When Yoga Becomes A Mask

Your yoga practice is a conversation with your nervous system. It’s an intimate talk with your emotional body and letting it be felt somewhere safe. 

That safe place is your reality.

You, where you are. 

This is the place where those things happen because you are present. 

You are awake but unconscious most of the day. Practicing what you did yesterday, exactly as you did the day before. You woke up with the same list of gripes and grudges and held onto them tightly because who knows what would happen if you let them go. Letting go hasn’t even been an option for many of us because you have to be present to see the suffering, and most of us don't, or won't, make space for that. We're too busy trying to control outcomes.

If you're in your head dreaming a way out of here, your suffering is great. Even if you are dreaming the brightest dreams in the sky, if you're not where you are, you are suffering. Your heart is calling you back home to see all the dreams you want, are actually feelings. Feelings you want to feel and your externalizing them onto an outcome.

Those feelings, you can access them right now. They are within you, but you create a wall of illusion around it like it's unavailable. 

It is always available.

And there will always be an excuse why you can't if you are stuck to your past identity. 

You can decide to keep the mask during yoga, focusing on what is or isn’t working, or take that moment to see the beauty of what is. There will never be another moment like this. 

Every practice you choose who you are, how you show up, and what you receive is in union with that.

As a teacher, I have felt the driving force of being liked and altering who I am and what I teach to feel included and chosen. The exact opposite is happening no matter the outcome. No matter how many students come. 

If I am not choosing myself. My voice. My teaching. I am experiencing self abandonment worse than that of anyone else. This creates space and distance from your heart - the true epicenter of your being (no matter how corny), and fills your mind with thoughts of lack and doubt. 

Doing this as a student, we unconsciously tell ourselves we are not enough when we turn the volume up or down on who we are. 

Let go of the fact that who you are now, or who you were yesterday, needs to stay the exact same. This is a suffering. Do what your heart wants you to do. Don’t be shy because you’ve had it broken a time or two. Be brave and it will reward you tenfold. 

Identity is rooted in the past. If you are excited for a new future, you’ll have to find something new about yourself to create it. 

More of yesterday, is what your body wants. Safety and security. 

More of now, is what your true Self wants. Your energy body is far too understudied to look for research but when you want answers, look inside yourself and it won’t let you down. You don’t need a published study to access the anecdotal wisdom at your fingertips. 

Practice presence to remove the fear around old stories. 

Do yoga.