YOGA FOR ONE EARTH, ONE HEALTH
"Yoga for One Earth, One Health" is the theme for 2025 INTERNATIONAL YOGA DAY, emphasizing yoga’s holistic impact on well-being and sustainability. Move your body, deepen your breath, and relax your mind as you embark on a journey to connect the body, mind, and soul in a way that has existed for centuries.
International Yoga Day, celebrated on June 21st each year since 2014, is a universally celebrated occasion that highlights the significance of yoga in advancing physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. This day encourages all individuals of every age group and background to embrace the practice of yoga to enhance health and harmony in their lives. Beyond the benefits, the celebration also fosters unity and mindfulness across communities worldwide. It serves as a reminder of yoga’s timeless wisdom and its ability to connect us with the environment as well as ourselves, which inspires a peaceful lifestyle in the fast-paced world.
Here are six ways to celebrate the theme of INTERNATIONAL YOGA DAY 2025:
Meditate on birds. John and I enjoy sitting outside overlooking our pond and birdwatching. We do this any time between sunrise and through the gloaming of the evening. Birdwatching offers an opportunity to awaken the senses. Our heads turn as we hear a birdsong or see movement. We sit quietly and still, observing and sensing our environment without judgment, criticism, analysis, or conversation as the birds display their magnificence through their color, song, flight, interaction, relationship, and stillness. This practice allows us to connect to our kinder, gentler selves and reminds us to embrace gentleness, slow down, and enjoy each moment as it unfolds.
Take a walking meditation with bare feet. Ditch the shoes and experience the sensations of your skin on the earth, the softness of the grass, the warmth or coolness of the sand or dirt beneath your feet. Bring awareness to each step and to the many muscles that are working to lift and place each foot. Walking meditation is an opportunity to slow down and luxuriate in the smallest detail of a process that we usually take for granted.
Connect with water. Research shows that spending time in or near lakes, rivers, the ocean, and other “blue spaces” reduces stress and has a positive impact on well-being. Visit your favorite pool, waterpark, hot tub, ocean, creek, pond, or river. Dip your feet in water. Jump in and play! If none of these are accessible to you, enjoy a shower or a bath, or splash your face with water.
Practice yoga outdoors. As mentioned before, enjoy the summer season by practicing outdoors and the gifts of practice within the nurturing embrace of sunshine, wind, water, rain, and earth. For some, summer is fun time to engage in a more vigorous yoga practice; for others, taking a slow flow and balancing the yang of the season with the yin energy through holding poses longer, focusing on breath, and cultivating stillness. Yin energy encourages relaxation and inner peace, which complements the outward-directed energy of yang seasons of spring and summer.
Create an earth mandala. Collect seashells, flowers, sticks, stones, bark, sand, and other natural materials to craft your own mandala design on the beach in your yard. Connect with your environment, express your gratitude, and create something sacred. Then, let it wash away or blow away and invite yourself to connect to impermanence.
Share healthy habits with others. Create a healthy meal. Share it with friends and family and include the recipe so they may replicate it in their own homes. Invite them to attend your yoga classes with Inner Connections Yoga & Wellness at the Waccamaw Recreation Center, Litchfield by the Sea Clubhouse on Thursdays, or on the north end of Pawleys Island on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Schedule a trip to pick your own fruits and vegetables at a local farm and share your bounty with others.
Attuning to the richness of summer not only allows us to experience it more fully, but it also helps us move more gracefully into upcoming seasons and the cycles of nature.
Happy Yoga International Day! Celebrate One Earth, One Health is some way every day!
Cheers!
Jeanne