Why your 6pm Vinyasa Flow is throwing you off balance
I want to share with you the Ayurvedic wisdom that explains why practicing Vinyasa style in the evening causes all kinds of imbalance and what we should be doing instead. But first, I need to take you back in time.
Circa 2012, I opened a tiny boutique yoga studio in the heart of the seedy, nightclub district of Perth’s inner city. The studio sat above a dungeon-like internet gaming place where I occasionally had to pop in to borrow their printer, and next door to a strip club where glamorous girls streamed through the back alley door and guys in fluorescent work shirts lined up on the sidewalk out front.
Amidst all this,in our warm, cozy yoga studio we moved, breathed, chanted and danced. The first schedule I created included a spread of classes and times that I knew would be popular. The types of classes and times of day that would satisfy what people in the city would like. Early morning ‘pre-work’ classes, express lunchtime classes, power flow classes for the ‘after-work’ crew, Friday night live music & ecstatic dances, yin on Sundays.
About 6 months in, with this schedule, I started to feel in myself that something was a bit “off” something was out of sync and I started to recognise that same subtle thing in the students that came to class.
This was also the time in my personal life where I was beginning to integrate the principle of Ayurveda into my morning routine. It required me to wake up extra early so I could complete my rituals before going in to teach the 6.30am class. I’d then do my own asana practice after the students filed out around 8am. I had been raised( in a yoga sense) on early morning yoga practice and rarely went to evening classes. But as I taught these classes at 6pm, 7.30pm I was feeling the effect on my body, my nervous system, my sleep, and my metabolism. It made sense that the students were also experiencing these effects.
What imbalance can look like
I observed that, whenever I taught a dynamic Vinyasa Flow class in these evening time slots, everything was thrown off.
Yes, it felt good to sweat out stress after a busy day. But I’d walk out wired.
It felt good being more flexible, compared to the morning when the body was already warm and open, but often I overdid it & sometimes I’d injure myself.
After class I was starving. It felt good to work up an appetite but having burned through all my inner resources and feeling the need to counteract the post yoga high, I’d ground myself with weighty burrito.
Sometimes, it felt good to fall into bed physically exhausted, but I’d often find myself tossing & turning in the wee hours, unable to deeply rest, still feeling burrito.
Sometimes, it felt good to stay up late, riding the ‘second wind’ & the nervous system buzz.
It was like a cascade of mis-alignments, one domino knocking into the next
So here I faced a conundrum. Keep these popular evening classes on the schedule or shift things around to be more aligned to the natural world and the Ayurvedic principles. As any small business owner knows, it feels counter intuitive to dissolve the offerings that are paying the rent but this was something I knew I didn’t want to compromise on.
The Ayurvedic perspective
If you are familiar with your dosha you’ll know that the energetic blueprint of Vata, Pitta and Kapha are radically different from one another (if you don’t know your dosha yet, click here) These doshas not only effect the quality of our body and mind but they also govern the energetic quality of different times throughout the day.
The afternoon hours from 2pm through to sunset (generally speaking, 6pm) the dominant energy is Vata. This means there is a high degree of movement and change in the air. The time after sunset (6pm( until 10pm is dominant in Kapha dosha, as the light of day fades we are naturally wired to slow down & turn our attention inward.
Ayurveda teaches us, or rather reminds us how to live according to the natural rhythms of day and night. 100 years ago, this would not have been a question. Without electric light there was very little activity that happened after dark, aside from sitting around the fire, or gazing at the stars. Now we have the possibility to go and go all day AND all night, the toll this lifestyle change is taking on our body and mind is starting to show.
What we can do insead
One of the most direct ways you can support your whole body-mind health is to harmonize your lifestyle with the rhythms of the natural world, mimicking what is going on outside, with your home and within yourself.
During the Vata hours (2-6pm) we can support our system and move towards feeling more balanced by reducing Vata in our activity. Simply put, Like Increases Like, if we do a bunch of Vata increasing activities, our inner Vata will also increase. Causing us to feel scattered, overwhelmed, anxious and forgetful. There are many scheduling choices we can make to keep Vata at bay but let’s focus on the Yoga.
If you find yourself on the mat during Vata time, you can create more inner balance by remembering these 3 tips
PACE. Move slowly through your asana. This is the time of transition from day to night, so the transitions in your practice should be deliberate and unhurried.
DIRECTION. Keep it simple and straightforward. Vata is related to the wind/ air element, known to change directions and move everywhere all at once. Restore balance with repetitive sequencing like Classical Namaskar.
GROUND. Spend the majority of your practice on the earth, either with supine asana, twisting or folding forward. Or on your belly, full pranam and gentle backbending on the abdominals.
If you find yourself on the mat during the Kapha hours after sunset (6-10pm) Here’s what you can do
PACE. Kapha is helping us to slow down in the evening so stress hormones simmer down and the sleepy hormones rise. Aid your body in this quest by refraining from that power flow. Take is slow with restorative, yin and yoga nidra.
INTENTION. If you haven't had a chance to practice today, don’t get stuck in the trap of thinking this needs to be a vigorous practice. What’s most important is syncing up your body clock with that of nature so you can wake up feeling refreshed and ready to rise.
CONNECT. Kapha is the power of Union, the force that binds us all here, together. Connect with yourself with meditation or journaling, connect to your devotion through japa or mantra.
Other rhythms to consider
Aside from the Ayurvedic clock and these dominant doshas, we look to all the natural cycles; the planetary days of the week, the lunar phases, the menstrual cycle, the seasons. Learn more about how to sequence your public classes and your self practice informed by these rhythms in my Online Masterclass “The Art of Sequencing with Ayurveda” It’s 2 hours of solid gold and you can download it right now!
