3 Reasons To Start Practicing Yoga
If you type in #yoga into Instagram, you'll quickly be bombarded with millions of posts of skinny, young, predominantly white women drinking green smoothies and doing some impressive handstands.
When this is how yoga is presented to you, it's hard not to feel wholly inadequate. Especially when you can't even touch your toes (yet), and all you want to do is stop the continual loop of background chatter circulating your brain.
I get it because I've been you.
I'm Megan, your resident yoga teacher, who's never been able to connect with the go-with-the-flow, tanned, blonde hair skinny yogi you see online.
I'd be more inclined to refer to myself as your average millennial who uses yoga as her tool to stop the daily overwhelm and running to find the nearest bag of Milky Stars (the simple childhood comforts) when it all gets too much.
I'm a huge advocate for yoga - but not about how it looks or the advanced postures. Instead, I'm about helping women learn what feels incredible in their bodies.
I don't care if you never achieve a handstand in your life - newsflash - I haven't yet, and I've been teaching for five years!
All I want is for anyone who attends one of my classes to leave feeling a little lighter than they did when they walked in. Whether physical, mental or emotional, I don't care - that's your journey.
There are countless reasons why you should start practising yoga. However, it's easier to break them down into three categories: physical, mental and emotional. So, let's dive in!
Physical
The physical practice, known as Asana, allows you to build strength using your body weight. This means you don't need additional equipment, like weights or dumbells, to get a whole-body workout. Instead, it helps you build strength that you can use in everyday activities on and off the mat. So, you can start your yoga journey wherever you're at and dial the intensity level up or down, depending on your mood and daily energy! Sounds way better than smashing out a HIIT session when you're running off coffee and a few hours of sleep.
Looking for a bit of relief from tight hips from sitting all day? Or suffer from lower back pain? These are all common complaints, and I like to offer people simple yoga poses they can do at home without equipment to ease the tension and create more space in the body.
They can be found on my Instagram channel here.
Mental
Yoga has this magical ability to snap you out of a funky mood. It's rare to hear of someone who regrets attending a yoga session when they've been in a bad mood all day. That's because you must be fully present when concentrating on a sequence of postures and connecting to your breath. So, this stops you from ruminating on whatever had put you into a bad mood in the first place -smart, right?
I love making simple, actionable breathing and yogic tools available to everyone. You can find a simple breathing technique here: A post shared by Breathe Sisters (@breathesisters).
You can check it out and save it for when you need it most. The best part is it can be done wherever you like. Just plug in your headphones, close your eyes and let your breath guide you.
Emotional
We live busier and busier lives with heightened stress levels, which can result in illnesses like chronic stress if left unmanaged.
Yoga helps to rebalance the autonomic nervous system, which controls our heart and breath and keeps us functioning at our best. It not only re-energises the body through physical activity but also activates the parasympathetic nervous system (our rest and digest system) to allow us to relieve the body of stress and heal.
Practising yoga became a pillar in my life when I was diagnosed with depression in 2017. It allowed me to get out of my head and into my body, moving through everything I was feeling in a healing way. And even on tough days when I'm tired and don't want to move, I force myself to pause and do some breathing techniques to allow me to return to myself again.
Here are my top three actionable takeaways for incorporating the yogic lifestyle into your life.
First, connect to your breath for as little as a few minutes daily. It will allow you to drop into yourself and invoke a sense of calm.
Move your body in a way that feels good TO YOU. There are many different styles of yoga, from Hatha to Vinyasa to Yin, which all have unique benefits. Get playful and try different types to see what works best for you.
Practice gratitude. Find three things you're looking forward to each day and three things you are grateful for each night, and watch your mindset shift to see more beauty around you.
If you're ready to dip your toes into the world of yoga or deepen your existing practice join Megan, founder of Breathe Sisters, at one of her upcoming events in Aberdeen or sign up for her upcoming online course so you can move whenever, wherever you like!
