Choosing Yoga…

After experiencing a series of life altering events from a bad break up, unpaid medical leave from work, financial difficulties and extreme (unintentional) weight loss over a four month time span, I was STREEEESSED OUT to say the least. During the time of this very chaotic period in my life, I was receiving treatment for physical therapy per the request of my PCP to help relieve severe tension build up in my shoulders (this is where I carry a lot of my stress, for others it may be the lower back and some even get debilitating migraines, yikes!). Due to my condition, my physical therapist recommended that I try yoga to help alleviate this tension as well as to increase my mobility as that was also limited. I couldn’t fully raise my arms above my head without feeling discomfort which literally brought me to tears. Not so much the pain, but, I couldn’t believe the toll that stress had imposed on my body. Although I’d been introduced to yoga while in undergrad many years prior to this, I never explored it beyond needing to engage for the sake of meeting my graduation requirements.

Given my condition, I was willing to try anything and I begin to search countless yoga and meditation videos on Youtube to find beginner friendly sequences to follow along with. Yes! It was that simple. Every morning I’d wake up, move the coffee table from the middle of the floor, lay out my yoga mat and get it poppin! Almost immediately after every video, I’d feel a huge sense of relief. I soon realized that there was literally a yoga routine for EVERYTHING! I would find videos for anxiety, insomnia, chakra attunement and even yoga for hangovers! The more I practiced, the more flexible I became. It was in lizard pose that I realized that I was on to something and needed to share this practice with other folks, who like me, could use a holistic approach to healing and connecting with the mind, body and spirit.

For me, yoga has been a saving grace. Not just by flowing through the asanas (body postures), but by striving to live a life that embraces all 8 limbs of yoga. Did you know there are EIGHT limbs (branches) of yoga? I won’t cover all of that in this post, but I highlighted that to say that yoga goes beyond what many are accustomed to seeing due to the westernization of the yoga practice. In fact, yoga teaches us how to treat ourselves and others. It teaches us to welcome transformative change through recognizing how we show up in the world by being mindful with our words, observing and/or focusing our thoughts through meditation, mindfully working with the breath as a tool for calming the mind, healing the body and much more. It is my hopes that my yoga journey inspires you to start yours, pick up where you left off, or to keep going strong. You deserve it. Stay blessed.