If you were to ask me to suggest just ONE thing for you to do to improve your life – just one – it would most likely be to begin a yoga practice. The reason is that yoga is so much more than just exercise. Yoga is holistic in that it is a mind, body, spirit practice that will encourage you to change all areas of your life. A very good friend of mine had an eating disorder, and rather than focusing on trying to fix it, I suggested that she start a yoga practice. Very slowly, after months of learning to be in her body, to increase her awareness, to develop compassion for herself, her eating habits began to change. Eventually, she realized that it had been weeks since she had binged on food. I asked her why she thought this had happened, and she thought it had a lot to do with a feeling of coming home (in a physical sense), rather than running away. She said that her practice helped her to get in touch with why she was overeating, and thus to let go of her low self-esteem and pushed-down anger.
I’m not saying that yoga is a cure for all our mental and emotional ills, but I have seen some astonishing transformations over the years that I have been teaching both privately and on a class level. As a yoga teacher, you have the honor of being able to watch people’s pain and tension melt away – even if it’s just for the duration of the class.
But, my lovely friends, the key is to find a good teacher, and this isn’t always easy. Check out my post on how to find the right teacher for you. A great yoga teacher is everything when it comes of a life-changing practice. If you’re not inspired or changed by your practice, you likely haven’t found the right teacher yet.
The great news is that if you can’t make it to a yoga school, Yoga Works (where I initially trained 16 years ago), is now offering an incredible online program called MyYogaWorks. I highly recommend this program, which you can do every single day. When you sign up, you usually get 2 weeks free, but if you use my code: you get a whopping 6 weeks free! So please take advantage of this offer, and see how a good yoga class can change your life.
