Yoga Classes Poulton-le-Fylde
When I mention yoga to you what is the first thing that pops into your head? Let me guess – athletic bodies bending and flexing into pretzel perfect shapes, usually taken on a spectacular beach somewhere exotic. Tell me was a close?
You see the truth is, I like you find these pictures awe inspiring, beautiful and yes sometimes unachievable. While they show a wonderful side to yoga – this is not yoga. Yup that’s right you heard me – it’s NOT yoga. Movement is just one element of yoga that does have its benefits however without the other aspects can leave us short of reaping the yogic benefits we so often hear about.
The real gold in yoga can be found within yoga philosophy when we knuckle down and start with the ‘inner work’ buzz word alert! But yes it’s with our inner work that we start to really practice yoga. This brings us to our sutras – the yoga sutras, you may have heard of them? You might have read through them but struggled to actually understand them or just thought ‘how do I apply this to my life’ and you wouldn’t be alone as these where my exact thoughts when I started on my yoga journey.
This was the reason I started to focus on the sutras and in short translate them to modern day. There are so many of us today suffering with anxiety, depression, burn out, body confidence issues or just tired of feeling stuck and in your own way, do these sound familiar? These are our ‘modern day’ problems and when the sutras were first written I’m sure day to day challenges looked very different. It’s my belief that if we could apply the sutras to our life in a way that we can understand we could live a happier, healthier life.
If we look at Ahimsa – which starts our journey into the sutras. Ahimsa means non violence. When you think of acting with violence, what comes to mind? Maybe murder, gun crime or war? In this sense, Ahimsa implies ‘non violence’ in all aspects; towards yourself, the people around you, creatures, and the planet. Essentially, ahimsa is where all the kindness, mindfulness and compassion in the world stems from, and if half the planet could follow just this one piece of advice, we’d all be a lot happier if we could base our life upon this ONE principal, as every choice we make has the ability to add something to the world. We can either add to the violence, or the peace – no matter how big or small our decision.
Take a moment to consider your own choices and if you are currently acting towards yourself and others with kindness, how do you talk to yourself? What foods to you put into your body? When did you last take time out? Just to breathe, to spend time slowing down and just noticing how you feel in that moment. If we applied this to our yoga class when we feel the frustration to move into the full expression of a yoga pose we know we aren’t completely capable of yet, (cue exotic beach seen) maybe to prove something either to ourselves or someone else – we have the tendency to push ourselves beyond healthy boundaries in class. This could mean over-stretching our muscles in an attempt to go deeper in to a posture, pushing ourselves to the point of exhaustion in our practice, or straining to hold that challenging arm balance just a few moments longer to impress someone else.
When we act ‘violently’ towards ourselves in a yoga class it’s likely we’re listening to our ego instead of our true nature. To continue with this one piece of a sutra then how many times do we do this daily in our work, friendship groups, families and live outside of our true nature?
If we could start to apply even this first little piece of yoga philosophy out of 196 sutras to our lives, to our day to day then just imagine how you could be living your life!
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For more information check out www.fortitudefuel.co.uk
