I practice yoga as an extension of my desire to maintain balance in my life.
I now teach yoga with that same goal.
I have often said that I lived the bulk of my life without balance or boundaries. I was always on the go. Always moving. Always doing. No resting. No stillness. Even when I would take hot baths at night, to try and melt away the tension of the day, I was always working. Multi-tasking. This made for an anxious mind, and an exhausted, depleted body.
Some of it was unavoidable. It was the typical life of a working mom. It was the life of a busy executive. But as I continue to morph into a new chapter of my life, I am mindful of that former existence. I am grateful for having survived it, and I have come to honor the lessons it taught me. But I suffered physically and mentally having lived in a constant adrenaline-fueled state. I wish I could have told my younger self:
It’s okay to slow down.
It’s okay to stop multi-tasking.
It’s okay to take time for yourself.
I wish I had learned how to embrace stillness.
Now I try and incorporate stillness into my every day life. Starting with daily meditation, but yoga is a big part of it too. My yoga teaching is an extension of that philosophy as well.
As I tell my students, it is important to move your muscles and get your heart pumping. It’s not only good for your body, but it has the added benefit of being a great stress reliever too. This is known as the Yang part of the practice.
But it’s equally important to embrace the stillness. The deep stretching. This is known as the Yin part of the practice. They say it is in stillness where we find solutions to the problems that nag at us.
Whether or not you do yoga or meditate, I invite you to take a few moments for yourself. Find some quiet time starting today. See if there is tranquility and maybe even solutions to be found…
in the stillness.
