Yoga Butt to Enlightenment
Yoga butt.
Yes, we all want one.
It’s not the main reason to practice, but let’s not fool ourselves, we all want a little bit of a workout in yoga class. If yoga lifts the derriere or trims down the waistline, well, we’re not complaining.
There’s an exercise high from the workout. But more than a tight butt and sculpted arms, yoga is a “work-in” —you feel it every time you leave class happier and nicer than when you arrived.
More than anything, everyone —every single one of us, wants peace of mind, joy in heart and a sense of inner freedom.
Yoga would teach that this is your inherent state of being, but somewhere along the way, you forgot. Your wounds consumed you, you believed the lies others told you about yourself, you felt alone and fragmented.
That may not have been what brought you to the yoga mat, at least not consciously. But for most, suffering is actually the first step towards waking up and remembering your wholeness, joy and freedom.
The body is the meeting place of the inner and outer worlds; when you change one, you influence the other.
On the outer layer, yoga addresses the aches and pains you get from life in an aging, active (or maybe sedentary) human body. Deeper, though, it takes you to a mind-body connection.
This link makes you aware of what you’re doing and thinking in the moment, and provides the space to see habitual patterns and behaviors with the opportunity to change them.
It can also release unhealed trauma and unprocessed emotion.
As you stretch, twist, move and sweat, your old patterns—both physical and mental, unravel—blockages are released and you begin to be free of pain.
The spaciousness turns on a light, illuminating vast stores of power and wisdom within you that you may not even have known existed.
As you challenge your physical body with new and deeper yoga postures, you learn you can do much more than you thought. You learn to rely on and trust yourself.
Magically, you begin to relax and let go of control.
On your mat, you still seek the physical—that butt in jeans, we’re still looking at you!—but now you look beyond that.
You soften into each yoga pose, letting it do it’s work on you, all the way to enlightenment
