What does yoga mean to you?

Football players need to open their bulky shoulders, runners need to lengthen their tight hamstrings, and dancers need to tighten up the openness they have created over the years. Moms need peace, kids need to practice self love, and elders need their balance back. It is a common belief to many that yoga is about the physical body only. They may think that yoga is warrior two, a prett chattarunga, forearm stands, and oh yes, the mighty dancer pose.


What is yoga to you? What brings you back to your mat time and time again? What was it that brought you to the mat the very first time? Is your current yoga practice feeding your habits or are you allowing your heart to open and shifts to occur?


Yoga means to unite or join and the goals of yoga can range from improved health, releasing suffering or stress, or maybe you just want tighter abs. For me yoga is life, it is in everything. Yoga doesn't need to be this or that.. It just IS. We don't need to look a curtain way, live in a curtain part of town, or be able to wear the newest yoga clothes to begin living a yogic life. After all, this is a practice that started with grown men wearing white sheets around their mid section!


Yoga is in how we communicate, how we care for ourself followed by how we care for others. It is in our ability to look someone in the eyes, see their soul, and then connect to it without fear, to step out each day and love to our greatest ability. Yoga is in the breath and the breath is our life force. Think about it, we would not exists without it's presences. Yoga has no ego or competition, it doesn't win or loose or give trophies away after class. Yoga nurtures, wraps us up in love, opens our heart, and fills us with life. Yoga quiets the mind and offers space for growth or even better, de-conditioning of the mind. 


So it's simple right? Just find your breath, it is the fastest track to this present moment. Begin to love more in your daily life. Give to a stranger and don't tell anyone about it, just do it because loving kindness is your human nature.  Take simple steps off the mat and before you know it down dog will be your next addiction!!