All Change

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Change!

It’s so easy isn’t it! Get fit in 15 minutes, lose weight in a few weeks, change your life in 3 easy steps.

Not really been my experience, has it yours?

So I won’t promise quick fixes, a beach ready body or a new you in 8 weeks. Yoga isn’t going to change who you are and nor should it.

Yoga can be different things to different people, there are so many different styles and spin offs available. It could be a way in to start being more active, a work out to keep your body strong and flexible, active recovery session for sports people or a way to calm the mind and uplift the mood or all of these things combined.

For me, it is a range of practices that help create more ease in my body. Allowing me to find more comfort in everyday life, by being stronger, more flexible, having better posture and supporting my joints more efficiently. All these things mean I can do more of the things I love (and recover from them more effectively!)

But the magic for me is how it helps me create more ease in my mind. Find moments of calm in otherwise hectic never ending busyness, find mental space to react less or differently to everyday situations and find the time to rest so that I am able to function better at work, with the people I care about and at play. Enable me to learn to recognise negative thought patterns and take a moment to step back and shift perspective.

Now don’t get me wrong I am still far from perfect as no doubt the people I know would tell you. I can be a workaholic, resist rest, pile pressure on myself to achieve, get stressed, be grumpy and think – “I-have-no-time-for-Yoga-I-have-too-many-important-things-to-do.” And do do do do!

But then something will shift and I will turn to the practices and life will be less hard around the edges, less everything is against me! At times of challenge and stress I have tools I can use to get through and small changes make all the difference.

This is why I have stuck with it over the last 13 years or so and why I will always be a student as well as a teacher. It’s about little steps, adding little practices bit by bit, not being perfect and being able to be (more) comfortable with that. Be kind to yourself.

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