When therapy is too expensive and day drinking at work is frowned upon, how can you safely navigate the lifey-ness of life?
You’ve exercised for stress release. Prayed for guidance. Journaled for catharsis. And it’s helped! Ish.
But where can your physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being intersect? You may be surprised how they all flow together on a 24″ x 68″ vinyl rectangle.
Yoga is no longer that unapproachable practice reserved for monks or the spiritually enlightened. Or 95 pound Lululemon models. There is room on the mat for YOU.
Yoga won’t just make you a more chiseled, pretzel-y version of yourself. It will transform you from the inside out. Bonus: it’ll teach you a couple of mind-blowing life lessons along the way.
- The Way You Do Anything is the Way You Do Everything
Things get real when you’re contorting your body into sweaty shapes you can’t pronounce. You hit a challenging pose, your breath becomes labored, your muscles quake.
These stressors illuminate habits and thought patterns that aren’t serving you. Quit or persevere? Believe you can’t or believe you can. Say no. Or yes.
Your headspace on the mat is your footspeed off the mat. Change your habits in yoga practice and automatically change life out in the “real world”.
2. Stay on Your Mat: No One is Watching You
It’s 2021. Your life is a virtual open book. But the constant bombardment from the highlight reel leaves you agonizing over your unfiltered behind-the-scenes.
Yoga empowers you to mind your own business. To dim the distractions and focus inward. To trade comparison for self-compassion.
When you close your eyes and stay on your own mat, you discover no one is watching you. Everyone’s too wrapped up in their own inadequacies and inflexibilities to notice yours.
3. Connected Breath + Intentional Movement = Transformation
You hurry through life holding your breath. In worry or fear, excitement or anticipation. Most of the time, you don’t even notice.
But moving attention from your breath distracts you from your literal life force. Yoga resuscitates you by linking breath to movement.
When you slow down enough to match breath with movement, your reward is presence, awareness, intention, and transformation.
4. Progress Not Perfection: There’s More Than One Winner
You don’t have to believe the hype that life is one giant competition. You can find true victory competing with yourself. Instead of comparing your journey with others.
When you focus on your progress, the demand for perfection will fade away. You can chart your personal growth and change with new and surprising benchmarks.
You’ll notice your mind is quieter. Your body stronger. Your spirit more calm. Celebrate your progress because Most Improved is actually the real MVP.
5. It’s Never Too Late To Start Again
Challenges, distractions, roadblocks will come. Even with all your newfound coping skills. There will still be moments when your mind races and your intentions wane.
Fear not! Life is a constant series of do overs. It’s even built into our physical universe: we literally start again every 24 hours.
But you don’t have to wait for a sunrise. You can come back to your breath anytime. No matter how far off course you veer, you can always start again.
6. Savasana: Rest is Not a 4 Letter Word
You may have fallen victim to the insatiable culture of more: work more, do more, buy more, be more. But what about rest more?
Yes, yoga is strenuous. It stretches you: physically, mentally, and spiritually. It improves flexibility, lengthens muscles, strengthens your core, lubricates joints. But it also prioritizes rest.
Savasana culminates your practice in stillness and bliss. REST. In those final moments on your mat, you’ll find rest through savasana and strength through rest.
7. Namaste Your Way Through Life
Your entire life is on display through another person’s phone. Yet you still feel unseen, unrecognized, misunderstood. You long for others to see and honor the light in you.
Because being seen helps you endure. Gives you hope. Provides belonging. Makes you feel you’re not alone. It’s also a gift you can give others every day.
Namaste at the end of a work meeting. Namaste at the dinner table with your family. Namaste to the fellow runner trudging along the path. Recognize the light in others. Speak it.
Embracing your new life as a yogi-in-progress won’t be easy.
Your first step on the mat might be terrifying.
Your 1,000th step on the mat might be terrifying.
But every step on the mat — on your mat — will be worth it.
Beause you’ll find a place that speaks to every part of you, not just your individual pieces. A space that is your own. A wellspring of transformation. A practice for a lifetime.
The growth, strength, and rest you’ll find on your mat will be exhilirating.
And so much more rewarding than day drinking.