It’s practiced meticulously with heightened body awareness and synchronized breath. You approach the practice knowing the task ahead of you. You regulate your energy to last throughout the period. You do it with utmost gratitude to your beautiful body. You are made aware of the imbalances of your anatomy. Weak points and things you need to pay more attention to. These are all good things to experience and observe.
It requires little resources to start yoga. You only need enough space to roll out your mat. You even don’t need a yoga mat. Remember, yoga existed way before yoga mats, or even rubber. You just need enough space to roll the mat.
Some yoga quotes are so powerful that some people decided to try yoga because of them. Some are just beautiful word-arrangements. But some are not mere clever arrangements of words. These are wisdom of truth. Living testimony to transformation that yoga brings about. Lessons yoga masters wished to shower upon the world. And epiphanies of everyday warriors.
Meditation; simply put, is mindfulness. One might argue that mindfulness is a form of meditation. They would be right. It is also true that it is one and the same. Meditation is a heightened state of awareness which leads to focused attention. I invite you to study the literal meaning of the word in your first language. It’ll give you better perspective of what is the process is about. What it is that meditation is trying to achieve.
There had been many times in therapy sessions with my regular therapist where she gave me different types of breathing practices. Mind you, these are not typical pranayama practices. Nor do they call it that. I’m sure they haven’t heard of it nor aware of it. In fact, most of the therapists who recommend these breathing exercises are not trained in yoga or exposed to yoga. However, there are multiple science backed breathing practices therapists use as tools of help for the patients. And they work every time.
Yoga is for everybody. Everybody’s worthy of yoga. You don’t have to be a yogi or a yogini to reap the benefits of yoga. That truth is time tested and proven. Over and over again. That is why it is time for you to rollout the mat and do the physical and mental exercises which millions of practitioners around the world stand by
When you begin your yoga practice and convinced yourself that this is good for you; that this is going to be a permanent fixture of your life; you try to go above and beyond. You try to convince others to take up yoga.
Yoga is incomprehensibly vast and vibrant, going at it as lightly as possible serves in more ways than not. It’ll be sad if it intimidates you before you even try. Even worse, if you tried and it didn’t meet your expectations.
For its ability to appeal to everybody. IT IS for everybody. For those who don’t like yoga pants and won’t fit into a haram pant. For those who takes it to lose weight. For those who wants to regulate stress. For those who wants to accompany a friend. For those who want to be there for the ride. For those who are curious. For the skeptics and not flexible. For misfits. For the meek. For the self-assured and scatterbrains.
I didn’t feel I didn’t belong, even though I wasn’t any of the above. This is something I was lucky to experience about yoga from early on. Yoga is unifying and humbling. On the mat
Yoga rightly represented my coming out of hibernation. It was time to pick myself up and move on. There was no plan or purpose. There was only urge to keep moving.