SAFETY OVER URGENCY

As a practitioner, yoga has taught me to move my body from a place of safety. And until I landed on my mat, I had no idea that I was only ever moving my body from a place of urgency.

I am a typical type A person- I am an ideas gal, an over achiever, and if I am not working hard I am not working at all.

Its taken me years to acknowledge this!

My exercise was always as fast paced as my life- gym workouts consisted of at least a 10km run on the treadmill… and that was my warm up (my hamstrings hurt even just thinking about this now!).

I used to do boxing sessions, park workouts, coastal runs and deadlifts that were fast and furious. The more I sweat, the more of a sense of achievement I felt.

But the issue with this, is it meant that no where in my life was I in the slow lane.

And I have come to realise that’s because the slow lane would make me realise how sad I was in my body, and for a long time I just was not ready to admit that.

So I went fast. Really fast. All. Da. Time.

This is what contributed to my nervous system being stuck in fight or flight, and I was exhausted.

But I didn’t know I was stuck, until I landed on my yoga mat.

When I first came to yoga I did the classic type A kind of practises- 90 minute dynamic flows, hot yoga, Bikram yoga.

Fast fast fast!

But then, like a lot of people, I started to fall in love with the philosophy and saw that yoga was so much more than the poses. I started to understand what my body was saying, I started to learn to listen- and what I heard was not a happy gal!

I realised that my body was the first place I felt unsafe in.

I judged my body. Ridiculed her. Pushed her beyond capacity. Starved her. Weaponised her.

No wonder I was tired!

But slowly over a very VERY long period of time, yoga taught me how to move my body from a place of like- I won’t say love, because that has only just started to happen and I want to be honest.

Yoga is the first place where I truly learnt to be in communication with myself from a place of compassion and kindness.  

And it is through doing this, that I slowly started to learn what safety felt like in my body. And once I felt it, I realised all the places and practises in my life where I didn’t feel safe, and I started to walk away from them.

My yoga mat has truly become my safe place- what an amazing gift that has been to my nervous system!

Safety doesn’t mean not being challenged- there are plenty of parts of the yoga practise that are challenging (hello yin!)- but what that does, is teach us that we can be challenged AND we can be safe- they are not mutually exclusive.

And so when I think of my role as a yoga teacher, I don’t see my role as someone who is there to teach people how to stretch, I see my role as someone who is there to teach others what safety looks and feels like in their bodies.

And if I even just teach ONE person that, I feel I have truly truly done my job.