WHAT IS YOGA?
For me, Yoga is balancing…
In my everyday life, I constantly get pushed and pulled in and out of balance. I get angry, I feel overwhelmed, I am happy, I feel sad, I am busy... my life is constantly changing. Yoga has taught me to notice how I am feeling in the moment and then use some of the tools from my yoga practice to re-balance myself.
When we practice yoga we learn lots of different techniques that we can take off our yoga mats and use in our everyday lives. For example, we can slow down the exhalation to calm ourselves down when we are annoyed, we learn how to rest in a restorative way when we are tired so that we get a little boost of energy, we experience how the breath and slow gentle movements can foster resilience in our nervous system so we feel overwhelmed less often. Yoga also provides practices to cool you down when you are hot and warm you up when you are cold. It can be used to ground yourself when you feel anxious and can help you feel lighter and more joyful when you feel burdened and bogged down by life. This is how I use my yoga practices to keep myself centred and balanced.
Yoga also helps us find balance in this ever-changing world by encouraging awareness of both the changing part of ourselves, which interacts with the environment and also the part of ourselves that is unchanging, from where we can witness all of these changes going on. This is often described as our witness consciousness. It is constant and gives us a platform from which we can watch all the ups and downs of life.
Yoga can be translated as to ‘yoke’ or to ‘bring together’
Yoga brings together our individual self - the part of me that says, I am a yoga teacher, I am 5ft 6”, I am happy, with the part of me that is Universal, the part of me that does not change over time and space, the part of me that is eternal. Yoga offers me the opportunity to fully experience these two aspects of myself and integrate them in the moment, leading to more joy and happiness.
Yoga teaches us to be present...
In a yoga class, you are encouraged to cultivate awareness of the moment. You learn to view life as it unfolds through observing your experience of movement, breath, and maybe over time thoughts, feelings and sensations. This is different from much of our life which is lived unconsciously. Most of the time we go about our day-to-day lives without being fully aware of what we are doing, why we are doing it and how we are feeling. In this way, we operate out of habits and conditioning.
When we are present we can be aware of our thoughts and feelings so that they become conscious. It is this ability to observe our thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations as they are happening that gives us the opportunity to watch life unfolding, rather than be caught up in the drama of it and in doing so we get to know ourselves better.
When you are being a witness to your life it is a bit like watching a movie. You can see your thoughts and feelings as they come and go just as you might watch a film on the screen. Being aware of your thoughts and sensations allows you to observe how you are reacting to life. This moment of awareness also offers us a pause, from which we can choose how to respond to whatever is happening around us. In this way, we are able to accept fully what is going on in the moment and then decide how we would like to respond. If we are unable to observe our thoughts and feelings we see them as reality, as fixed, rather than our perception of the world and we believe what they are telling us to be the absolute truth when it is really our own unique experience of the moment and each one of us might experience the same situation quite differently.
Jenny is angry that a car has cut in front of her, she can witness the anger, pause and then respond or she can get lost in the anger and shout. She can watch the anger or act it out, believing that she is right, that there is only her point of view. If she is able to experience the anger without reacting to it she can stay more balanced. This isn’t the same as not feeling, it’s just that rather than getting caught up in the emotion we have the space to observe it and release it. Then we can respond compassionately to the situation from a more balanced place.
Yoga is self-discovery…
Through the process of observing ourselves, yoga illuminates what it means to be human. We all feel many different things and think lots of different thoughts, that’s part of being human. Yoga uncovers our hidden depths. We begin to sense that there is this ‘me’ that is experiencing life and there is more than just this individual ‘me’. ‘I’ am not an island but a complex, inter-related expression of life. In this way, I can explore my connection to something bigger which we might call the universal or spirit.
Yoga is a system that allows us to get to know ourselves deeply on all levels: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and to see the connections. As we begin to experience the interconnection, we realise that body, mind, soul and the world are actually one thing expressing itself in many forms.
Yoga brings us to a place of fulfilment...
Through opening ourselves up, feeling more, observing more and allowing the complexity of life to unfold, we allow creativity to express itself through us. In this way, we can all sing our own tune and be part of the choir. We’re free to connect deeply with the universal and be a part of the creative unfolding of life that is expressing itself uniquely in each one of us every day.
Yoga as connection and self-care…
Yoga is an ancient wisdom that takes us on a journey of self-discovery where we can learn about our own unique individual experience of being in the world. It also guides us to the realisation that at the same time, we are all the same at the deepest level and in this way we are all connected. It teaches us that we are both individual and universal at one and the same time. This embodied wisdom helps me stay balanced as it allows me to keep coming back to this sense of connection to others and the world as a whole when I feel myself getting overwhelmed by emotions, circumstances or life experiences and through this greater Self-awareness I can respond to the world from a more centred, open and connected place making my life joyful and wondrous.