Freedom For Life

Finding freedom - releasing from what binds us

One of the wonderful things about being away for a whole month is that I had time to think: to reflect on what is important and to self practice. It has reaffirmed for me that I love to teach. So I return this month with renewed energy and fresh ideas.

Whilst travelling, I posed myself the question: “ if I only have 6 months to teach people yoga, what would I teach them?” You might be surprised to discover, it isn’t the technique of any particular pose. It is: how to breathe; how to smile and let go; how to move without force; how to talk to your nervous system; how to feel ok with your emotions and how to cultivate gratitude as a habit. The sum of these things is Awareness and Befriending Oneself.

For the next few months, I am going to use my inspiration from travelling to teach you a story. We start at the beginning, laying the foundations as if they were characters in our novel; work through a series of chapters featuring a different physical focus each month and bring it all together in a balanced practice for autumn. Along the way we will be exploring some of the psychological aspects of yoga.

In May we will be exploring freedom. Moving in a fluid way by soothing our nervous system. ’Releasing from what binds us’ is a call to let go of things that prevent us from being free. We are the lucky ones - we’re not at war or bound by poverty; we dwell in a free country with liberty to live our lives as we choose. Yet somehow we can trap ourselves within our own limits. The limits of our opinions, becoming bound by our behaviour until pretty soon, we’re on the relentless hamster wheel of habit.

It is said that once we get to 35, humans get resistant to change. We start drawing in our boundaries and limiting our possibilities - just a little at first, until almost imperceptibly our world has got smaller. That smaller feels safe. The mind likes nothing better than security. And so we live a smaller version of ourselves.

If travel broadens the mind, movement frees the mind.

One of the best things I did whilst travelling was a snorkel safari. Twice a day I experienced the wonderful feeling of floating, weightless in warm crystal clear water with seemingly endless visibility. Floating over coral reefs and walls, within shoals of colourful fish, encountering turtles, dolphins and sharks, I was surrounded by nature. Literally I was immersed in it - not separate from it, part of it. Totally engaged. Wondrous. But how often are we immersed in the beauty of our daily lives?

Returning home, I was asked what I liked about coming back. It made me realise that if my life isn’t as I would like, I have the power to change it. We all do.

Sometimes what stands in the way of living a beautiful life is fear of change. Making decisions gets harder as we age. There is more to lose. But when people say that don’t like change, it’s normally when it has been imposed. Changes we make ourselves are liberating and energising. They present opportunities for personal growth.

Yoga is a scientific and an emotional process for creating change. It is a moksha, or liberation practice. It helps us to build awareness through physical movement, through breath work and through connecting into our emotions. I prefer to think of it as moving towards a better version of our lives. Having the courage to free ourselves by being more expressive and finding liberation that helps us live a larger, more joyful life.

How does it do that? Our brain and body are inherently attached. A shift in one leads to a matching shift in the other. Feel something physically and you get a mirrored thought in the mind. Have a happy thought and you feel light, warm and energised physically. It works in reverse too. You can trick your mind and create emotions by choosing to a particular movement. Move your body fluidly and it will create freedom in the mind. This is the magic of the asana practice, it’s why we do the physical poses. The power of movement to change how we feel and thereby how we think, lies at the heart of what makes people return to the mat. They feel better when they do yoga.

Moving through a set of yoga positions, especially when one needs to keep up with the pace of the class, can be a hard skill to develop. Over the next few months I am going to teach you how. Flowing freely requires understanding the foundations of what makes us grounded and stable. In May our physical focus will be strong and flexible toes, ankles and hips. From these foundations, we will explore how to smile from the inside and find freedom.