer, there are a couple ways to do it. You can press your elbows in at your sides. And again, I've gone really in-depth for these postures before, so I'm not gonna go super down the rabbit hole, but you can bring your elbows into your sides, pressing them right at the base of the rib cage and lengthening up through the heart center. Fingertips can point up towards the sky, and then you just lengthen. Same thing as bridge. You can place a block between the shoulder blades or a bolster. Blocks can be a little bit square into the sides of the shoulder blades there. You just want to make sure that you don't feel any tension in your head or neck as you pivot up through the chin and rest just the crown of the head on the mat. To make it a little more active, you can also take the palms of the hands to the floor underneath the tailbone, creating this diamond shape that I've that I've put on the screen for those of you who are not watching, and tuck that diamond just around your tailbone, draw the lower abdominals in and gently lift the legs. So that's going to take you a little more back and a little bit more into the yang aspect. And so for a restorative bridge, you can just open through the heart center, lengthen through the chest, release open through that throat chakra, and begin to let some of that blockage flow freely. Um I think it's very, very important always, and especially when you're thinking about bringing energy from bridge pose through the upper chakras. Literally, it's coming on through the legs. It's coming, you've done this standing practice, right? You've done the seated practice, all that energy, all that strength that you're building up in your legs, you're bringing that energy from your legs down through your pelvic bowl, through the body, through the torso, and then into the heart space and into the shoulders. And when you go from bridge to fish pose, you're then allowing that same energy to track all the way up through the throat and then reconnect back with the earth through the crown of the head. So the two postures from an energetic physical perspective, and I know I said energetic physical, but I meant exactly what I said. Um, even though it's a physical release, there's energy flowing through your body, and that connection back to the earth through the mat, through the crown of the head kind of brings it all full circle. And if we're talking about forgiveness, release, closer, and moving on, what is it if not if not a circle or a cycle of life? So from the bridge, I'm sorry, from the fish posture, when you're coming out of it, you do need to lift up through the crown of the head, tuck the chin in gently, and make sure that you press into the elbows, release the hands if you've had them underneath, but make sure that you're really pressing up and so that you have protection through the back of the neck as you come back to that neutral position on the mat laying flat on your back. From there, everyone's favorite the crowd pleaser, recline spinal twist. And there are so many variations of reclined spinal twist. Um, and I often practice reclined spinal twists as a warm-up as well. Um, but the general the general rule of thumb there is to have the spine in alignment, which a lot of people look more like a C from the yoga instructor's perspective when they practice reclined spinal twists. So make sure that you do have the idea of bringing the knees to one side of the mat and the hips to the opposite side. It's a good way to kind of position. And the little cue that I like to give is whichever direction your knees are facing, lift up that shoulder and draw it over a little bit in the direction of the knees. That generally tends to straighten the spine out a little bit. And then from there, whether your knees are stacked, whether you have one extended down, one leg extended down, one leg extended perpendicular, whether you have one foot on a thigh and you're grabbing to get a little bit of extra through the IT band. There's so many variations through the legs here that I may focus the yoga video on this specifically to or towards that uh recline spinal twist leg variation aspect because there's so many fun ways that you can do that, and they target different areas of the lower back, and you can that generally get a nice happy, happy crack, if you will, again with the air quotes when you're in a reclined spinal twist. The nice thing is to then roll open, breathe through the upper body and chest, really come from that expansive place. And I think that that is um a beautiful way to again, I always talk about twisting as wringing out the towel, right? Like you're you're and I that's not I did not coin that. I believe it was my yoga instructor, Stephanie Papas, that did that did give us that kind of wringing out the body sensation when we're talking about twisting of any kind. But with reclined spinal twist, again, we're talking about that energy that we've created throughout a practice. And I think that as you come into that recline spinal twist from the two prostors, we're talking about that reconnection of the energy from the floor through the feet up through the crown of the head, through bridge and fish. And if you talk about the idea of ringing it out, for me, it's almost as the recline spinal twist begins to disperse the energy throughout the body. So we've brought, we've heated it, we've created it through the asana practice. We come down onto the mat and we need to, we've we we're filled with it. So we need to direct it, essentially, is how I like to look at this