I’ve been practicing yoga for about 6 months now and have been so blessed by this practice. Sometimes, while practicing I gain deep insights as though the universe speaks truth into my heart. I started practicing mainly for the spiritual aspect. I had an experience where I felt myself drawn nearer to God and had heard that yoga could be a deeply spiritual exercise. At that time, I’d had also wanted to start working out again as I was in a deep funk and needed to surround myself with positivity. I wanted to fill myself up with everything that made me feel good and would not have any long-term adverse impact to my life. Having been a gym rat at different parts of my life, I knew exercise always managed to lift my spirits. Yoga not only does this, but also acts as a wise teacher.
Today while practicing, I had one of those deeply insightful practices where I was blessed with nuggets of realization and then had to focus on keeping them so that I could write about them. Half-moon is normally a pose that I tend to struggle with.
Half Moon Pose
Today I was able to do it and I realized what my problem was. As I was launching from “warrior two” into “half moon,” I heard my inner voice say, “Trust yourself.” I realized a lot of yoga’s balance postures are teaching me how to do this.
I’ve seen a lot of growth this year and this is one of the areas that I’m still working on growing in but have come a long way from where I was. I was the girl who was so out of tune with herself that I literally wouldn’t recognize something was bothering me until I went into an all-out rage and lost control of myself. I was the girl who couldn’t articulate what I wanted because I truly had no idea. I was the girl who was full of issues but hid it well with my perfectionism and intelligence. Not trusting myself allowed me to stay on a career path that I have never found joy in partly because I didn’t trust that I would be worth hiring for anything else. Not trusting myself has allowed me to be content with the status quo. Not trusting myself has kept me from asking myself what I really want out of this life that has been gifted to me. Not trusting myself has kept me boxed in. I now see that I’ve never trusted myself before and so this is a fairly new experience for me.
When I pushed myself into half-moon today, I realized that this problem permeated my half-moon so deeply that I always found myself completely wobbly and fearful of falling sideways, falling backward, or just simply falling out of the pose. Throughout my life, I’ve had different people who believed more in me than I did in myself tell me, “You don’t give yourself enough credit.” I always laughed this off and thought, “Yeah… ok buddy.” They were right. I didn’t trust my skills. I didn’t trust my abilities. I didn’t trust my innate worth as a human being. Today, I held half-moon, well balanced and strong. I allowed myself to trust in myself and saw the physical results of going all in and trusting my body to support me fully in that pose and it was really beautiful. It made me realized that I need to do this more often in life with non-physical aspects of my world.
For example, I’ve been bouncing the idea around of becoming a full-time writer around for quite some time and haven’t taken the leap, but today half-moon made me ponder for a moment what it would be like if I were to fully trust in my talent as a writer and go all in. Would I find work? Would I be successful? Would people read my work? Would they like my work? Could I make money from my art? I feel its time to stop doubting and start trusting and see what happens. Maybe it will turn out like half-moon… a little shaky for the first 6 months and then with practice become stable and well balanced.
It seems that any change in life is mirrored in the art of yoga, especially the balance postures. We start out a spectator of a new pose. We watch the instructor. We watch those around us to see how they are doing it. We shyly attempt to mirror what they are doing. We slowly inch into the posture, often shaking or wobbling, sometimes stable, but with incorrect form. Then over time, with practice and cultivating awareness, we begin to see room for improvement in the posture. The instructor reminds us to drop our shoulders, align our hips, or elongate our tailbone. If we’re open to the suggestions, we make the adjustments and discover that we weren’t in the correct posture at all when we’d started. We realize the new alignment feels slightly uncomfortable and we must fight back the old comfortable habits. The more we practice getting it right, the more graceful we become. Less shaky, more stable, less weakness, more strength, less shy, heightened boldness, less nervous, more confident, less anxious, more calmness… we watch ourselves evolve in our physical practice, while at the same time seeing the evolution in our lives off the mat if we’re doing it right.
Yoga is not just a physical practice, but a newer and deeper way of life. It’s a physical manifestation of ancient truth. When put together with spiritual teachings, we begin to see our lives evolve in a more intentional manner. This year has been a pivotal year for me in the way of spiritual growth and transformation. I feel in a lot of ways like a new person and I have my yoga, in part, to thank.