Emotion on the Mat

Hello! I've not posted in the blog for a while because I recently moved house but here I am! I want to write about something that has been on my mind for a while and something that we will touch upon in my women's class on Wednesday.

So often I see 'yoga inspiration' posts and yoga practitioners talking about how wonderful yoga is and how it helped them heal - it got me thinking and this is where I'm at....

It's true; it truly is wonderful and a powerful healing tool however I feel that what isn't communicated is that yoga will break you. Yes. And I'm not being 'negative', it's absolutely true - it will break you into all the little pieces that you glued together and masked with your resistances, the walls you put up and your coping mechanisms (helpful and unhelpful). The masks we put on are broken away and what's left is something raw, something true - your true Self. And there's no denying that this is a lifelong process but it's also a challenging one that ultimately affords us a better quality of life and to inhabit our true selves. Naturally, as we break down these resistances we can rebuild and find ourselves.

I feel that many teachers focus so much on the wonderful, positive emotions associated with yoga that when a student comes to the mat feeing completely and utterly dreadful, with many powerful emotions - that the student can feel disillusioned, discouraged and as though there is something wrong with them or that they're doing 'it' wrong - 'why am I not feeling amazing, like I'm walking on air?' 'Where is this wonderful feeling?!'...... 

 It's fine to feel angry on the mat. Frustrated. Tense. Grief. Sad. Depressed. Gutted. Jealous. That's absolutely okay. Be in the moment with that emotion. Breathe into it.

That is so much easier said than done! And I will be the first to admit that identifying these emotions and breathing into them is something that I struggle with deeply..

Maybe you leave your yoga class feeling worse than when you went in because something came up for you? That's fine. That's normal. Working to connect the mind-body-breath is powerful and can bring up strong emotions.

You do not need to hide your Self; you do not need to hide these emotions when you come to yoga. Be kinder to yourself. Come as you are. Be as you are. Breathe as you are.

"You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather."

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There is so much more on this subject to say but I'll leave it for another post. ;)

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