In the last blog I talked about starting a yoga practice. To reiterate, your yoga practice doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Maybe you start at home on a bath towel, maybe you find a studio and show up to a class, there are so many options, do what your heart is calling you to do.
On that note, I love the opportunity to talk with my students before/after class. Recently, I’ve had a few new students and as I listen to what they share, there often this element of self judgement. They aren’t as flexible as the person next to them, or they can’t do all of the poses, a super common phrase is “I’m not flexible”…I could go on and on…
The mindfulness component of yoga is meant to quite the mind. Have you ever noticed that you have this inner voice, this inner dialogue, and it almost never stops talking to you. From the moment you get up, you look in the mirror and you hear, “ugh, I look tired today. I wish I didn’t stay up so late last night”. Often, the voice tends to be critical or negative. As you read this, what is your inner voice saying to you right now. If you tell it to stop talking, will it?
Our inner dialogue can help us or hurt us. I invite you to be more aware today of your inner voice and what it’s telling you. Ok, back to yoga. So, my students have this inner voice as we all do, and my hope for them and all of you is to bring awareness to this voice and what it’s telling you. Once you find awareness you can build the skill of controlling that inner voice. YES!! You can actually train your inner voice to be positive, loving and stop making self judgements!! Through the practice of yoga and quieting my mind, I have learned to shift my inner voice to be more positive. I do want to point out – I use the term “practice” often. My goodness, this is incredibly accurate! I have to continually practice and i don’t know that I will EVER come to resolution. I do hope that my students will also come along on this journey in hopes of quieting that pesky inner voice and find less self judgement.
We all deserve to find inner peace through self acceptance.
namaste,
Alli