Grounding in gratitude: Spiritual rituals for mindfulness in the spring
Green grass and swarms of vibrant blossoms parade San Luis Obispo in the springtime. With new life bursting at the seams in the form of orange poppies, babbling brooks and sunlight peeking through rainless clouds, it can be a beautiful time to add new mindful rituals into one’s spiritual and yoga practice.
Chloe Jones is a 26-year-old yoga teacher who moved to San Luis Obispo two years ago as a reporter for the San Luis Obispo Tribune. Amidst her journalistic work, she has been practicing and teaching yoga for multiple years, beginning her spiritual journey while still at school in Arizona.
For Jones, seasonal mindfulness is based on intent and what is going on in her life. She focuses on the ideas and meaning behind spring, such as rebirth and starting fresh.
“What I always try to do is see what I need throughout my daily life and how I can intertwine yoga with it,” Jones said. “I feel the beginning of the year, a lot of times I’m just focusing on ‘new year, new me’ or wanting to set some goal or wanting to keep pushing forward.”
Within her practice, Jones said she tries to shift her mindset from wanting to constantly improve to exercising more gratitude.
“I think sometimes when I’m thinking like that, I forget about all the good things that I already had and I don’t appreciate those things,” Jones said. “It’s more about building on top of the great things that I built within the year before, rather than trying to reinvent myself into somebody new.”
It’s the little moments of contentment and bliss that Jones finds rewarding.
“A quote that resonates with me is that ‘gratitude is the moments where you find yourself smiling and you don’t know why,’” Jones said.
In shifting one’s spiritual and yoga practice to match the blooming energy of spring, Jones emphasized how the idea of growth is important.
“Think back to where you started and how much further you’ve come and give yourself a pat on the back for how far you’ve come,” Jones said. “Whether it’s a long way or short way because growth is subjective and it can mean anything for anybody.”
For Jones, breathwork is a simple yet powerful and effective mindful practice she turns to whenever she wants to ground her energy.
“When I feel myself getting really overwhelmed with work or anything, I take a moment and say ‘Okay, let’s take some deep breaths and see if I can get myself out of this,’” Jones said. “You don’t necessarily need to be doing Chaturangas or Warrior Twos in order to practice these ideas of yoga.”
Yoga can be practiced in many ways to support one’s journey through seasonal transitions. Alex Giovannini has been practicing and teaching yoga for over a decade and currently teaches at Spark Yoga at both the Foothill Boulevard and Laurel Lane locations.
“The practice of yoga and the practice of staying present in your mind is understanding that everything is always changing,” Giovannini said. “When good times are good, there will be challenges ahead. When bad times are bad, there will be good.”
With the overhauls of Mother Nature that occur during winter, like seemingly endless rainstorms, spring is a time for recovery.
“The spring is where you actually see the growth from all of the potential destruction,” Giovannini said.
While navigating seasonal transitions, some may find it helpful to embrace habits and rituals to encourage more presence in their daily life.
“I feel like a ritual is something that I have to think about doing,” Giovannini said. “Whereas a habit is something that just sort of happens. Maybe I’ve done it as a ritual so much that it becomes a habit — so they sort of intertwine that way.”
Rituals that happen every so often, such as when the seasons change, can function as a way to transition to what is new and let go of the old if it doesn’t serve you anymore. Giovannini practices “108 sun salutations,” a ritual where sun salutations are repeated 108 times in one sitting, as spring and summer roll around.
“One is the start of something, zero is the end of something and eight is the infinity symbol,” Giovannini said. “It’s one of my favorite rituals to remind me that there’s the start, there’s the end and there’s everything in between. We have all of it right now, right here in this present moment.”
In terms of habits, one that Giovanni stresses the importance of doing every day is the yoga pose Savasana, also known as “corpse pose.”
“You lie down in corpse pose and imagine that you are now a corpse, that this was your last day on earth and [you] reflect on your last day. Then [you] wake up tomorrow and do it again,” Giovannini said. “The continuous repetition of that practice can drastically change the presence that you have.”
Even some simpler or more common rituals associated with spring can be a powerful catalyst when it comes to embracing the seasonal shift. Recent Cal Poly psychology graduate and Spark Yoga teacher Ketzia Kogan said she spring cleans.
“With the shift into a season where you have more light and more daytime and more windows open, it encourages me to tend to my home,” Kogan said.
With the spring reminding us of change, it can allow us to appreciate what we have in the present moment while making the most of it.
“It’s just a potent reminder of how there are transitions in life between one state to the next, kind of like a yoga class,” Kogan said. “It’s important to remember that spring is a temporary moment, but it’s also something to be so grateful for.”
Year-round, it is important to recognize how we are connected to the world around us, and one of the most prominent connections we have is to other people. Although Kogan doesn’t celebrate the holiday for its religious roots, Easter is an important time for her to connect and come together with family and loved ones.
“Coming together to share a meal and to be together and to celebrate this rebirth and the renewal of color and life and light, it feels like this thing that I actually really look forward to,” Kogan said.
Whether you are celebrating time with loved ones, the concept of rebirth or the freshly green rolling hills, springtime has endless inspiration to take with you into your unique spiritual journey.
