Have you ever 'fallen off the mat'? Does this mean you stop doing yoga or are you just focusing on your off the mat practice? As I found, sometimes stepping off the mat can teach you more about what you really need in your practice.
Over the 8 years I have been practicing
yoga my practice has totally transformed! In so many ways… obviously now that I am a yoga teacher and I
have taken various courses I understand the body better, I understand the poses
in a different way and I have learnt about the history and philosophy of yoga.
But taking the teacher part out of it, I am still a yoga student and looking
back, my own yoga practice has been one interesting journey.
So the first few years I struggled with my
own body, not with the flexibility but actually the opposite… learning to pull
back in order to connect with the poses. This really took a while to learn to
understand my body’s limits and working to them- maintaining the challenge
without losing the pose. This is an ongoing challenge, keeping my mind focused
on my body and maintaining that inner sense of what I need on any given
day. After a few years I started
practicing yoga 6 days a week and became almost addicted to it…. I really
missed my practice when I didn’t go to the studio. I hadn’t really found my self-practice,
I just found it hard to do a practice on my own. I also wasn’t allowing myself
to get the full benefits of yoga. So pushing my body really hard during the
class and then letting my mind race during Savasna not letting my body relax or
my mind calm down.
The battle of my mind was a difficult one….
I have always been an ‘on the go’ person. I find it hard to relax and switch
off. I do everything at full speed, a friend of mine once told me I don’t walk-
I hover, because my feet barely touch the ground. But when I finally found that
connection with my mind and allowed myself to let the thoughts go, first of all
during my practice and then during Savasna, it completely transformed not only
my practice but my love and appreciation for yoga. This was when yoga became so
much more than an on the mat practice for me.
However, I hit a little bump in my yoga
journey, well more like ran straight into a hurdle and I stopped practicing for
about 6months. I had moved to London and was working long hours in my job and
found myself very stressed. I probably needed my practice then more than ever
but I lost touch with the mat and started running. I found running great to
help me de-stress- I got my exercise but I also used it as time to process my
day and try to separate my work life from my personal life. Looking back now I
think I was afraid to let my mind be quiet. I knew I wasn’t happy where I was
but I really wanted to make it work. In short I fell off the mat. I was a bit disappointed in myself for
letting this happen, I never fell out of love with yoga I just did the classic
‘Ross & Rachel’ we are on a break thing! But it didn’t last long and I
finally listened to my heart, my brain and my body and stepped back onto the
mat. It was funny though, I remember rolling out my mat… and just standing
looking at it for a few minutes. I’m not sure why.... I don’t know if I
expected to see a ‘Do not enter’ sign or find it covered in dust…. but I didn’t
find anything different from the last time I had practiced. I just found that
lovely sense of calmness and me space I had been missing.
I have mentioned this to a few people
recently and I was happy to hear that I was not on my own…. other friends have
also gone through times where they can’t do as much practice as they would like
or even stop totally for a while but I have also realized you never lose your
yoga. Before I trained to be a teacher I looked on this period of my life as
the time I didn’t do yoga…. Whereas now I understand it was just the time in my
life where I focused on my off the mat practice, because that’s what I needed.
Your mat is like a true best friend…. You
can see each other every day and always have something to talk about or you can
go long periods of time with no contact and whenever you do see each other it’s
exactly the same!
Twitter: @ellabelleyoga
Facebook: www.facebook.com/EllaBelleYoga
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