Yoga: we nizanibû ku ew ê bi vî rengî be

1. Life is a struggle

This is what you will understand in the first place when you start doing such a «quiet» activity as yoga. What happens on the yoga mat, in fact, is the embodiment of everything that happens to us in life: our relationship with ourselves, our fears, boundaries and limitations. The way we compare ourselves to others.

Muscles ache from exertion, breathing is short of breath, sweat seems to accumulate on your eyebrows. And although this struggle is physical, know that at the same time a great struggle is taking place in your brain.

2. The desire to compare yourself with others

It is one thing to see beautiful pictures on the Web (especially a photo of a person sitting in a lotus position against a sunset), and quite another when you come to class and you are surrounded by a whole room of real people sitting in this position. Beautiful and not so beautiful. Comparison takes many forms, and your task is to learn how to deal with them.

You fail, and you feel like a rigid stone statue. Or it still happened, but the body demands to get out of this unbearable position as soon as possible. And you start negotiating with him: “I’ll just stay as long as this guy next to me, and as soon as he finishes, I’ll finish too, okay?” Or someone collapsed nearby, and you think: this is difficult, I won’t even try.

Yoga is a discipline, mental and physical. And one of the biggest challenges she throws at you is to stay both mind and body within the boundaries of your rug. It is no coincidence that many exercises are performed with half-closed eyes.

Everything that concerns you is yourself. Everything that happens ten centimeters from you is already a different world and a different person. It cannot annoy or distract you.

We compete only with ourselves. It doesn’t matter if your neighbor or the whole room is looking at you. This pose worked for you last time and didn’t work today. Yes, this is the practice of yoga. You are influenced by many internal and external factors, and what was achieved yesterday has to be achieved again every time.

3. There is happiness. But maybe not

One of the goals of yoga is to set in motion the energy that has accumulated in your body, to allow it to circulate. Emotions from our previous experiences — both good and bad — remain in our body. We stand on the rug so that they rise from the bottom.

Sometimes it is a feeling of joy, strength, with which you live for a few more days after the practice. Sometimes you feel like you’re practicing in a dense cloud of negative thoughts, memories you hoped you’d forget, and feelings you seemed to be getting over.

I bet that when you came to the first lesson, you had no idea that it would be like this.

When this happens, yoga ceases to look like a picture from an advertising booklet. You are not sitting in the lotus position full of wisdom. You pack up your rug, take a towel soaked with sweat, and you have no desire to say a few nice farewell phrases to your neighbors. You want to be alone, in silence, and think.

4. This is the training of your future

There is a reason why yoga is called a practice. What happens to you on the mat is a training in how you behave outside the walls of the hall.

Remember to take deep breaths while at work or in the car. When you practice yoga regularly, you will find that you have the strength to deal with many problems.

5. Yoga is not poses

This is primarily a story about how to unite the body and mind. Sometimes the simplest postures are liberating and we feel like we are finally fully here in our body.

Yoga classes do not guarantee pleasure, always, every minute. Standing on the rug is like an invitation: “Hello world. And hello me.»

What happens to us during practice?

Yoga should not be taken as relaxation. All her poses require concentration and control.

Let’s observe a girl sitting in the simplest position with her legs crossed. What is happening at this time?

The girl keeps her head straight, her shoulders should not rise, as the coaches say, “towards the ears”, and be tense. She must ensure that the spine remains straight, the chest is not sunken, and the back is rounded. All this requires muscle effort. And at the same time, she is completely calm and her gaze does not wander around, but is directed forward, to one point.

Each pose is a careful balance between tensing some muscles and relaxing others. Why send contradictory impulses to your body at the same time? To be able to balance these opposites — not only of your body, but also of your mind.

The body teaches to respond to contradictions not in terms of “either-or”. In fact, the right decision often involves the integration of different options, the need to choose «both».

An overly flexible body lacks firmness, and sometimes a lack of concentration and concentration can cause injury. It is the same in negotiations — if you are too accommodating, you can lose a lot.

But strength without flexibility will leave you rigid in tension. In a relationship, this is tantamount to naked aggression.

Both of these extremes already contain a potential source of conflict. By practicing at home, in silence, learning to reconcile opposing impulses within the body, you transfer this ability to achieve balance into an external life full of constant challenges.