During these winter months, we must seek refuge on our yoga mats.

What’s up asana kickers and and mudra flickers? Hope you are all enjoying the holiday season and feeling your best out there wherever you might be. Below is a post via YOGANONYMOUS—I wanted to make sure to spread the holiday love with all of you elephants out there! ~ Dan

With the weather growing colder and colder, and the commotion of the holidays building and building, I, like most of us, have found great refuge on my yoga mat. Not only that, I have found that winter is a great time to crank up the tunes, turn up the heat, and dive deep into personal practice.

While things are stiffing, freezing, and growing heavy outside, I have been experimenting with lots of warmth, movement, and levity in my practice—doing my best to keep things light inside. My practices as of late have consisted of lots of energetic vinyasa based flowing sequences, focusing on the power of fluid movement that exists within each of us on a cellular level. And of course, with all the talks of Christmas Trees this time of year—I have been incorporating my fair share of tree poses, or rather should I say, upside down tree poses—adho mukha vrchasana AKA the handstand.

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of offering a very special series of workshops entitled “Hip/Hop Yoga Practice” at a couple different studios located around New York and Philadelphia.

The focus of the “Hip/Hop” workshops was on fluid hip openers, high flying hop inversions, and the creative correlation and connection between the two in the flow. Often times we carry our heaviest stress (both literally and figuratively) in our hips and it is the freedom and eventual lightness of this region of our body that allows us to fly high and rock our inversions. Moreover, when the weather drops we tend to spend more time, umm how do I say this lightly…sitting on our asses than we normally do when the weather is warm. So it is even more important to go deep into our hip joint mandala and free any tension and tightness that may be lurking below the surface.

…And of course, a proper “Hip/Hop Practice” event would not be complete without a custom yoga playlist featuring some old-school hip hop inspired beats and eclectic electronic rhythms. In the holiday spirit I have compiled some of the favorite jams from the Hip/Hop Yoga events and I offer them to you here as a fun, light, and inspirational source to stimulate your asana practice and keep your internal fire burning bright and light during these cold winter months.

Click here to head over to YOGANONYMOUS to read the rest of the article and download the playlist for free! Stay warm my friends!