closing sequence. And so directing it from the legs up through the crown of the head, bring the energy up through your chakras. Then from there, as you twist it, you're beginning to rebalance it through your chakra system, disperse it laterally from side to side, back through the legs, and in a balanced and even way that starts to bring it from that heated energy into a cooler, more unified energy that your body can kind of then absorb better and take the goodness from better. And again, twists always release toxins, so there's an element of that that moves through it as well. But think of it as a rebalance. And so obviously, what goes up must come down. What you do in one direction in yoga, you must do in the other. Bridge and fish are both uh symmetrical, uh kind of parallel front to back, if you will, whereas your reclined spinal twist is side to side or lateral, so you do need to swap from one side to the next. And then finally, the crowd pleaser for many, and one of the least favorite for people who do not like to be super vulnerable, happy baby pose. So after recline spinal twist and before Shivasana, spoiler alert, I always come into happy baby pose. And for those who are unfamiliar, happy baby pose is where you are in the middle of your mat, spine completely in contact with the floor, with you know, as as less of a curve of the lower back in contact with the floor as you can manage comfortably. And then you draw your knees into the chest and then bring your knees out towards your armpits. Soles of the feet, knees are at a 90-degree angle, and the soles of the feet are kind of walking on the ceiling, and then you're grabbing the backs of the thighs, the ankles, the big toes, um, whichever is comfortable for you when rocking side to side. And this is probably, you know, it's it's a it's a crowd pleaser, it's a yoga, yoga class favorite. And again, this kind of just celebrates all of that hard work that you just did. Um, it's a deep, deep hamstring opener, and it all everybody knows what it mimics why it's aptly named the happy baby posture. Every note, everybody has an image in their mind of a baby kind of rocking side to side, grabbing their feet. Um, and it just kind of brings that whole cycle full circle, I think, um, where you're coming back to the joy and reminding yourself at the end of that cycle of forgiveness, of closure, of moving on, and of release, there is joy. Hopefully, hopefully, that cycle has to have joy. And I believe that happy baby is the yoga asana that brings you from the effort to the release, to the transmutation and that twist of the energy, and then into the joy. And then the joy too must come to an end at some point, and the cycle begins again, and that's when you enter your shavasana. So I know that I've kind of gone through the postures in a relatively speedy way, but I did want to talk a little bit more about how this relates to the idea of the idea of the cycle, the idea of it is it is insert situation here, right? This cycle of life goes through ebbs and flows and situations that are going to require you to a cultivate self-awareness, but b start to understand your own role in in the cycle of creation, and that these situations, if they find themselves repeating for you, may very well have a lesson in them that you need to complete and learn. And then ideally, if that's the case, you will come to that final, you know, that big bad boss in a video game or that final exam at the end of your studies, where you you nail it and you get to move on to the next study or the next course or the next you know stage in the video game of life, if you will. And I think that the the ending sequence, and again, I should preface that not all yoga teachers end a class this way, but it is I've certainly seen it many times. I think it's a relatively go-to um way to wind down. And I believe that it mimics this idea of having like the situation is the practice, right? So I'm gonna build on this metaphor. The situation is the practice, and then the practice itself has that aspect. The situation itself is gonna come to that very the challenging part, right? Like it it presents itself, you go through it just like the asana class, you hopefully try to find balance and some balance postures, you work through some core, like there's work, there's effort, every situation in life, whether it's work, whether it's relationships, whether it's whether it's you with yourself, raising children, you know, every every kind of aspect of our existences has these cycles in them. And and you don't necessarily know where you are in each cycle as it as it comes to that, but you are at a point, and then the cycle renews. And there are big cycles and small cycles, and you'll see that this thread will run through, uh, this theme will run through. And so for the yoga aspect of it, being able to honor and acknowledge the release part and the forgiveness part. And I know that, you know, when I first started with yoga, and I know a lot of people who did start, um, they start very type A, and yoga is almost like a self-competition, right? Where it's like, oh, I wanna for me, it was like I want to get my heels down and downward-facing dog, right? That was like a big thing for me. Or I wanted this, you know, I I hurt my shoulder trying to grab my leg behind my head. I got there, but I but it wasn't really worth what I did, right? Because I was young and I just wanted to do the pretty yoga pose, right? Um, and and as you, as with with with age comes wisdom, one can only hope, right? Um, and