If you haven’t practiced yoga for a while and are lacking motivation for life; here are five reasons to come to class this week!
1. Get Perky!
Practicing yoga makes you feel fresher, brighter, happier and more alive. Just the simple act of moving the body, shifting stagnant body fluids and working the muscles enlivens the body and mind. As a physical activity, yoga is unique in that you’ll move every joint and work every muscle in each yoga session (other sports tend to focus on a few key muscles and repeat particular body movements, but none are as complete as yoga at working the entire body in an even balanced fashion.)
And that perky, energised feeling you get from a great yoga session will also make you feel more positive and optimistic in other areas of your life.
2. Internal sunshine
Now that summer has gone and the nights are drawing in you can create your own internal sunshine. Certain yoga poses – back arches and exhilarating standing poses especially – create lots of internal heat, giving that post-yoga glow that lasts for hours and makes us feel great (as well as burning off a good few calories).
3. Love yourself
Yoga builds awareness; awareness of our strengths as well as our weaknesses. Awareness of the magnificence of the human body and awareness of how we can manage, control and direct our bodies to get the most out of them. With practice we generate more strength and flexibility and become more capable, so our self-reliance, self-confidence and self-esteem grows.
4. Yogi’s are always lovely people
With yoga there is no pressure to perform, to compete, or to be a social butterfly. There is no hierarchy and there is no need to talk if you don’t wish to. So yoga is an easy social environment, just being in the same room with other lovely yogi’s and feeling their energy cultivates the feeling of belonging in the world and being part of community. This satisfies our deep need for connection (indeed the sanskrit word ‘yoga’ means yoke or connected) – because humans are social animals even if we don’t feel very sociable. And if you do feel sociable, you know that everyone you meet in a yoga class will be a lovely person.
5. Follow your intuition
Simple yoga meditation techniques help us to switch off that ‘shouty’ inner voice in our heads that can be so dominant and can make us feel indecisive, impetuous or anxious. In the quiet of your yoga practice you’ll find that you can hear the softer voice of your own intuition, you’ll arrive at decisions that come from your heart rather than your head and you’ll have the conviction to take action when you need to. You’ll be stuck in a rut no more!