Yoga changed my life, for the better!

I had the absolute pleasure of watching the sunrise on the eve of the Summer Solstice (couldn’t make the actual day) with one of my closest friends and it was everything I could have wished for and more.

As we watched the changing colours of the sky as dawn broke and soaked up the – I have to say – healing rays of the sun as it rose, I was moved almost to tears. Of joy, gratitude, appreciation, love and awe – with the acknowledgment of that feeling of truly being in the moment.

The reality is that there was a huge part of me that couldn’t be bothered. I was regretting the choice to set my alarm for 3:15am, to drive to the lake.. should I have just stayed in bed? But I know that is my mind and that is not what I truly believed, I know that to have the experiences I want, to experience joy and pleasures I have to actually make the effort!

I don’t really share too much about my personal life here as it isn’t what you are here for (maybe), but day to day life for me can be very challenging. Like many of us I have experienced trauma and grief, I had unhealthy coping mechanisms, I have regrets, I am muddling my way through parenting teenagers who need additional support. I spent many years holding so much of my past down, ashamed and unsure of myself, numbing and masking, in my head and just getting by surviving but nowhere near thriving.

And then I "met" yoga and it all changed. Without yoga I know I would not be able to cope the way that I do, I would not have had the opportunity or the strength to sit with myself for even a moment or to consider meeting and accepting every part of myself, messy at it was (is!). Practicing yoga – all limbs – supports my life on and off the mat and has enriched my life in so many ways – without yoga I would not have got up in the middle of the night to experience and appreciate the beauty of the sunrise, that is for sure.

To say yoga changed me and my life is not an exaggeration. Yoga has, and continues to teach me so much about myself and my mind, body and the world around me.

Yoga has taught me to notice how my body is responding to people, to my environment and circumstances and shown me how to soften, release holding, find my feet, to ground. Yoga has taught me to feel safe in my body, to know its strengths and its limitations and to accept and appreciate my body as it is. 

Yoga has taught me to take a deep breath (or 5) to regulate and find calm, to find space and clarity in my mind. Yoga has taught me to pause (most of the time, I am still human) before reacting, speaking, spiralling.. 

I can now pause, come back to (and not be scared of) presence. Yoga has taught me to appreciate nature, beauty, my fellow human beings, to find gratitude and joy, to understand that we are all the same. wanting to love and be loved, to show me that I am part of a bigger picture, a higher consciousness. 

Yoga has taught me to not crave - for happiness or to avoid feeling sad - but has shown me that I (my true, unchanging self) am the constant, the baseline, the mountain. So when life inevitably offers experiences, challenges, highs, lows that sweep me up in their waves, that they pass through, move on and I can return back to my body, my breath, myself and find contentment and strength there, in that pause.

And I am hugely grateful for all of that and more.