“Mat Practice” into “Life Practice”

As I continued my Vinyasa flow, I couldn’t help but notice how our Mat practice is what we need to bring into our life practice.

1. Showing up is so important: More than anything else is showing up on your mat just as it is important in life to show up

2. Unsure about what happens: No matter how many years we practice yoga, each day or each practice session is different. we don’t know what happens on the mat on that particular day just as in life things that happen are not always known.

3. Continuing to breathe: No matter what we are doing on the mat, the focus is the breath because it is the breath that helps get through the different poses or the challenge on the mat just as in real life we are faced with different challenges at all times and the key is to get comfortable breathing through whatever it is that is happening

4. Don’t worry about what happens on other’s mat: when we start to look around to see what others are doing on their mat, we lose focus of what we are doing and we end up losing our balance. Similarly, in life when we compare ourselves with others and focus on what others are doing, we lose focus on what we need to do. Ofcourse its always great to have people around us inspire us, but do not get intimidated by what others are doing. Focus on your strengths

5. Learning to being present: On the mat, its all about being present. We may be faced with worries from the past or about the future but what helps us stay focused is being present in that moment. Similarly in life we will be faced with stress, anxiety, emotions or worries about events that have occurred or what may occur, but we need to learn to acknowledge them, feel them and then come back to the present.

5. Acknowledge ourselves: after the practice session, we learn to acknowledge ourselves and feel good about facing whatever the challenges that we did on the mat, similarly we need to learn to acknowledge ourselves in lives for being able to get past our challenges.

“You are stupid”!

How many of us have heard that from a parent, teacher or a spouse? 

How many of us end up believing this?? when we hear a figure of authority in our lives tell us that, at some point our subconscious begins to believe it ! This results in us behaving clumsily in the presence of the person who tells you that and eventually even in the absence of that person. For many of us it takes years of self healing and practicing self love to release the negative beliefs that we have formed about ourselves as a result of verbal abuse.

It is very important to have a positive self image. You have to love yourself unconditionally, you have to find your personal power. What I tell my clients is that when someone talks to them like that, it just means that the person saying these negative things is actually insecure about himself or herself in some way and is looking to see how he or she could make someone else feel miserable as a way to remove the frustration of his or her own incapabitlity or insecurity in some areas. So the key is every time someone says that to you, you can be sure that the person saying it feels that you are in some way better than them and they are not happy about it. 

So don’t believe people when they tell you that “you are stupid”! because you are NOT!!