According to Ayurveda, yoga’s sister science, autumn is vata season. This means you may feel airy, more scattered than usual, and in need of some help getting grounded. Fortunately, there are many grounding yoga poses that can help you feel more stable as the seasons shift.
As you might guess, grounding yoga poses emphasize stability and rooting into the earth. You can ground through the feet, through the hands, or through both the feet and hands. While you might expect poses like mountain and downward-facing dog to be grounding, you may not realize inversions and balances are also grounding yoga poses.
Mastery of basic grounding poses will help you become more stable. That stability will help you stay grounded in more challenging poses—the inversions and balances.
6 Grounding Yoga Poses to Practice in Autumn
- Mountain pose – The most basic grounding pose, in mountain pose you root through the feet and stand tall.
- Downward-facing dog pose – In downward dog, you are rooted through both the feet and hands. This makes downward dog one of the most stabilizing and grounding yoga poses you can practice.
- Tree pose – When you practice tree pose, you learn to stay grounded while maintaining the ability to sway at the same time. This is an important tool for life. After all, we are often in situations that test our balance and stability.
- Headstand – Here you root through your forearms. (Remember, your head should not bear your weight in headstand.) This pose is excellent practice for staying grounded when life turns you upside down!
- Child’s pose – The ultimate resting pose, child’s pose will help ease feelings of disconnection and help you feel stable.
- Savasana – Often called the most important pose in yoga, there’s nothing like a rejuvenating savasana to help you feel more grounded during vata season. In savasana, your entire body grounds into Mother Earth.
More Ways to Stay Grounded with Yoga
In addition to grounding yoga poses, yoga offers other tools that can help balance vata energy. Specifically, these tools are meditation, mantra, and pranayama (breathing) practices.
Meditation calms and stills the body and mind, so it’s an excellent antidote to feelings of instability that may heighten during autumn. This is a great time of year to tune in and recommit to your meditation practice as well as your asana practice.
Chanting a mantra can also help with instability in autumn. Mul Mantra is great to chant when you need to get grounded. In the Kundalini Yoga tradition, mul mantra is the root, or spiritual foundation.
Pranayama practices that calm the mind, such as alternate nostril breathing or ujjayi breathing, are also excellent tools for staying grounded. The breath is a powerful tool for calming and centering the mind.
Using the tools of yoga to stay grounded can help you enjoy this beautiful, heart-warming season without the disconnection and instability that come with the increase in vata energy this time of year.
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