What is yoga anyway?🙏🧘‍♀️🧘🧘‍♂️🙏

I want to share with you a few things I wish someone had told me when I first started....

Especially as there are literally hundreds of websites and articles out there that describe what yoga is but sometimes I feel like this miss the weird and wonderful journey yoga is.

The first thing is that the media gives us the impression you need to be slim, young, female, flexible, drink green juices and like lycra to do yoga. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. Yoga is designed for EVERY BODY, every age, every size and you gain the flexibility and strength through the practice. I definitely didn't have it before!

This media stereotype undermines yoga completely. It is really about learning to love ourselves, and I mean EVERYTHING about ourselves, including the nasty bits we feel too ashamed to admit to openly.

The idea being the world becomes a mirror for our growth. We recognise that within ourselves is exactly the same thing that we see outside and are judging as wrong or bad to some extent. Accepting our own flaws means we can treat others with genuine understanding of the fact we are all simply human and not so dissimilar when it comes down to it. We all have shadows.

Being on your yoga mat is important but it is kind of like the swimming pool practice and real life is like swimming an ocean. Yoga postures help you grow self-awareness of your body, but to me, more importantly, awareness of your emotions, your thoughts and our natural connection to energy.

I couldn't count the number of times I heard the voice in my head say "I can't do it" and how long it took me to retrain and replace that thought with "I can do it" and what do you know? Suddenly I could, both on my mat and in life.

Yoga gives you time and space ✨ to see what your thought patterns are when faced with easy things, challenges, failures, the opportunity to show off, embarrassing situations and those moments that sometimes come up where we just want to leave the class. When we observe ourselves we get the chance to figure out how to honestly feel and manage all those emotions in real time. And the next time someone cuts in front in the supermarket we can respond rather than react.

Being on a yoga mat gives you the chance to focus on now and only now. It opens you up to be willing to experience pain, as you learn not all pain is the same, and it is not all bad; it always passes, and often, it is simply your body giving you a message.

Yoga showed me that every pain I ever had was associated with some sort of emotion that I had buried or situation I couldn't face, and when I got the emotions out by journalling, crying or finding the courage to face the things in my life, those pains literally vanished. Like magic 🪄.

Yoga shows you it is ok to fail and fall, to be able to laugh at yourself, to push yourself a little harder and get back up. You realise most people are too busy worrying about how they look to even notice your trials and errors.

Some of the hardest lessons for me were not to look around. Not to compare my body with other people who, to my mind, were inevitably slimmer, fitter and more graceful than me. That we all have postures that we do easily that look impressive to other people, but these are never where we make most gains.

The postures that infuriate you, that make you cry, that you think you will never be able to get into them let alone master them - they are the ones that help you grow and the ones that give you the most expansion in the end.

But you have got to be willing to show up, EVERY TIME, and try again, and again, then let it be for a while and then, suddenly, when you least expect it you will be in that posture you never thought possible. Exactly like in life.

And the power of the breath, wow, I literally never got that when I started (for like maybe 9 years...!). But if there is one thing that is the easiest to take from your mat into daily life it is that breathing, big, deep, long, slow belly breaths as often as you remember. Try one or two now and you will get what I mean. Instant STRESS RELIEF.

I also never got meditation, I used to spend so much time thinking, “I am still thinking, this feels like a really long time...God! why can't I stop thinking, just for a second or two! I am rubbish at this. I could make curry for dinner I guess. I really wish I hadn't said that today...." Not the most spiritual of inner dialogues but reality for most of us.

I can't say it is the same for everyone but somewhere along the way my mind changed. I was willing to let go, to trust I didn’t have to run the show and it was ok to step back and let my thoughts come and go. That I wasn’t them. That I wasn't even the one observing the thoughts.

And now meditation feels utterly amazing (most of the time!). There are still thoughts of course, and my overactive imagination runs wild, but I let the visions come now and I don't judge. I let the energy expand beyond me and I send love ❤️ into the world and I get it back.

So, if I could give anyone that wants to give yoga a go some advice it would be: SHOW UP FOR YOU.

Your journey and mine will be completely different but I promise you that joining a class will bring you benefits you can't even imagine yet.

And it will not be a straight line; sometimes you will feel amazing and other times completely floored. You will get new injuries and pains in places you never even knew you had before. One day a posture you used to hold into with ease will suddenly become a nightmare. You will put on weight after working so hard to lose it or lose weight after working hard to gain it. You will hear pops and clicks and find muscles in the strangest of places.

But you will learn something completely new about being in a body and about living that you never saw before.

And if you can learn the lessons your mat is trying to teach you, swimming in the ocean of life one stroke at a time becomes easier, and not only easier, but it also starts to actually be enjoyable.

I would LOVE to hear about your experiences of yoga, what you think it really is and whether you are already a yogini or still afraid to give it a go!?!

Feel free to share below...

And if you want to try out an online course with me reach out or visit: https://www.divineenergetics.co/yoga

With love,

Helen xxx