What is Yoga and Why Do I Practice?
This is a very personal question and one that every yogi should consider. It is fluid and can change from day to day and even from moment to moment. What leads you to your mat initially may not be what you walk away with after your practice is over. It is important to know what no matter what leads you to practice the benefits of yoga are ever expanding into your life.
This was a question posed to me at my first day of my first teacher training. I share it as a jumping off point yet encourage you to define it for yourself.
To me yoga is the opportunity to distract my conscious mind enough to tap into my intuitive mind or my deeper yearnings. I expend physical energy allowing me to tap into an energy deeper within myself, getting quite and focusing on the more subtle guidance that exists within.
Yoga is my opportunity to breath, to breath long, to breath short, to focus on the skill of breath. Yoga is a moving meditation that distracts my monkey mind just enough to see things in my life with new light.
Yoga has been home for me over the last 9 years. I have lived in many different countries, and really began traveling alone, and yoga is what I have brought with me and where I have always found myself. It has been my community, my sanctuary, and my place to not only connect deeper with myself, but also the others that practice and the teaching community. No matter how long I go between practices, my mat always welcomes me home, with open arms and continuous nurturing.
Yoga allows me to release emotions that I am usually not aware I am holding onto, it allows me to be flexible and flowing and I carry that into my day. As I tap into the pain that is within my body through different asanas I gain insights into where the pain originated. I am aware that pain is not a physical sensation that stops on the surface, it is a necessary healing process that is continuously calling to us. The beauty of pain is that we will never escape it, thus yoga will forever serve a purpose in opening and releasing all emotion.
No two practices are the same, which deepens my understanding of non attachment, attachment being the direct cause of all suffering. I practice to continue to evolve my relationship with my self, because I believe that evolution is change and I am an ever changing being.
But most of all, yoga is the quality time I offer to myself, how I show myself love, devotion, strength and worthiness. It is through yoga that my love for myself deepens, and as a result so does the love I have for the world around me.
To Me Yoga Is A True Form of Love.
What is yoga to you?
