CREATING A RELAXING HOT YOGA PRACTICE

How can someone do yoga in 38 degrees heat and still be relaxed?  How can certain people receive ‘bad’ news and still remain focused and positive? 

I use my Hot Yoga practice as a way to build resilience within me.  When I look around a Hot Yoga class and see people composed, not fanning themselves down, doing their practice to the best of their abilities; I know that they are strong willed, have a clear purpose and a firm intention.  This is something that I work towards and I know that by attending Hot Yoga it’s a simple yet effective way to build my inner lioness and help prepare me for set backs that may come my way.

Basically, my goal is to make that mind and body connection so that my mind responds to adversity with peacefulness and clarity rather than resistance and fear.  It’s such an important trait to be able to transcend from the conditions of your environment (the things that surround you), it could be simple things such as: whether you think someone is sitting too close to you, the lights might be too bright or your towel has decided to scrunch itself right up. 

Or perhaps you need to surpass a habit you’ve created; for instance giving up when things get slightly harder or getting stuck in that loop of negative self talk or complaints.  I know that I personally find this challenging.  Not everyone is going to start out nailing it and some days are just tougher than others.  But being able to accept it for what it is, is a gift within itself.

I also find that my yoga practice helps me to excel emotional memories stored in the body.  So often certain postures will release emotions within you that you’ll need to work through.  Whether that be guilt, shame, anger, resentment, joy, abundance, freedom.  Lean into the emotions that are being created and walk the path it leads you.

So, what does all of this mean for me? 

My aim is to increase my mental capacity in a lot of ways and one of those is creating greater resilience.  This means that I’ll be able to recover more quickly from ‘failures’ and adversities, allowing me to continue to focus on my personal growth and development.

I’ve found that when you decide to change a belief or perception you have about life or a situation, you need to prepare yourself to allow that change to happen.  It won’t happen overnight, but rather you will need to have been applying that belief to smaller incidents in life consistently leading up to the situation.  And this is what my yoga practice is for me: a way to prepare myself for when sh*t really hits the fan!

Now I’m not saying that resilience is an absence of stress or trauma.  No.  We certainly need that light and shade in our lives.  Resilience means being able to bounce back and not stay in that state of ‘stress’ or ‘trauma’ for an extended period of time where it then starts to overcome you and all of your decisions.  Resilience is building that internal focus, knowing that you are worthy and believing that you can do what you set your mind to.

Try it out for yourself!

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