Living from the inside out

Reflections on a decade of daily yoga

Image: Ginny Rose Stewart on Unsplash

This year marks the 10th anniversary of completing my yoga teacher training with Ashram Yoga NZ. In my previous post I shared a bit about the journey of committing to a daily practice. This week I’m reflecting on the question – where has a decade of daily practice taken me?

I notice some significant changes in myself compared to 10 years ago, but it’s not what you might be thinking. A decade of yoga did not:

• Turn me into a handstand queen who can do crazy arms balances and twist myself into pretzels

• Re-sculpt my body into perfect alignment

• Give me a 6-pack or turn me into a gym bunny

Undoubtedly my body is fitter, stronger and healthier, and I have less joint pain as I turn 50 than I did at 40. However, the most significant changes have been in how I live life off the mat. I recently heard writer and podcaster

Glennon Doyle

describe the process of learning ‘how to live from the inside out instead of from the outside in’. These seemed like exactly the words I was reaching for to describe my relationship with yoga.

When we live from the outside in, we prioritise stories of how life and ourselves ‘should’ be, how life looks from the outside and what other people think. We define ourselves by external markers of ‘success’ and material acquisitions, and we might push our body beyond its limits in our strivings towards these goals. There’s a radical and counter-cultural shift that happens when we begin to live from the inside out instead. We start to listen deeply to our intuition, our inner knowing, and allow this to be our guiding star. Our relationship with our body is a key piece of this. In the field of psychology and trauma-healing the term for this is ‘embodiment’, and for me this has been the biggest gift of yoga. I live in much closer connection with the wisdom of my body.

Growing up I was a dreamy child, who learned the art of mentally disappearing at a young age and spent a lot of time in her head playing out elaborate fantasy scenarios. This meant there could be a lot going on in my body, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. These days I listen much more deeply to the signals from my body and treat its communications as messengers, calling my attention to what’s out of balance. I notice the nuances of my physiology, areas where I might be holding tension, carrying emotion or restricting the breath, how my digestion and energy levels are doing, and what state my nervous system is in. When I notice something is out of kilter, yoga gives me tools to help restore balance. The body is always talking to us if we take the time to listen.

The simple act of dropping awareness from mind into body enables a softening, a surrendering of the tight grip on the present moment and a release into the support of the surface below. Prior to my yoga practice I had not noticed how much my shoulder and upper back muscles are often gripping, as if holding on for dear life, and how much I restrict my breath and exhaust myself with this postural pattern. In this way, yoga offers me a direct line into the functioning of the nervous system and the nervous system seems to mediate everything else about my health and wellbeing. 

Living more in the body means living less in the head. Growing the capacity to step outside of the flood of mental activity, the torrent of thoughts, stories, judgements and reactions the mind produces, and being more able to witness what’s arising, recognise its transient nature and choose how to respond. This will always be a work in progress I’m sure, but it’s shifting.

There’s a sense that practicing yoga every day clears away blockages - physically, mentally, emotionally and energetically. The best way I can describe it is like a clearing out and letting go of what no longer serves my path in life. Some of the casualties that have fallen by the wayside over the last decade include junk food and alcohol. Becoming more attuned to my body means I’m more likely to choose something that will nourish me rather than something that will just tantalise my tastebuds, distract me from my boredom, or scratch the itch of a craving. I notice the subtle and not-so-subtle numbing effects of alcohol and it feels intuitive to move away from this as I grow to love the clarity and energy in my system that yoga brings. Yoga did not turn me into a puritan, it simply helped me to notice.

The nuances of embodied awareness flow over into the therapy room too. I’m more in touch with what’s arising as I work alongside a client, how the ebb and flow of emotions move through their system and the resonance in my own system. As I guide clients on an inner journey of connecting with self, they start to notice and tend to old wounds and this reconnection with the body is a vital part of trauma-healing. As a therapist you can really only lead a client into embodied presence to the extent that you’re showing up from that place in yourself. If you’re in your head, your client will be too.

Of course, it’s tricky to disentangle what yoga has brought to my life from other factors such as simply age and the learning that comes from life experience. However, starting your day with an embodied practice, incorporating self-care and mindful awareness, cannot help but spill over into the rest of your day and into your life. As self-help writer Louise Hay puts it:

‘How you start your day is how you live your day. How you live your day is how you live your life’

My morning practice feels like the place where I clear the static, iron out the kinks and empty out the trash. It has become one of the cornerstones of my life that I wouldn’t be without and I plan to continue in some shape or form until I no longer have breath in my body.

Here’s to the next 10 years and beyond. Perhaps you will join me?

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