How to be comfortable with who you truly are: Yoga, Yoga, Yoga.
The power of being comfortable. When you’re uncomfortable, your focus narrows to pain, fear or limitation. Comfort means softening around discomfort too - meeting it with a little kindness.
Yoga helps you tune in. There are so many other layers to being comfortable. And Yoga has so much to offer to help you understanding these layers. For me, the experience of being comfortable is about understanding how I experience life right now in this present moment.
Yoga can free you from how comfortable you are in your body, your mind, your relationships, and your future. It’s a forever study, but here are a few basic concepts and practices that can create a shift from the distraction of being uncomfortable to the experience of being here right now. Whatever is present. Otherwise life can be like trying to fix a tyre when you don’t have the right tools to even jack up the car!
Yoga may be more than you may think too: only one of the eight limbs of Yoga in the ancient scriptures mention the physical movement part which was made popular by the “West”. Yoga leads to meditation and the experience of not just your calmer, true self, but your intrinsic connection to others and nature.
Release Karma.
You don’t need to believe in past lives to understand in karma. Karma is simply how past actions and thoughts shape your current reality. There’s nothing you can do to change what you’ve been through before: rejection, running from opportunity, tricky childhood, addictions, never taking a break. But you can change your experience to life, right now. The future is made up of this second, and the next one. Your future is just a series of present moments. Yoga can give you some ease and acceptance by doing one of the many state-changing Yoga practices. You create space to choose.
Meditation Creates Space
Meditation is a powerful, powerful tool for this because that’s what you do - witness your thoughts, let that particular one go (giving it less power) and come back to your breath (or whatever your point of focus is). Eventually, more gaps between thoughts appear, more gaps of ease without tension of any kind. Experiences of silence, of no doing or reaction. Off the mat, you will naturally find yourself responding and not reacting so much. Over time, with a regular yoga practice.
Letting Pranayama Flow.
Pranayama is more than your breath - it’s everything that moves inside of you, and every connection you have around you. But for now, let’s look at it like breath so you can experience a changing state.
Take three deep breaths, right down into your belly. As you breathe in, use your imagination to gather all the tension, regrets, destructive patterns, and horrid reactions that you’ve ever had. Pause at the top of your inbreath. Accept everything for what it is - the past. Breathe out and feel the release of these things you do not want to be part of your future. Rest in the pause between the outbreath and the inbreathe. There’s no past here. No future. There’s just now. How calm does it feel to be here. Do that deep and purposeful breathing two more times, slowly, reaching your belly.
Now drop the technique, and for five breaths, just feel your body breathe - what expands, what releases. Keep it simple.
Asanas (Poses) - Movement for Stillness.
Physical asanas were only created so that you could meditate more comfortably. Modern yoga has moved so far from that, but there is a shift back to it.
Shift physically into another shape. Before you move, take a snapshot of how you feel inside - change nothing. Take a yin or restorative yoga shape. Do one vinyasa, or a salute to the sun. Then take another snapshot. Notice how you feel. Imprint the change of sensations and energy you feel in your body. Believe it. Be grateful for it. Trust it. Do it again for longer. Here’s a restorative yoga video of mine that may give you an introduction into how restorative yoga can free the flow! Or come see me in my Titahi Bay studio.
Yoga and Nervous System Healing
Part of being uncomfortable could be because your nervous system is in constant overdrive - so much though that your body has adopted this state as the norm. Through stress or anxiety (acute or over time) the systems of your body change. Your body triages and only directs energy on what it thinks you need to survive. It ignores good digestion, sleep, hormone regulation, healthy grown and comfort.
Asanas help to switch your body over to the relaxation response where your heart rate slows, digestion flows, sleep hormones can be released, and your body starts to return to balance. Some styles of Yoga like vinyasa, hatha and ashtanga etc. also help to build strength, flexibility and resilience. But all asanas, especially restorative yoga shapes and breath, switch your nervous system over.
There’s a lovely pose called Tādasana, mountain pose. It was an experience of this pose that really made me realise that we can be strong and soft at the same time: strong, aligned back, feet planted into the ground. Yet an open, soft chest, forward-facing palms, and head floating to the sky. Ready for anything.
And there’s my absolute favourite - leg’s up the wall. If you don’t have a wall, go half way and put your legs up a chair.
