Missing Yoga!!

Missing Yoga!

Well, it has been more than a month since my last blog!  And I've been feeling very guilty about not updating my blog every six days as planned.  I do have a bit of an obsession when I set goals, and when I don't meet those goals of not writing a blog every six days, I feel very badly about myself!

The same feeling comes with yoga.  I try to practice every day, at least for an hour, at most for an hour and 40 minutes a day!  I wake up, drink some tea, and do some yoga.  Then I do my chores, go for a swim, come home, do more chores and do yoga.  Before I go to bed, I do more yoga!  Lately that's not been happening.

Other things in my life have come up that makes it impossible to follow my usual yoga/chore routine.  And in the process I'm extremely hard on myself if I can't get my yoga in my day!  I feel even worse if I can't get my chores along with work and yoga in on my day.  

Then I got to thinking....how does the practice of yoga teach me about being gentle with myself?  

Over the last three years of me faithfully putting in hours of yoga a week into my routine, I've learnt to be extremely gentle with my body. If I feel a muscle has been worked too much, or that my ankle is a bit tweaked, I work around those issues, and I become gentle with my body.  I have learnt to listen to my body, I've learnt that pain is not good when it comes to yoga, I've learned to love my body by backing off if something doesn't feel right, or if a pose feels too sore or pushes my body past my limit.  

The physical gentleness that I've learnt from yoga, has turned into an even better gentleness with my tendency to be obsessive compulsive with my life.  So, if I can't get those 100 minutes of yoga in a day (along with my mile swim), I have learnt to trust my body, to trust my mind and go with the flow.  I used to be very hard on myself, and I would feel very guilty if I didn't wake up and be active from sun-up to sun-down (with chores, work, yoga, swimming, more chores etc).  Now, I'm more gentle, realizing that if my mind and body needs a break from all of the activity, that I need that break.  In fact, if I've not practiced yoga for four days or so, I find that when I get back into my practice, I'm a lot stronger and a lot more "with it" during my yoga sessions.

My whole point in this blog is this:  Listen to your body, listen to your mind....respect your body and respect your mind.  If either your mind or body says to you to take a break, then do so......respect your mind and your emotions just as much as you would respect that injured muscle, or injured ankle or knee or hip!  

Yoga in my humble opinion, is about learning to know your body and your mind and your spirit, and learning to respect it when it says "no not today please".

Namaste