Something Yoga has taught me

“As long as you don’t stop, you can achieve whatever you want in life”

Those are words from my yoga teacher after I did succeed in doing a headstand pose. It just a simple sentence but made me burnt in tears at the time.

I have done yoga for nearly 10 months until now. And that would be the best decision I have ever made in 2017. My works, my relationship, my study plan, and everything else in my life were not very good at all throughout the year 2017. There were so many things that happen to me that bring me negatively, inferior feelings and there seems so much “grey cloud” ahead. But Yoga did help me a lot, so I just want to share my love for yoga and what yoga has affected my life, gradually:

I.  Fall in love with my body

I am short - 150cm high, fat with a big waist. Whenever I choose a dress, I always pick something in big size which could hide all of my fatty parts. I have always been feeling so bad looking at my body. But I was not disciplined enough to diet or set a goal to lose weight.

And now, my weight is still the same, but I feel like my body changed, it is not about the dimension but about how I treat my body - It doesn’t matter how people judge your appearance, it does matter how you treat your body. I am more confident to wear things that I never dare to wear before, more confident to post my yoga pic with my imperfect shape.

II.  Understand more about my inner - self

One of the key things in yoga is breathing - Close your eyes and just 100% focus on your breath - that is how we start our lessons. I just can breath correctly until the 5th month of my yoga journey. When you can truly know how to breathe, let all the worries, pains works outside the class, that is when you can have time only for yourself.

The focus and peace I have learned through breathing helping me sit down and think more about myself, what I am good at, what I have done incorrectly, how can I improve myself,…

III.  See my life in more gentle ways and know how to calm down myself

When you are in a yoga flow, you do all the poses slowly together with your breaths. You feel your body and your breath in every move you make. If you feel tired, you can relax for a while. If you are a beginner, you don’t have to be like someone who already practices for months or for years.

That is an important thing in yoga: “listen to your body”. That is something happening inside the class that would bring unexpected effects to your life through daily practice. You cannot feel it immediately, but it will go inside you with your unknown.

When I feel stressed, tired, angry, negative, worried, pained, hurt, …. I go to my yoga class. All the flows, moves, poses in yoga make me feel a lot better and give myself more time to think carefully about my issues, go back and handle them one by one.

IV.  More discipline with myself

There would be many things that could make me skip my yoga classes but I always put a rule for myself, being punctual for the class I already registered for. It was actually hard, in the beginning, to keep the schedule because my life before yoga was different, I always worked late or went to parties after works, or just feel tired. Then, I keep telling myself that I have to go. Now, whatever I get an invitation, if it is not very important, I will join after my yoga time.

V.  Conquer myself, not in yoga class in but in real life

Want to know how far you can go? There is just one simple recipe: practice, practice, and practice. There are 98% of what you can do from practice and there are just 2% from born - talent. There would be a lot of poses that seem very hard or impossible, but trust me, if you put in enough effort and practice, one day, you can do the craziest pose that you used to, once, think you could never reach.

Yoga teaches us not only how to exceed our limits in the yoga class but also how to go beyond our limits in real life. “Success doesn't come over night”. You cannot immediately get what you want, but if you are patient, focus, persistent and always keep the faith, but if you really want, do not ever give up cause one day you will see the result and are surprised with what you have been going though it may take you longer than it takes others to master in doing something.

Last but not least, the key of yoga is to focus on ourselves only, if we can understand what we got, what we need, and what we are lacking, we can have a way to be the boss of our life.

Sunny Nguyen