Found

The document has moved here.

Keya Williams YogaI’ve been thinking a lot about how yoga practice changes you and how it has changed me throughout the years.

I, like many others, started practicing yoga because I was drawn to the beauty and grace of it.  It was like watching art.  It was like being art.

But as I grew older, learned more, starting teaching and then going through teacher training to be a registered yoga teacher my views evolved.

While yoga (especially some of the more advanced poses we see on the internet) ARE beautiful and graceful and artful, yoga for me has become more of an inward journey.

I care less and less about what my yoga poses look like in the mirror.  I care more and more about how those poses make me feel stronger and more flexible.  Not just in my physical body, but in my Soul.

I practice now so that I can find myself.  So that I can release the shell of the persona that I have built up around me over the years.

Yoga is helping me unpack those ideas of my small sense of self so that I can see who I REALLY am beneath the surface so that I can know and accept my real Self.

In my asana practice I get to notice ME.  Notice where I carry pain in my body. Notice if I am available to be IN that pain so that it can be released.  When I become aware of my pains, be it physical or emotional, I can choose to transcend it and be free of it.

I also get to notice where I am strong, capable, self assured and FREE, and this brings me a sense of aliveness and gratitude that makes life so sweet!

My focus USE TO BE on holding a pose for as long as the teacher said, or advancing to the next highest expression of a pose.

My focus now is on being.  Being strong AND surrendered.  Being assertive AND free.  Being in control AND provided for all at the same time.

Because that is what Hatha yoga is.  It is the play on opposites in this physical world.  Ha, meaning sun or representing the masculine, assertive aspects of life. Tha, meaning moon or representing the feminine, accepting aspects of life.

I am both of those energies.  I am strong and soft. I am assertive and surrendered. We all are.

And when I let it, my hatha practice helps me find that balance. That balance that keeps me well, whole and healthy in my body, in my mind and in my Life.

Share with us. What things do you do regularly that helps you remember who you are and what you desire most out of Life?