Sankalpa - Intention Over Goals
Intention + energy shift = healing. Of the thousands of thoughts you have per hour, how many will lead you to how you want to feel in life? Your body hears everything you tell it. We know from the science of neuroplasticity and biofield science that we can change the effect that thoughts have on our body through intention and using vibrations to create change. Many body scan meditations and certainly most Yoga Nidra’s (guided meditation, lying down) are designed to plant intentions when we are most relaxed and receptive. In these practices you get to change yourself at a cellular level. Transformation at this level then changes the denser levels - your body, your mind, your actions, how life unfolds around you. I’ll be running an Intention workshop soon. We can work on a life intention, intentions for certain aspects of your life, and specific intensions for specific difficult times in your life. Read more about how intentions are placed in Yoga Nidra too.
Intentions are not goals. They are not deemed successful if you get to an end result. Intentions move you in the direction of how you want to feel in life, how you want to be. I am calm. I am free. *I return to my source of silent stillness *I AM Yoga Nidra, Kamini Desai.
A note here on trauma: Trauma shows up and stays in the body because there’s a severe nervous system response to the traumatic event at the time. Sometimes you’re too close to it to release how that event still effects you, making it hard to choose the right intention. It’s too personal, too much pain. But through meditation, the patterns that you’ve made since that trauma event become clear and you can witness it more. Gently. Slowly. Your reaction to triggers becomes less acute and you can take a deep dive into it safely. This needs support with a trained professional. . Ask your naturopath or health provider to recommend the right kind of person.
Be Curious About the Deepest Question: Who are you really?
Jobs, relationships, holidays, possessions - they can all be taken away in a flash. What is constant, deep inside you? What is not a screen? What do you connect to when you are in nature and why does that feel so good? You can’t be your body because that constantly changes. You can’t be your thoughts because they constantly change. So who are you?
Only just over half of your experience comes from what you know about your body and mental capacity. Yoga practices allow you to go deeper to get to the real (karmic) reason for your reactions and actions. Wisdom. Intuition. Inner knowledge. So if you’ve got bad digestion, taking supplements and fasting may not help. Your mind dictates digestion. Change your mind.
I’ve done some study in Sound Medicine, led by neurologist and Ayurveda practitioner Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary. I loved what she said about listening: “Your mind lies but your body doesn’t”. Believe your body and how you feel inside your body. Sometimes you just feel “off”. There’s a reason for that. Take a five-minute rest, listen to something soothing. Listen.
Creating a Culture of Deep Care
Many of us didn’t grow up with valuing silence and stillness. I remember being fascinated by my Aunty Jan who meditated in the car once when we were on holiday with her. I’m so grateful I get the opportunity to be curious again.
As an enthusiastic, creative adult I spent a lot of years in distraction success. I knew in my gut I didn’t believe a word I was telling myself or others! Then Long Covid came as the biggest opportunity to change. It took time. I spent two long, painful years focusing on my Long Covid and adrenal fatigue symptoms: gut issues, headaches, mental overwhelm, insomnia, and terrible apathy. I drowned out the voice inside myself that had been nudging me for years…. calm down, it’s okay to be yourself, learn to live.
Then through sound healing, yoga, meditation and ditching my stressful job, I had a major shift: I am not my symptoms, my body, or what my mind was telling me (you’re weak, you have to be busy, you’re too sensitive, you’ll never be happy). My physical symptoms were just a symptom of something else, something deeper. I had to shift my nervous system from a constant fight or flight. I also had to experience having nothing, and be happy with that. I’d sit for hours in my studio, walk around the my forest, close the eyes and listen. The old me couldn’t cope with that slowness. I soon discovered that I was just a being who deeply wanted to connect with just that simple expression of that. It’s often said that the best way to really learn something is to learn to teach it. So I have!
The more you do practices like meditation the more you’re pulled to go there more often, for longer. It’s a beautiful, soft calling.
Practice is Everything
What you can learn from books and listening to tracks on aps will only effect your mental capacity to change. Wisdom comes from within will transform the whole of you. Wisdom can be found when you deeply relax, let go of who you think you are, and drop into the curiosity that awaits. Change your mind.
It’s frustrating, takes time, forces you to change aspects of your life, and isn’t always comfortable. But what choice have you got? You know there’s more to this human experience or you wouldn’t have got to the end of this very long piece of writing! Well done. Find the support you need for your shift. Keep going.
None of the above is of my own making. It is my experience of ancient Yoga wisdom and teachings, and the teachers who I have been fortunate enough to learn from. Trust. Follow from the original source.