Empowering Your Life Through Yoga
hi
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
am
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
in
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