5 totally awesome things about yoga

Ahh, no. This is not me.

If you know me, you know I yoga.  I’ve been doing it in some capacity for about 12 years, and have just upped my dedication to 4 times a week. Yowser! It’s not everyone’s cup of chai, so I don’t like to harp on, but given it’s such a massive part of my life, it would be amiss not to blog about it at least once. So now I’m going to torture you with the 5 things I love about yoga, and then I’ll shut up about it.  Promise. 

1.     YOU CAN ARM WRESTLE BLOKES – I’m a small chick.  Some of the 5^th graders at my kids’ school are taller than me, and I could probably wear their clothes and shoes.  But I’m tough!  I can arm-wrestle grown men and if I don’t win, I put up a bloody good fight.  I can hold my own body weight in a manner of positions and do push-ups without having to go the lady version.  If things need to be lifted, moved or carried, I can do it, which is handy when you have two kids and the travelling caravan of crap that goes with them. I may be a pygmy person, but I’m a strong one. 

2.     IT’S A ONE-HOUR ISLAND RETREAT – Life’s bloody busy.  And sometimes hard and stressful and tiring.  Even when it’s none of those things, it’s still noisy.  Some people go on holidays to escape, and while I wouldn’t knock back a trip to Bali, an hour on my mat is almost the same. It’s pretty much the only time I’m quiet (like, ever!).  Not only am I quiet, I’m not focusing on my silly self and all that junk that goes with me. I just go with the flow, switch off, zone out and let time pass. It’s my daily peace and the closest to relaxed I am. Ever.

3.     YOU FINALLY ACCEPT YOUR BODY – Pre-kids I was like most women, constantly worried what my body looked like.  After carrying those kids, shooting, well, sort of having them tugged out, feeding them and watching them grow, I’m more amazed by what bodies do than what they look like. Lots of running and stacks of yoga later, I’m more amazed by this than ever. I can’t lie and pretend I don’t care at all about my body, but instead of bitching and sulking about the bits I don’t like, I'm more interested in how it’s working, what it can do and how it feels. This makes me happy. 

4.     IT’S OUT-OF-YOUR-COMFORT-ZONE EMPOWERING – Every class is different, and every practice is a path. Sometimes you’re just there, going through the motions, sometimes you’re off with the fairies or having a rest, but sometimes, you challenge yourself so hard that by the time you finish, you feel like you’ve conquered Mt Everest. Not that I have, but I imagine this is how it feels. You try things you wouldn’t normally try and push to do things that seem impossible and when it hurts and you want to stop, you just hang out and breathe until you realise you're doing it. You turn yourself into a pretzel and suddenly feel like you can do anything you want to. And then in the real world, you try to.  

5.     YOU FEEL ALL WARM AND FUZZY - At my yoga, just about everyone has a tattoo.  There’s lots of young, fit, type A personalities with dragons on their legs, lotus flowers on their backs and lovers’ names on their wrists and ankles. While I’m probably older than the average devotee and sport no body art other than shopping reminders on my hands or texta from the kids’ drawings, I still feel a lovely sense of belonging when I walk into the studio.  We’re all there for the same thing and have some connection to each other, if for no other reason than we continue to show up and do something we love together. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, without using butterscotch schnapps.

So there it is - my yoga rant.  I promise not to go on about it again, but F#@* I love it!  I need a bumper sticker that says ‘Yoga makes me happy.’  You think I could make a million bucks selling them? Maybe I’ll try.