Have you ever sat down and really looked at your day?

Most of us fall into life and then let it carry us from pillar to post.

This has prompted me to ask the question...

How does yoga bring balance to one's life?

At first I found this question a tough one to answer, without sounding like a text book but after a little reflection, everything became clear.

When I am driving to work each day and I am sitting in a conveyor belt of cars, all bumper to bumper with each other, I often reflect on how the world and the way we choose to live our lives is evolving.

Many of us have been conditioned to expect and are expected to, live our lives with the aim of attaining a certain level of material gain and commercial success. Unless we have achieved this, we may feel as though we have failed. There is nothing at all wrong with wanting to or indeed, living a wealthy and comfortable existence, where we have worked hard and achieved a lot, but often we become blinkered into thinking that that is all life is about. 
More often than not we have begun to neglect our mental and physical health for the pursuit of the goal of our perceived success. We can also neglect the things in life that really matter, like the smiles on our children’s faces when we say we’ll pick them up from school and knowing that we can be there for the ones we love. 
The world today is unforgiving and extremely demanding and it brings with it many stresses. It also creates an element of competition and separation between people. We have stopped working together and have started to protect ourselves from others. All these things create tension, anxiety and fear in our lives. Fear of failure, fear of losing the things we have gained and fear of not being good enough. We find it hard to switch off and bring our attention to the more spiritual things in life. We have lost our true ‘selves’ to human conditioning.

How many of us notice how fluffy the clouds are, or how green the grass is during our drive in to work. We forget to notice the stars in the sky and the rustle of the leaves on the trees as the breeze touches them. We are missing out on so much because our minds are on other things. 
So many of us may not be living the lives that we want to live because we feel we should be doing something that was suggested to us in childhood. We see how others are living and feel we have to fit in, even if it is not where we are as a person. This can lead to disharmony between the mind and the body. We can feel unfulfilled, depressed and like life has no purpose other than to slog away for nothing. This often stems from a lack of confidence, a lack of understanding of whom we really are and a fear of branching into the unknown.

So what influence does yoga have on all this?

Yoga teaches you to both know yourself and trust yourself. For example when we start to practice a difficult asana such as headstand, we feel a certain level of fear. Once we have mastered that asana, our confidence is increased, we feel empowered and we learn to trust ourselves. We also learn to respect and trust our body. As we practice more yoga, our health improves and we feel stronger, calmer and more in control, although we do not have to be in control. This is because our confidence and trust has grown.
When I practice yoga, my whole world slows down. I start to feel ‘me’. My attention is brought back to where I am at this moment and as a consequence, all of the fast track thoughts about tomorrow and next week and what happened last night, start to disappear. By the end of the session I feel light, calm and relaxed. I would love to stay in the peace for ever. I learn to look at the world around me and remember we are all part of one existence.

Yoga starts with you, your body, your mind and your spirit, and when practiced regularly, brings with it increased physical, mental and spiritual awareness.

Yoga Postures

When practicing asanas we can choose to work with them in two ways. We can practice them dynamically, were we perform them repeatedly in quick succession or we can practice them intensely where we hold each posture for a period of time.

When practiced dynamically we warm the body and build strength in the muscles thus preparing it for holding the posture if we chose to do so. There is an increase in the heart rate and the body is cleansed and energised. As the body heats up circulation is improved and we build up a sweat. The sympathetic nervous system is stimulated into action empowering us and increasing our energy.

Asanas, when held, bring many benefits. We are rooted in the moment. Our consciousness is brought into the ‘self’. Ensuring we are extending evenly between both sides and from front to back, this brings the benefit of that posture evenly throughout the whole body. We learn to recognise when our muscles are tense.

The Breath

The breath is said to be the most important part of any yoga practice. Focusing on the breath helps us to learn to control the breath and therefore the mind. The fight or flight response is needed when we have to run away from an attacker but when we are stressed for a long period of time it begins to be harmful to our health, our muscles tense up and our sleep is interrupted. By consciously controlling the breath, we can physically bring the parasympathetic nervous system into play, enabling us to relax and heal. 
Pranayama breathing techniques, such as alternate nostril breathing help bring balance to the body.

Meditation

Meditation can be used as a way of clearing the mind and connecting to the self. By getting to know who ‘I am’ people begin to free themselves from stress and self doubt. Meditation can then be used to move us forward in life by allowing us to discover what we really want and then empowering us by giving us the confidence to make the necessary changes. It helps us to realise our full potential and our dreams.

Relaxation

Some of the more gentle asanas, such as Shavasana, or pose of the child, bring a sense of peace and tranquillity when we practice them. Our focus is on relaxation rather than to energise. Yoga sessions should start with some form of relaxation to enable a sense of awareness to move towards the 'Self'. We hold tension in our muscles and are sometimes unaware, until we try to relax, just how tense we actually are.

For me yoga is a god send and I know my life would have been so different had I not started on the path 20 something years ago!

Why not join me at a class soon!