Yoga is moving with the breath. What do you do when your body feels like it's being chased by a lion? (especially when the lion is just an email or slack notification…)
I spent the weekend deepening my understanding of these bodies we call home, and my love for this practice keeps deepening too. The first time I stepped onto a yoga mat, I was deeply anxious and actively destroying myself from the inside out. This suit of bone, tissue, and muscle did not feel like mine, did not feel like it fit, did not feel safe to be in. A practice that started as "what does my body look like?" quietly became "what does my body need?"
As we worked through the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the koshas, I was reminded not just that yoga works, but why it works
Our bodies have an intelligent design. So intelligent that when one part falls out of balance, another part compensates. Take posture. When the feet don't bear weight evenly, the knees bow in. When the knees bow in, the outer hips weaken. When the outer hips weaken, the low back tightens. Or connective tissue, which will grow to brace a joint when the surrounding muscles aren't doing their job. Everything is responding to everything else, all the time
What really landed for me was occupational stress. Not just stress from a job, but stress from circumstance, family dynamics, the environment, the state of the world. All of it puts a load on the nervous system. Most people are living in a constant low hum of fight or flight, so much so that downregulating can feel like a stressor itself. Living in that heightened state floods the body with hormones it was never meant to swim in 24/7, and over time the body will course correct, sometimes by attacking itself. Autoimmune flares, inflammation, an exhaustion that doesn't lift no matter how much you rest
So much of this lands on women
We have complex hormone systems. Female bodies move through cycles every month, then through entirely new seasons in pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, and beyond. Of course I was thinking of you as I sat in this training, the bodies carrying babies, the bodies softening into postpartum, the bodies tending little ones while still trying to come home to themselves
Yoga is a practice. Something you return to, not something you follow as a religion. A tool
We don't live in isolation. Everything is interconnected, and the same is true inside of us. We can't address the nervous system without addressing the fascia. We can't address the fascia without addressing the muscles. We can't address the muscles without addressing the joints. They all move together, always
Take a moment to notice the quality of your breath
In yoga, we speak of three layers, the koshas. The gross body, which is the physical. The subtle body, which is prana and mind. The causal body, which is the true self, the soul. All yoga really is, is moving with the breath to connect these layers, one to the next. You are the expert in your own body. My hope in sharing this is to invite you to get curious about where you are in this present moment, and where you need to tend
These teachings can feel elusive. The easiest way to demystify them is to find a moment of pause. It is really hard to hear what your body is communicating when you are constantly taking in information, answering emails, tending to little ones, scrolling, watching, doing
One thought has been sitting with me, and this past weekend hammered it in. Treat yourself the way you would treat a child. You wouldn't get angry at a child for not knowing what they didn't know, you would help them learn. You wouldn't get angry at a child for having big feelings, you would sit with them
So why is it that compassion and patience are so hard to extend to ourselves?