Empowering Your Life Through Yoga

i’m julia and i’m a yogi

now what exactly that means can depend

on the audience

so i created one of those perceptions

versus reality memes

starting with some of my perceived

perceptions

while a lot of this is close to the

truth i think what yoga really looks

like in my life

is a little bit more like this

see although i practice yoga pretty

often

in a group class on a mat i think the

real yoga is what i do

off the mat i first encountered yoga

when i was a young kid

watching my mom do ready vhs tapes in

our living room

and i was inspired not holistically

though

i had one thing in mind that forward

fold

head to the knees fingers to the toes

because apparently that’s cool when

you’re a kid

now i was not an athletic kid i was a

music kid

i started playing the violin when i was

four years old

and my mom said no sports for you missy

it’s too distracting and

you could hurt your violin fingers so no

sports

no skiing no four wheeling basically no

doing

all the things every other normal kid

living in upstate new york

was doing thank you but i really didn’t

care because

music really was my thing and i could

still play outside with my friends and

participate in gym class until

sixth grade thank you something changed

for me i experienced my first

asthma attack so i go to the doctor

and he tells me i have an exercise in

allergy induced

asthma and he puts me on a steroid

inhaler which i have to start taking

daily

and even with this medication there were

still times where i

over exerted myself and found myself in

this state of gasping for air and

panicked and also knew it was

so i stopped participating in gym class

i stopped really trying to do

anything involving sports and i avoided

running at all costs

but this is what brought me back to yoga

yoga became an accessible means of

exercise for me

a place where i could work out but not

feel

embarrassed by my lack of athletic

skills or fearful that i was going to

have an asthma attacker hurt my violin

fingers

so i started doing yoga tutorials online

just by myself

here and there and then in college i

realized oh there’s group classes i

could go

try this with other people so i started

going to studio

after studio and the more exposure i got

to yoga

the more i realized i was strengthening

myself

beyond my physical body now a lot

happens in a 60 to

90 minute yoga class and depending on

the style of the class they can vary a

lot in

difficulty and intensity i saw a meme

recently that said

yoga it’s simon says for adults oh i

thought you wanted me out of the way

and i’d like to say it simon says meets

twister

because there are lots of times as a

beginner i said you want me to put my

foot where and do what exactly

yeah so i don’t want to talk to you

today about the down dogs or the back

bends or the arm balances

the poses i want to tell you about the

three things about a yoga class

that have powered my life off of the mat

and could do the same

for you the first thing being how a yoga

class starts

the teacher will instruct you to just

sit and notice

so let me be your guide for a moment and

i’m going to walk you through this

go ahead and close your eyes and just

start to notice feel the weight of your

body within your seat

start to scan yourself from head to toe

noticing any little sensation discomfort

how are you feeling start to

observe your breath each inhale and

exhale

is it shallow deep choppy

smooth start to bring some awareness

to your mental state your thoughts

are you following my voice or have you

already started to wander

recognize that you are in control of

your thoughts

the past it’s already gone let’s just

let it go

in the future it has yet to come

so you don’t have to wait for it really

matters

is right here and right now

and right here and right now i’d like

you

to ask yourself what does your body need

what would suit it best today

and think of a word a statement an image

an affirmation something that might help

your body to achieve what it needs

i like to think of an i am statement i

strong i am capable i am worthy

just manifest something positive for

yourself

and put it into the universe

okay audience you can go ahead and

gently open your eyes wow

what a concept just sitting taking a

moment to acknowledge yourself

set a goal affirm something positive

doesn’t that feel

good so i guess you can just let me know

what if you did it every day

for many of us our days are filled with

doing doing doing

worrying about this and that past and

future and often doing things for

everyone except for

ourselves sounds good all output no

worries

no input why not take a moment to ask

yourself

how am i doing my second favorite aspect

of a yoga class is focus on the breath

now breathing is obviously an

involuntary action

but it doesn’t mean that our body is

always capable of maintaining an

effective breath

and having asthma i knew all too well

what it felt like

to not be in control of my breath in

yoga there are many breathing techniques

designed

to help you do just that and often the

motion is guided

by the breath so the surya namaskara the

sun salutation of a basic yoga flow

is inhale raise the arms up exhale dive

forward

inhale lift up halfway exhale step back

to a plank position

this idea of moving with the breath that

was monumental for me

because one of my biggest asthmatic

barriers was that i was

never thinking about the breath by the

time i thought about my breath it was

too

late and i was already panicking see i

was letting the sympathetic part of my

nervous system take over

that’s the fight or flight it’s where

your heart starts racing the adrenaline

is pumping

but when you breathe you do the opposite

you activate the parasympathetic part of

your brain

that’s your rest and digest it slows the

heart rate and allows you to relax

the oxygen you get from breathing it’s

like a magic elixir

and yoga has taught me how to attain it

my third and favorite aspect of a yoga

class

is the final posture shavasana

the sanskrit word translates to corpse

pose

so essentially it’s playing dead doesn’t

that sound fun

you should try it sometime you lay on

your back

with your arms and your legs splayed

open and you just allow

yourself to completely melt

into the floor you let everything go

physically that’s not so hard to do

feels great

however you also have to let go of your

thoughts

and try and clear your mind to a blank

slate

now that’s not easy to do and it’s here

that i have learned

so much about myself because when you

start to

push thoughts away they try to push back

and you start to realize which thoughts

are the strongest

the ones that you can’t push away

i sometimes wonder during this moment

as a music teacher how i can be a better

teacher

it’s it’s like in this moment of

darkness i can suddenly see myself

clearly

for who i am the choices i’ve made and

who i want to be

and if going into yoga any of my

thoughts were negative

after going through that flow setting an

intention and

pumping all that oxygen to my brain and

then finally getting to this spot of

surrender and just letting

everything go well by the end

i’m suddenly not even thinking about

those negative thoughts anymore

it’s like they’ve fizzled away i always

joke that

it saved me from writing a lot of angry

emails

now coming out of shavasana you know

just jump out of this pose

the teacher has you come into a fetal

position on your side

that’s the same position we’re born in

and it does represent

a rebirth no longer a corpse but a

person ready to re-emerge into the world

feeling more confident stronger

and more at peace my favorite quote

is attributed to buddha and it’s every

day we’re reborn

and it’s what we do today that matters

the most