“You’ll never guess who I met at my yoga class………”

I started attending Laura’s classes at Aruna Yoga a few years back, at the time I was a frequenter of spin classes, strength training classes, anything that left me in a sweat!! So, when I arrived at my yoga class, I was eager to be able to do the ‘insta’ poses I had seen online. I was not particularly keen on props or using what I considered to be the “easier” option. I had attended yoga on and off for years and this was typically how I approached it. Looking back, I see now that Laura had me twigged a mile off!! She thought me to slow down and pay attention to the more minute parts of my practice. When Aruna yoga advertised the teacher training I was immediately interested. From the beginning of the training Laura took us through each musculoskeletal section of the body. Every bone, every tendon, every ligament. Once again, I distantly heard the thought “yeh yeh, yeh, when can I stand on my head!!?”. Thankfully, Laura’s classes had thought me the lesson of mindfulness of each moment and patience. The first place we started was the feet. We carefully learned how to ground ourselves on the mat, feel through our feet, feel each part of our foot on the mat and then we slowly started introducing poses, the warrior sequences, mountain pose, tree pose. It dawned on me, I was now so much stronger in these poses having grounded down to the earth, my feet were steady, each part of my body to the tip of my head was connected and in flow. I understood what I was trying to achieve and where I was trying to get to, but was equally content where I was, knowing that when the time was right, I would get there.

It is said that we meet ourselves on the mat, that how we live our lives is often reflected in our yoga practice. When I look back now, I see how my….perhaps…. perfectionistic and ego driven practice when I started at Aruna was reflected in my life. I was barely at home, I was always rushing out the door to do whatever it was I had convinced myself had to be done! It left me pretty burnt out, disconnected, frequently tired and not attending to the things I valued in my life.  Since slowing down in my practice, noticing the minutia of the postures, realising that the smallest of adjustments can make the biggest of changes, my practice has become much richer. Simultaneously, I have noticed a slowing down in my life. I am juggling less; I can be grateful for the simple things in my life as before I didn’t even see them. What’s more, is that when life is inevitably tough, I now realise that the smallest of adjustments can sometimes make a big difference. Just like I noticed in my practice, by doing less, noticing the smaller pieces, I am more connected, more inflow and certain that when the time is right, I will get there.