Liverpool has been my home for the last week. It’s an amazing city — vibrant, historic, patriotic and the home of the Beatles! I even tracked down a yoga class while I was there, which always gives me that home from home feeling and a sense of belonging in a new environment.

I love listening to people around me and one of the key phrases I heard while in Liverpool was people saying "Happy Days!" Usually used at the end of a list that leads to a feeling of contentment — Happy Days! I wonder whether by even just saying the words each day it could help to change the way we think?

The Dalai Lama, when asked when he was at his happiest, replied "Now". So every day is a happy day!

The Yoga Sutras are a complete manual for the study and practice of Yoga and there are many translations and interpretations. It’s a permanent source of reference and inspiration for me. When thinking about the expression “Happy Days” and how we seem to constantly be looking for happiness, the following Sutra came to mind:

Sutra 2.42 - Santoshad Annuttamah Sukkha Labhah — "Through contentment, supreme joy is obtained."

How often do we feel truly happy or content? How often does reality fail to meet up to our expectations and we feel disappointment? As the former Beatle John Lennon put it in the song “Beautiful Boy” for his son, Sean, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

It seems to me that our biggest challenge is to be content with what we have, to accept what happens and to be satisfied with the hand we have been dealt.

Contentment comes first and foremost from having a sense of mental well-being. It’s often our annoyance and sense of regret from things not having gone the way that we would have wished that leads us to feel frustrated. We often look at what others have — or don't have — instead of being grateful for what we do have that leads us to feeling discontented.

Contentment is a dynamic and constructive attitude that brings us to look at things in a new way. It calms the mind.

Contentment means looking at every event with a smile.  It helps us to have a good sense of humour.  As quite a few of my new Scouse friends know, it helps us to achieve Happy Days!

For the next couple of weeks I’ll be emphasising the importance of the neck in my yoga and Pilates classes and how we use it. How many of us have a stiff neck but hardly ever stop to think about the reason why?

For me, there are two main reasons.

There’s the physiological reason, which comes about because our posture is poor. We use electronic devices without giving any thought to how we are holding our head. We get stressed and tense when we are driving. There’s an almost endless number of ways we get it wrong.

The mental reason is just as important. We find ourselves holding on to stress and tension in our neck and shoulders, but don't know how to release it.

In my current classes, I’m focusing carefully on the alignment of the head on the top of the shoulders. Teaching simple and practical ways of gently stretching the muscles in the neck, I’m helping my students to feel a relief from the tension that we often hold there.

I am also emphasising the need to breathe deeply. Too many of us just breathe into our neck and shoulders; that was never how we were designed!! Think of the age-old phrases you hear all the time: take a deep breath, count to 10. There’s a reason we still say them!  When we breathe deeply, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for how the body rests and digests. Breathing deeply into the belly slows the breath down and gives us time to stop and think. It gives us the opportunity to release stress and relax, particularly around the neck and shoulders. Just taking a deep breath can slow the heart rate and bring down blood pressure.

And it’s incredibly practical, too. Being able to move the neck and shoulders freely helps with very functional movements, like looking behind us when we reverse the car. And feeling calmer and more relaxed comes as an added bonus — how much nicer to walk around without our shoulders around our ears?!

This is a quotation from one of my favourite books that is especially relevant to what we’re considering today:

"If we are tight and constricted in our joints and muscles it is likely that we are also mentally tight. This usually manifests itself in stress, anger, fear and judgement. If we are supple, limber and fluid in the physical body it is more likely that we will reflect this openness in our mental body. This leads us to creativity, compassion, acceptance, gratitude and an ability to embrace and implement change in our lives."
Bhava Ram — The Eight Limbs of Yoga

Come along to class to find out more and help to bring balance into your life.