Despite yoga being widely acclaimed as both a fun workout and a way to release stress, I’ll be the first to admit that for a long time, I struggled to understand the hype. I didn’t necessarily dislike it or anything, it just hadn’t really clicked with me. However, over the past several months, I have been incorporating yoga into my workouts and my opinion on yoga has absolutely changed since then. For me, yoga has been more than just a workout or a way to relax. It has been incredibly valuable in healing my relationship with myself. Here are some things I have learned from doing yoga.
Fitness can be fun and satisfying.
Fitness has always been an important part of my life, but admittedly, I have not always had the best relationship with it. In the past, I have felt a lot of pressure around fitness, either from external sources or just from myself. I have struggled to view fitness as something I truly do for myself and that doesn’t need to have stress surrounding it. Yoga has helped me change my perspective and escape some of that pressure. I have come to see yoga as a quiet time during my day where I get to take a break from the world and focus on developing my balance, flexibility, and ability to move through the different poses.
I feel a sense of pride in what I can do and what I’m learning.
Alongside releasing the sense of pressure and stress regarding fitness, yoga has also given me an opportunity to take pride in my fitness journey and in the growth I’m seeing. I have become more flexible since taking up yoga and I have noticed the different poses starting to feel more natural and easier to move into.
I can trust myself and my body.
One of the most challenging things for me when I first started yoga was being able to trust my body. There are many poses that require a sense of trust that you aren’t going to fall out of the pose. You have to learn to rely on yourself to stay balanced, even when it feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar. In the past, I have struggled to trust myself, since I viewed fitness as something I had to force my body to do, rather than something my body is able to contribute to effortlessly. However, practicing yoga has helped me build up that sense of trust and confidence, and use it to improve at specific poses and yoga as a whole.
I absolutely feel that I still have a lot to learn about yoga, and that I still have a lot of work to do in order to heal my relationship with both fitness and myself. Yoga has already taught me a lot about myself, and has provided a great chance to reflect, and I am very excited to continue this journey.