Surrender

Yoga  is peace and surrender. It’s a moment of quiet where you calm the mind and the body. This comes from taking time to focus on your breath and be truly present in the moment. It’s taking a long exhale and letting everything else go.

Realizing

This is when you realize nothing else actually matters except the present. Nothing actually exists except the present moment on the mat. During these moments of quiet you begin to listen to yourself, listen to what your body is telling you.

Maybe you are experiencing pain, maybe you are clenching your jaw with stress. You can get so wrapped up in the daily routine you don’t take time to listen to what your body needs, where you may need to release.  

Shift

I believe there is a shift in energy when you do yoga and yoga teacher training. You can go from chaos to peace just from flowing and breathing. Part of this happens from the physical poses, since I believe you store emotions in different parts of your body.

Doing the physical practice can help to release these stored emotions or stress. I personally experience emotional releases when doing deep hip openers or backbends. However, people can hold emotions in all different parts of their bodies.

Yoga makes you surrender to the moment and let everything else go. You can’t think about the past or the future while on your mat because you are focused on the poses and your breath.

You surrender to the practice in that moment, you trust that the practice will give you what you need. It teaches you to have faith. This is one of the most beautiful parts of the practice.

Connection

To me, yoga (with own practice or doing a yoga teacher training) is also connection. Connecting the body, mind and soul. Connecting to a higher power. Connecting to the people and the world around you. Yoga helps you understand life as a bigger picture.

It pulls you away from the small stresses of your life that in the big picture aren’t important. I often leave a yoga practice wondering why I was so stressed in the first place. It makes you feel a connection with everything around you, it makes you feel like you are a part of something bigger than yourself.

There is a faith in a higher power that comes with the yoga practice, whatever that power may be to you. This could be God or the universe, I don’t think it really matters, it’s having the faith that’s important.

Something Bigger: Trust

Regardless of where live, be Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon or Winnipeg, you need to surrender and have trust in something bigger, it’s the only way to truly let go of your grip on control.

This was something that took me a while to learn, that I’m not actually in control. But when I did learn to let go my life was never the same again.

I’ve been in yoga classes where you feel an immense connection to everyone else in the room who is practicing alongside you. In that room and that moment everyone is one. This type of connection is life changing and something I hope everyone can experience.