6 weeks ago, I considered yoga to be something I did on ‘special occasions’ – health retreats, holidays, the odd class to catch up with a girlfriend…but did I consider myself someone who ‘did yoga’? Probably not.
One morning while having brunch with a very gorgeous friend of mine, who also happens to be a yoga teacher, I decided to sign up for the Modern Yogi Project at Power Living. It sounded like fun and just what I needed! 6 weeks of yoga with a commitment to doing 6 classes per week, daily meditation and a weekly meeting to help keep you accountable and on track. On the back of training for a marathon, starting my new practice and a hectic social calendar, my body, mind and soul were all starting to get a bit tired. Taking some time to restore myself with a bit bending and stretching was surely just what the naturopath ordered!
My first class….
Whenever I start something brand new, I always seem to go through the same thing. I can work myself up into such a state of (almost) panic that sometimes I can feel physically sick. “What if no one talks to me? What if I can’t do it? What am I supposed to wear? What if I wear the wrong thing? Do I take a bag? Where will I park my car? What if I’m there too early? What if I’m late? What if I do it wrong?….” This ridiculous chitter-chatter that whirls through my head at lightening pace creates a level of anxiety that I’ve come to term “the storm before the calm”. Once I’ve been there and removed the levels of unknown I’m fine; I just tend to let myself get a bit dramatic in the process! One day I would like to be able to give this drama the flick all together and dive fearlessly into new tasks and challenges, but for now I’m just getting better at recognising and processing so I can just get on with it.
I went through the ‘usual’ process in the lead up to my first class. I’d already looked at the timetable and worked out what 6 classes I was committing to. I was planning on doing a mix: 1 basic, 2 yin classes and 3 vineyasa. When I arrived, another class had just finished. There was lots of smiling, happy people and the phrase ‘such an amazing class’ was being bantered about a lot. I didn’t really have any expectations, but surely this was a good sign…right?
At the end of my first week, I remember sitting and reflecting on how I found it. Having been a dancer, I didn’t find it as challenging as some, but would I have said it was ‘amazing’? Was I suddenly in love with yoga? Did I think it was going to change my life? No, not really. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it – I did, but did I get that same buzz I got from conquering a big hill mid-run? Nope. And did I feel like all those people I saw pouring out of the class before mine? I don’t think so.
Creating a context…
I’d just signed up for 6 weeks of yoga; I may as well make the most of it even if I did feel a bit ‘meh’ about it. The context that I decided to create for my yoga project was that yoga and I were ‘dating’; we were just getting to know each other. I was open to the possibility of love blossoming, but I wasn’t holding my breath, I wasn’t going to force it and if it didn’t work out, no big deal – at least I’d tried.
Then slowly, slowly as one week rolled into the next, I started to get the hang of it. Yoga and I had moved from coffee dates to dinner dates – it was starting to get serious and I had the Lulu Lemon outfits to prove it. I noticed that I could now co-ordinate my breath with my movements, I actually knew the difference between ‘cobra’ and ‘upward facing dog’ and I even found myself saying ‘that was an amazing class’. I still have a very long way to go before I’d consider myself a ‘yogi’, but I think it’s safe to say yoga and I are now in a permanet relationship, albeit one that has moved into the friends zone. I’m not prepared to make it mutually exclusive; I’d end up cheating with running, cycling or swimming, but I think that yoga and I will continue to hang out 2 – 3 times per week and really enjoy each others company ;)
Throughout this process (and on reflection) I was surprised at all the lessons I was being present with. Here are the 3 most profound ones and how I have been applying them in my life off the mat.
You’ve got to breath!
To my surprise, yoga is much more than bending and stretching. To be perfectly honest, the whole breathing thing took a lot more for me to get used to than I thought. How hard could it be? We breathe thousands of times a day. It isn’t until you actually stop however, that you really realise you may not be breathing as well or as deeply as you could. You’re doing enough, but you’re not really opening up and expanding.
Where else in your life do you think this could be happening for you? Where are you just taking the small, superficial, barely there types of breaths? Where do you want to really start expanding? And even if you’re not sure – that’s ok too. Just remember to breathe deeply in all areas of your life.
When I became a sticky-beak, I’d lose my flow
Holding some of the poses can be a real challenge. It takes a significant amount of focus to either a) not fall flat on your face, b) not give in to the struggle or c) not end up doing a combination of both. One of the things I became acutely aware of during my yoga practice is the second I started wondering what everyone else was doing, I’d lose the plot. I’d either lose my balance, my mind would start chatting or I’d end up out of my flow.
How often does this happen in our lives? LOTS! We start comparing ourselves to those around us, getting so caught up in where we ‘should’ be that we don’t even realise where we actually are any more. Come back to your centre. Refocus your attention on you and what you want from your life and watch how easily your balance and flow returns.
Do what feels right rather than what looks right
In the first few week of my project, I was so eager to get each of the poses ‘right’ that I forgot to actually ‘feel’. This lesson for me was often combined with the one above as I found myself looking around trying to make sure I was fitting in with everyone else. I remember saying in passing to my yoga-teacher friend that I don’t think my poses look like everyone else’s. She replied ‘they are not supposed to. Just go with what feels right for you and your body’. It was like a light bulb went on in – of course! How had I managed to not see it?
We are all on our own journey, on our own path and all we need to do is what feels right for us. So often we spend so much of our energy trying to make what we do fit; we want it to look right, we want to look good. We move along ticking boxes, thinking that each box we tick should get us a step closer to ‘making it’, whatever that actually is. From that point forward, my whole experience of yoga changed. It was almost like I was doing yoga on my terms, in my own kind of way. I stopped trying to do things perfectly and instead, just ‘did’ without the judgment. I learned that being real was more empowering that being right, and right for me was in and of itself, a unique and special thing.
