Why yoga?

Since my training began last October, many folks ask what is it about yoga that you like so much? Which led me to explore that question for myself and thought it might be good to share.

My personality is of the type of independence and resistance. Nobody could tell me what to do. In fact, if someone told me what to do, I would do the opposite.  If I was told I could not do it, I would despite the fact if it was even was something I wanted to do. 

As I grew older, my independence created many opportunities to expand in my environmental career, allowed me to gain great lengths in my athletic adventures, and led me to my husband who honors and understands that part of my personality.

However, my independence also brought separation and an attitude of the need to be better; constantly striving to be different and unique and pushing so hard to better myself at everything I did.  If I did not do this, I was nobody, a failure. This is how strong this part of my personality is.

Enter yoga. Of course, like most, my yoga practice began because my body was sore and very unhappy.  Long hours of running on pavement, created so much tension in my hips I would walk with a sight limp, my neck and shoulders where so tight I couldn’t look over my right or left shoulders.  At first, I thought yoga would provide me with the tools to keep pushing through, to be bigger, better and stronger, and it did.

Then my practice grew into something more. Sometime, somehow, somewhere during my mat practice, my perspective changed. I began to listen to myself.

The biggest change in my life came when my focus switched from self-improvement to self-discovery. I was perfect the way I was, no need to strive to be any other way, the problem was I just did not see it nor understand it.

Why yoga? What I love about yoga is it allows me to keep my independence. Nobody told me do this, do that; believe this, believe that; you are this; you are that. Instead yoga said ‘listen to your own experience’. It is your own direct experience through which you learn and develop your depth of character. Nobody, NOBODY, will ever have the same exact experiences as you. It is up to you to know yourself, to trust yourself, to know what is good and bad for you. 

There is an opportunity to learn about your self in every moment of every day. The trick is to be present in the moment to be open to that experience. For example, how often do you find yourself missing out on part of a conversation because you began to get lost in your own thoughts, going off on a mental tangent? That is you not being present, missing out on that present experience.

So I do yoga, I allow myself to be present in my practice and it carries with me through the rest of the day. If you give yourself an opportunity to learn from each experience, then there will be no other option but to grow in depth and character, to really understand who you are, not who others perceive you to be.

Explore the experiment, the experiment of the self discovery of you. Let yoga be an opportunity to discover who you are, for your own self. Yoga will never tell you who you are, or what to believe in. It is only a tool, a tool to figure it out for yourself.  That is why I love yoga.

Namaste.