Welcome to Yoga - Healthy Body, Healthy Life!

Hey you, I’m glad you are here! I am so excited to share all this amazing information with you. It has had a huge impact on my life and now it can have a huge impact on yours as well. Below is an introduction to mindfulness, which is the foundation of our course and yoga practices.

Learning to live mindfully

So many of us spend our lives lost in thought, which has us mindlessly doing tasks. For example, when we wake up in the morning most of us roll out of bed, get dressed, brush our teeth, and move through a routine all the while we are thinking about a task that will occur hours later in our day. I think you might know what I am talking about. Even now you are likely skimming through the reading, if you’re not skimming, nice work! If you are, slow down, ask you self why I felt the need to skim, then let it go and start reading mindfully.

Why live Mindfully?

To have a healthy body we need to be aware of it's needs to tend to them. Mindfulness allows us to tune into our bodies become increasingly aware of our sensations. That awareness allows us to take action in regards to these sensations. For example, most of us are aware of the feeling of being tired. When you are aware of being tired, you then can make a choice to go sleep. Imagine a world where you were so aware and mindful of your body that your health sky rocketed? This could mean a optimized life because of an strong immune system. Mindfulness for a healthy mind, this is were it gets fascinating. Mindful people have increased brain function, lower stress, less depressive symptoms, and increase their grey matter in the prefrontal cortex. What does that even mean, increased grey matter? It is the part of the brain responsible for memory, happiness and highly complex human emotions. WOW! That sounds like a healthy body, healthy mind, which means healthy life!

What does living mindfully even mean?

Mindlessness is the source most of our suffering. To be able to have a healthy body and live a healthy life we need to have awareness to notice a choice and mindfulness to make a healthy choice. This is true of small and large choices. Being mindful is doing what ever you are doing with your whole being. Thich Nhat Hahn describes his time in a monastery in some of his writings. In one he talks about his first lesson from his teacher. Excitedly he enters the room in which his teacher sat, his teacher gave him a task and even more excitedly he scurried off, the door swung open, the door swung shut. Moments later he was called back into the room. His teacher said you must do what ever you are doing with your whole being. When you are walking, be fully present while walking; when you reach the door, stop, then open the door mindfully; and once you have walked through, close the door mindfully. Do what ever you are doing with your whole being. That is not easy for most of us to do. I know for me when my alarm goes off in the morning I roll over, hit which ever button will make it stop first and then begins the first battle in my mind, sleep in? Wake up? I don’t work in the mornings, so it is a genuine choice. How brutal is that? The first thing my mind thinks about is an internal argument. Mindlessness is the source of all suffering. It definitely is in this example! Instead we should all wake up, hear the alarm, be aware of rolling over and choosing the press the appropriate button. When we wake we should peel back the covers mindfully. If we are mindful it will be interesting. You can feel the weight lifting off of your body, perhaps the breeze of a fan, maybe your body will stay soft and relaxed some mornings, maybe it will tense up from being chilled. Wow, all that and we were just mindful during one activity? Imagine if that was the start of your day and you kept a mindful awareness with you all day long.  Now, think about some of the “Bad” habits you have… sleeping in? Junk food? If you were so in-tune with your body and its need you could make choices that better fulfill those needs instead of convenient or easy choices. For example, feeling tired and wanting to make a mindless convenient choice to have a energy drink, with mindfulness, perhaps you may choose a healthier alternative such as washing your face and brewing a black tea with some lemon. The energy drink is not healthy for the body and will have a crash, which will eventually cause some sort of suffering. Where as when you are mindful you can make a choice that is healthy for your body!

What does this have to do with our yoga practice?

Well, sometimes introducing mindfulness into your whole day right away seems like an easy peasy lemon squeezy idea. It can be challenging and discouraging when you fall short. Our yoga practice is a reflection of our life and a practice for our life. Sounds cheesy, I know. Stay with me here. There was a time when I hated the pose 'straddle forward fold'. Know the one? Sitting on the floor with your legs wide and trying to fold towards the ground in front of you. I used to struggle to even sit up like that. I had to have my hands on the floor behind me to even be able to slightly straighten my spine. So I set out to work on that pose. I found my self frustrated all the time! I would enter the pose and instantly feel anxious. So anxious I wanted to be sick. On top of that my mind kept wandering away. Eventually… by eventually I mean 6 weeks into this I realized that my body and mind were trying to communicate with me, and I was to blind to see it. The mind kept wandering to the same topic, over and over again, it was the topic that was the source of my anxiety. When I had first ever felt that anxiety, I was seated in a position that my hips were tense, my inner leg lines especially fired up (I often sit with my legs crossed and actively squeeze them together when I am stressed with out being conscious of it). Once I had worked through the anxiety mentally and emotionally while seated in a straddle forward fold, I literally heard a loud POP sound and was able to fold to the floor comfortably and anxiety free. If we can be mindful in our bodies during our yoga practice, we can learn lots about ourselves, some times they are revelations like the story above, other times, you’ll just notice you have been holding tension in a particular area. The yoga practice is like a training ground for life. When you do work on the body it affects the mind and the breath. When you do work on the breath it affects the body and the mind, they are all connected at all times. So, to maintain a healthy life you must maintain a healthy body and vice versa. The best way to find a healthy lifestyle that you will actually keep up with, and not just drop like a fad, is by listening to your body and becoming mindful. Mindfulness gives you the awareness, awareness gives you choice. The more often you practice being mindful, the easier and more natural it becomes. Let your yoga practice be the place where you being to be mindful.

Mindfulness, awareness, choice, what??

Let me walk you through a simple example. This one time I was at a social gathering that was hosted by friends and family of my friends whom I was still getting to know. I was extremely exhausted from traveling and having allergic reactions. I wasn’t my usual bubbly self. In fact it took a lot of effort to even smile. I was feeling self conscious about not being myself and what if I don’t make a good impression because of this and so the spiral began. I would begin to think rant in my own head and then find my self snacking. This happened three or four times before I realized that I was snacking to avoid speaking, and it was a crutch for my discomfort. That was the awareness. Then I had a choice, go back to mindlessly eating to avoid how I feel or resist the urge to get up and get more fruit and try to join in the conversation. I chose to join in the conversation, soon enough I felt the pressure slip away and noticed my shoulders relaxing, my core softening. This whole time my body was tensed up too! I created new friendships that improved my life. If I wasn’t mindful, this choice wouldn’t of been there! Mindfulness gives you awareness, once you have awareness you can take action and make healthy choices, for the body, mind, and soul. It inst always big things it can be small for example; I think we are all aware of the working life shoulders, you know, when you have a stressful day and when you come home you realize you are wearing your shoulders like a pair of earrings and must really focus to let them relax. When we are mindless we don’t relax them or let them go, we develop knots in our necks, shoulders, and wrists. Suddenly or not so suddenly we have chronic pain. Suffering all due to mindlessness. If we were living a mindful life we could of had the choice to relax our shoulders, let go of tension and not developed knots.

Convinced yet?

Let’s get started!