so I no longer force myself into postures like that. I know the consequences. I've lived them firsthand. And so giving yourself that grace and you know, that forgiveness aspect of, you know, your body is never the same in each yoga class through each, through each phase of life, through each phase of a class, of a week, of a of a month. I mean, we're women if we are still experiencing our cycles, you know, each yoga class every week, if you go every week, is gonna feel different, right? Your body's gonna be different every day. And meaning yourself where you are and forgiving yourself for not being the same body that you were a week ago. I remember, I think it was from the Disney movie Pocahontas, where I think the quote is you never step in the same river twice, right? Well, your body is never the same body twice. It is a it is an evolution. Um, and that's where that self-forgiveness comes in. And that that idea of self-awareness has to come first. And I think the the difficult postures in asana bring you to that self-awareness. Your limitations in asana, no matter what they may be on any given day, are ever changing, but just like that river, right? They're ever-changing, but they also will bring you to that self-awareness. They'll smack you in the face with it sometimes if you don't listen. Um, and then from that self-awareness, ultimately you have to reach acceptance and forgiveness, and then you can release the expectation, release the attachment, um, and let the energy that you've just cultivated move through you, rebalance you, bring you joy, and bring you back to center, bring you back to stasis and shavasana. And so I know that I went pretty pretty deep on that metaphor, but I do believe that that closing sequence is is so thick with meaning that we oftentimes take for granted, or that maybe, maybe as a yoga nerd, quote unquote, or yoga geek like I may be, maybe it's just me uh overtaking things. But I do believe that you know art imitates life, right? And yoga is, I believe, a form of art, a form of creativity with the body. Um much like a much much like art that is impermanent, right? There's art that is permanent that we can appreciate and it lasts long be long after the creator, right? And then there are there is art that is beautiful for its impermanence, like a sunset, um, and and is alive in beauty and form in and of itself. And I believe that your body, everybody's body, even if it's not the societal standard or norm, is beautiful and as transient as the sunset. And so I just want you to give yourself that grace. Um, meet yourself where you are, forgive yourself for, you know, holding on to things that no longer serve you. Forgive yourself for, you know, beating yourself up when you didn't get get on your Zoom to record your podcast three weeks or four weeks prior. Give yourself the grace, no matter what you are beating yourself up for, no matter what you are, what expectation you created for yourself that you are not meeting, let it go, release it, forgive yourself for it, and and then come into happy baby pose. And I think that, you know, that aspect of remembering the joy is so crucial for all of us because we forget and we get so hung up and we get so caught up in our own daily dramas and again the the hard part of the cycle that I think we oftentimes forget the joy. And we've we as much as forgiveness is important, as much as you know we have these expectations and this drive and this ambition potentially, maybe we don't, but for people that do and that you know set these impossible standards, whether they're beauty standards, whether they're physical standards, whether they're uh achievement based with success and finance or goal-based with school and education, no matter what the drive is, there still has to be joy, or what is the point at the end of the day, right? Um, so always remember that. Always think of when you really, when you're really when you're really getting stuck in it, when you're in the weeds, when you're in the thick of it, think happy baby. And if you have to, if you're in a place where and you if you're in pants and you're in a place where you can comfortably sneak into happy baby, just remind yourself, not only are you grounding yourself in that practice, but just remind yourself that what at one point you were a very happy baby on the floor with not a care in the world, and that you can be that in a moment at any given point in time, as long as it's safe. I'm not telling you to do this in the middle of a street, um, but as long as you're in a safe space, um, if you need a reminder, then you know when there is darkness, happy baby. And on that note, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of you for sharing this space with me and ask that you please feel free to share the same with your loved ones. For more goodness, follow me on all the socials at Above the Ground Podcast or visit my website, airsaboveyoga.com. And as always, don't forget to check out my other episodes and all of my amazing sisters at divas that care.com. You can find us on Spotify, Odyssey, Apple, Amazon, iHeartRadio, or anywhere else where you might feel guided. Again, my name is Gia Raquel Rose, owner of Airsabove Yoga, and you are listening to Above the Ground Podcast, where every day is a good one.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for listening. This show was brought to you by Divas That Care. Connect with us on Facebook, on Instagram, and of course on divas that care.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss a thing.