Yoga has always found me at times in my life where I felt torn.

It’s as if a chasm gets dug deep between who I actually am and who I think I am, and yoga has always been there to put the pieces back together. You could think of it like a giant puzzle.

Here we have life, this seemingly giant collage of moments full of flow, resistance, blockages, traumas, and healing all through the confusion of trying to come to terms with the truth of our being inside our vast inner worlds that many of us may neglect in search for something outside ourselves.

But this is where the beauty of yoga comes to play. I say play because to me, rolling out my yoga mat is an intentional act of creating space for my body to play. To move. To feel the rhythm and energy of life cast down my limbs and hear my breath exhale, releasing all of the suppressed tension my human body has stored for the last so many years of life.

Ahhhhh... That feeling of post-yoga bliss is something I’d love to guide the world towards feeling. It’s as real as the sunshine you feel on your skin when you walk through your yard at around 3 p.m. during the peak of a summer’s day. It’s as real as a kiss from a passionate lover of yours that maybe once was or is, but you always remember that ethereal presence of how it made you feel to be seen in their eyes and caressed in their gentle embrace. With yoga, however, you learn to do these gentle acts for yourself, with your most glorious body.

Movement becomes medicine. It becomes a dance of pure intention and playing with the space of the body and losing track of time happens naturally. I describe being in a flow state as truly being without noise in my head and a gracious awareness of my ability to breathe and hold space for myself to play and be seen as I am in the moment I need to feel seen. I can see myself clearly during yoga, for we are yoga. We are unity, and through asana practice, I believe we learn to embody a sense of presence and peace in complex poses because it proves to our mind what we are capable of doing with our bodies when we allow it to move as it needs to...

Yoga becomes the medium by which I can feel my authentic self under all the layers of shame, guilt, and self doubt that I feel...

And it simply feels good to be held in the arms of your own strength, your own flexibility, your own integrity no matter what form that comes in. It just feels good to be grounded during a yoga session where the mind stops buzzing and you can drop into your heart and really just unleash the divine feminine energy that lies within us all.

The healing power of yoga is unmatched in my book and I am learning no matter how far I get from my truth, I find a home through my yoga practice again and again, but through every ascension process, my relationship with yoga gets deeper. More intimate. Oh, it’s a beautiful love affair.

 

 

I write this story from the window seat of the train; the window is wide open and I can feel many stories to fill the spaces inside me.

There’s something pleasant to the senses about travelling from the train. A feeling of love emanates the environment around us that it ends up affecting us if we choose to welcome it’s healing benefits. A shift must occur in ourselves first if we are truly to be able to fully reap the benefits of this natural exchange from nature.

The shift is quiet and inwardly focused completely. No one can initiate the shift for us unless we choose to let ourselves feel the beauty and richness in being exactly where we are in the present. When we do allow ourselves the space to listen and surrender to the movement and noise of wherever we find ourselves in this world, we can see the beautiful flow of nature.

Ultimately, the beauty of nature is all around us, it just takes an intentional shift to be completely surrendered to the divine presence in front of our eyes to witness it deeply.

Well, the choice is individual. It’s unique. It’s subjective. All outcomes of being are synonymous; being aware of the love around us where we are, but the action and approach towards arriving to this space has everything to do with our distinct choices to intentionally shift our focus. If there is an answer you seek to this question, I am afraid I cannot give you that answer. Only you can really answer it for yourself when we can slow down enough to see. There’s a saying that says, “we go where our attention goes,” and in this case, that is definitely true.

Let’s say we are having a day where our body feels riddled with overwhelming thoughts and sensations, like stress and anxiety. If we arrive from a place of dis-ease, we may find it more difficult to shift into love because our minds are consumed with thoughts, and the way we think certainly does influence our perception of the world around us. However, even if we are riddled with tension and thoughts, we can find it comforting to shift into love more effortlessly if we can let go of the thoughts and come to a place of total surrender to everything outside of our current focus, which is (for this story) what is going on outside our windows.

Acceptance arises where we meet ourselves in a space where there is no sense of time, just a rich, meaningful fulfilment of being present with where we are at. I told you in the beginning here that I was sitting on the window seat of the train, and I can tell you, love is flowing through me in ways that fill myself with a divine trust in where I am in this world. A trust that is guiding me and my intuition through the day with love in my heart because I can feel the love of the earth’s heartbeat moving through my being as I continue to watch the world just be. It reminds me to slow down, not take life too seriously, and enjoy the moment for what it is, without needing to change a single thing about it.