3 Things That Surprised Me About Yoga

For the last year, I’ve been slowly making my way through the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. The content is pretty heavy, but it walks you through the ways that a body can hang onto stress and trauma. In my burnout recovery journey, I know that very physical side effect of exhaustion was a direct result of chronic stress and can be triggered again by oncoming stress. Considering exhaustion is not conducive to functioning well, I wanted to learn how to heal the physiological side of burnout while I was learning how to heal the emotional and mental sides as well. This book recommended Yoga – specifically somatic yoga – to begin tackling that.

In January, I began going to a restorative yoga class once a week. This was the first time that I was adding a new exercise regimen into my routine without the goal of losing weight or increasing my athleticism. In the past, I would have tried to make goals around my flexibility or achievement of certain positions. However, since I’ve been learning to value direction more than destination, I chose to keep my mind open and go into this with a discovery mindset.

Here are 3 takeaways that surprised me about yoga:

1. Yoga quiets my ADHD and my anxiety

   When my monkey mind is out of control, I’ve tried lots of different techniques for focus and calmness. Sometimes they work. Often, they do not. For instance, I’ve had a pretty consistent meditation practice for the last 8 years. I appreciate meditation as a way to build my mental stamina and it works to often prevent my monkey mind and anxiety. However, if I’m caught in a spiral and need to break out of it, the ability to sit still is sometimes beyond me.  I’ve noticed that since yoga adds movement to the skills that I build in my meditation practice, it will regulate me almost immediately.  As one of the TAs in my wellbeing class, Daniella Devarney, said, “You can’t change your mind with just your mind. You often need movement too.”

2. Yoga is teaching me to listen

   All the yoga teachers I have experienced this year have taken time to teach me how to listen to my body. Sometimes this is when they talk about adding some movement to the pose so that you can feel how the muscles in your body may be responding differently. Other times they lean on listening for balance within the movements themselves. Also, they encourage you to notice the differences you may feel on one side of your body versus the other and not as a way to get them to match, but to instead be simply gathering information about the differences within you. All in all, you are frequently invited to take stock of what is happening inside and then add movement to help you get a deeper sense of your own body. I’ve learned things about my body that I didn’t know were there. Usually, when I’m working out, I try to ignore my body signals to keep pushing through. “No pain, no gain,” right? This is the opposite. You want to stretch and reach for growth, but there should never be pain. It is teaching me how to take stock of my progress without ignoring myself so that I don’t overdo it.

3. Yoga has me actively practicing self-compassion

   It is said that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a master at something. Considering self-compassion is a somewhat new skill to me and that I didn’t actively practice it in a safe space before, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how often it is encouraged in yoga. Not only do the mantras often focus on compassion, but you are regularly encouraged to show yourself gratitude for simply showing up and to thank your body for what it is capable of doing that day. If there is a pose or movement that is difficult for you, the yoga teacher often says, “that’s ok. Do what you can do today. Listen to what your body needs.” This has helped me actively practice gratitude for myself, compassion for what I lack, and hope for where I can grow.

I don’t burn a ton of calories while I do my yoga practice and I’m definitely still very unflexible, but I notice that when I’m done, I feel grounded, peaceful, and open. Instead of those things being just emotions or thoughts, as I would have categorized them as before, I notice that I feel those things within my muscles themselves and that’s really cool. Yoga is not a substitution for other wellbeing practices (this is a nod to a long running joke about company yoga policies that they think will solve all their problems), but I’m grateful that I’ve added it into my own personal wellbeing practice.

Thanks for reading with me today. I hope your wellbeing practices are filling your cup right now.