Yoga isn’t just an exercise regime that you do on your mat once a week, once a day or whenever you can. Yoga is a lifestyle science, it’s not a religion, it’s not about worshipping an almighty and repenting for sins, it’s not about doing things “right” or “wrong”. Yoga is a guidance of how to live a healthy life that leaves you more at peace with the world than when you started.
In the ancient texts enlightenment is talked about, this can sound very religious to some, out-there to others but for me I understand it as being at peace with all that is in yourself and around you.
Enlightenment to me is when you can truely love every part of yourself even the hard bits, where you understand fully who you are and have come to terms with this and where you are detached from the external wants, needs and desires that modern society places on you.
Yoga for many starts on the mat but what we learn on the mat or meditation cushion is then something we take into our everyday lives, and slowly through practice and patience our awareness shifts, our understanding alters and not only does our body become stronger more flexible and open but our mind let’s go of the things we try so desperately to hold onto, the patterns of behaviour and thoughts that we return to daily that don’t necessarily help us through life. And practice by practice breath by breath we return back to our true selves, the place where we realise we are all the same, the animals, the plants, the different humans on this earth and it is here that yoga becomes our lives.
This weekend take your yoga into your life, slow down, breathe, become aware of your surroundings, be present, give others your full attention, listen, let go of the commercial and reconnect with the natural, the humanness that’s around. Be a yogi.
Have a beautiful bank holiday