Five Ways Yoga Changes your life
Yoga is so much more than bending limbs behind ears and competing in the trippy Yoga pants parade. Yoga is a secret blueprint on how to live life and how to live life well. Yoga is an ancient tradition with timeless relevance, it’s the answer to being the best possible you, to feeling the best you could possibly feel and performing at your top-most potential. For me Yoga has opened up a life of contentment, self-confidence, health, happiness, travel and all the worldly wisdom that comes from this.
Here are the top 5 ways that yoga can, and will change your life.
1. CONNECT MIND AND BODY
This may seem an esoteric concept to yogi newbies as you find yourself asking questions never asked before, such as: isn’t my mind and body already connected? Feel the sensations reach down into my what? Breathe into my back body… what the how? Apart from bringing your awareness to parts of the body you never knew you had, yoga cultivates overall mental, emotional, physical and energetic body awareness. When we think of the body we think only of the physical body, and when we think of the mind we think of a squishy grey ball in our skull, but this is far from the full picture.
Our body is a complex interconnection of meridians, nadis, tissues and emotions, and our mind is the centre which enables us to communicate with this all. Through the breath, yoga bridges the gap between our physical and nonphysical matter and breaks us free from a limited view of ourselves.
2. CULTIVATE AWARENESS
Once you get deeper into your practice, you’ll begin bringing this awareness into areas off your mat and beyond your body. You’ll start seeing and sensing so much more, starting with a heightened self-awareness. You’ll more easily identify your habits, reactions, worldviews and ways of interacting with those around you. Cultivating self-awareness is the most crucial first step in changing the character traits and conditioning holding you back in life.
Through this increased awareness, you’ll enjoy a renewed appreciation and understanding of the people in your life, you’ll find pleasure in simple scenarios and feel more connected to earth and all the incredible beings on it.
3. NURTURE SELF-LOVE
One of the greatest, and possibly hardest, lessons to learn is just to love yourself. We spend our lives searching for love in outside circumstances, in people and places and sensual experiences, meanwhile the only true love comes from within. Yoga teaches us to look inside, to see ourselves for who we truly are and to embrace our inner crazy- creases, cracks, crevices and all.
Once you find this inner centredness and contentment, magic will manifest in your life. If you honestly believe you deserve to live the best life you could possibly live, to truly be happy and healthy and to be loved - then voila, all you could ever wish for starts coming your way. The key to keeping hold of this self-believing and positive outlook is to keep nurturing self-love through your yoga practice.
4. FOSTER SELF-DISCIPLINE
Self-discipline isn’t only necessary when trying to keep out the cookie jar, self-discipline is a skill that transcends all areas of life. If you can control your mind - you can control your life and tailor it to be exactly what you want it to be. Too many of us are blissfully unaware of the monkey mind pulling the strings of our puppeteer existence. We think it’s us who makes decisions, who chooses what to say, what to do and how to feel - but it’s not. It’s our mind. And that’s not the same thing. As much as our mind is not a squishy grey ball in our skull, nor is it the centre of our intelligence and essence.
Although believed by many to be a super smart dude, Descartes got it wrong when he stated “I think therefore I am”. I want to be completely radical here and state the opposite. “I think therefore I am not.” The more we think, the less we know. To be completely in control of ourselves, our actions and reactions and the events we bring into our life, we have to be in control of our minds. Yoga teaches us to quieten the mind so to listen to our intuition.
5. CREATE A GOOD-VIBE TRIBE
If this doesn’t sound absolutely awesome already, the best bit is, through yoga, you will connect with a good-vibe tribe of like-hearted people. As soon as you start delving into the inner workings of your being, and opening yourself up to deeper connections and experiences with yourself and those around you, you’ll naturally attract people riding the same feel-good frequency. For me, yoga has been the vessel that’s transported me around the world. It’s brought me to tropical locations where i’ve played in paradise with soul sisters and brothers from all four conscious corners of the globe.