I didn’t fall in love with yoga right away. In fact, I had to make myself go back again and again before it finally started to resonate with me and become something I enjoyed.
That happened, in part, because of these eight things I noticed about myself after I started doing yoga–none of which had anything to do with getting a yoga body.
Patience
I started doing yoga fresh from a young lifetime as a competitive, fast-paced athlete. It was hard to slow down enough for yoga, hard to hold the poses for long periods of time. After a few weeks, I had more patience with holding the poses–and that patience moved into my daily life and dealings with other people.
Body Awareness
As an athlete, I felt like I was pretty aware of my body and what it was doing at any given moment. Yet, as the teacher corrected subtle position after subtle position, I realized that I didn’t know it as well as I thought. I started tuning in on a deeper level, becoming more and more aware. I also realized that after all this time and practice, there are still greater levels to achieve.
Ability to Deal with Pain
There’s a difference between pain and suffering. And pain, if you dig into and stay with it in the present moment, is easier to handle.
How to Breathe
Too often, we let our breathe go unnoticed as it grows short and shallow in the midst of a stressful situation or while trying to suck in our tummies to impress someone. There is a better way to breathe.
Progress
Sometimes it feels like you’re getting nowhere with a pose or a concept, and then one day: bam. There it is, like you could do it all along. There is so far to go with yoga, in so many directions (physical, mental, emotional, etc), and it’s exciting to see and feel yourself make progress.
Presence
It’s easy to let your mind wander when you’re walking, running, or waiting in line. In yoga, I focus on getting into the posture and then, with each breathe, deepening and refining the pose. There’s no time for your mind to wander. This has made me a better listener and also more aware of how other people are feeling: when you don’t check out, you notice what’s going on around you.
Keeping Calm
I had a heck of a temper when I was growing up; I was quick to yell to defend my position in an argument. Now, I rarely yell. In fact, I rarely get mad at all. It has become very easy for me to check my emotions and keep a level head even when dealing with difficult people or a difficult situation. I notice this the most during arguments with people I love: I can listen to their side, express my understanding of it, and still explain why I feel differently. If it turns out they’re right (weird, I know), I can concede.
It’s Not About Me
We’re all a bit ego-centric; we were made that way. When kids were whispering on the school bus, it was easy to imagine they were talking about us. Yoga, and especially teaching yoga, has taught me that the way most people behave, even when an action or emotion is directed at me, really has very little to do with me. In that same vein, it’s helped me to be more compassionate: at any given moment, we all have things going on in our lives that no one else knows anything about, and these things can effect our behavior.
I believe it was Stephen Covey who told the story of sitting down on the bus next to a man whose young children were running wild. It was rude and disruptive, and the father didn’t correct them and didn’t seem to care that they were disturbing other passengers. When Covey mentioned something to the man, a mild comment about how wound up the kids were, the man said, “We just came from the hospital where their mother died. I guess they don’t know how to react.”
Yoga (and stories like that) have taught me to give people the benefit of the doubt. You never know.
What have you noticed about yourself since starting a yoga practice?