Four Things Yoga is Teaching Me

I’m quite new to the yoga world, but already I’ve learned so many valuable lessons. 

I am by no means a yoga expert, but in the past few months, I’ve found so much overlap between yoga and the mental wellness space that I had to share this all with you!

So, here are my four top learnings so far!

First, it takes a lot of strength to find softness.

Through the yoga sequences we've been doing, our yoga instructor often asks us to transition from one pose to another softly. We’re asked to transition without wobbling or clunking.

From a physical perspective, this actually does take a lot of core strength and a lot of overall strength, while being soft and precise with our body.

But this is something we can also apply to our mental and emotional well-being. Because it takes a lot of strength to be kind and soft with ourselves, too.

Second, is the Eye of the Storm. 

This was a teaching from my yoga studio a little while ago, where we talked about how whenever you look at a storm, the calmest part is in the centre.

Through this, I learned that during challenging times, if you can just find your centre and ground yourself - the storm doesn't seem as bad.

No matter what may be going on in your life, this has taught me that it doesn't seem as bad when you’re able to find that calm and peace.

Third, our bodies give us clues about what we are going through and how we are dealing with things. 

During practice, the yoga instructor will always be checking in on whether we have tightened our jaw, or if our breathing has changed. In yoga we practice poses and movements, yet the stillness we create allows us to have space to hear the body tell us when it is under stress

.This awareness is something that I've actually taken into my life now. So if I feel stressed about something at work, or my anxiety starts creeping in again, I’m a lot more mindful of looking at what my body is doing. I assess whether my jaw has tightened if my breathing has changed, and if my shoulders are tenser than usual.

Noticing these small changes is the first step to being able to change your emotional state, because as soon as you notice what’s going on in your body, you can actually then work to alleviate that.

And that brings me to the fourth teaching, which is that we actually have the power to manually relax and bring ourselves to a place of calm. 

Just like learning three, when you notice the stress and the tension in certain parts of your body, you can actually then work at calming down.

An example of this is if I'm going through a really difficult time where I'm very anxious and I feel stressed; if I can notice that my breathing has become really shallow and short, and my jaw has tightened, then I can actually do something about it.

I like to do a little exercise that releases my jaw and slows down my breathing, calming my body in the process. And I find this actually manually relaxes my mind incredibly well, too. 

But the key is that you have to notice that your body is under stress to begin changing it.

These are my top four learnings from yoga so far. Have you noticed any overlap between physical and mental wellness practices in your life? Let me know!

I would like to thank Derryn and the team at Yogic State for guiding me on my yoga journey. You can find out more about this awesome studio here.