Just Keep Yoga-ing, Just Keep Yoga-ing!

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that my semester in EDTC300 is almost over! And that means I’m almost at the end of my Learning Project. The post after this, you can expect a wrap up of my learning in this project but until then I have one more post to share about my yoga-ing journey!

via GYPHY

This time it’s not about yoga and my body but rather about yoga and my mind and my spirit. Let’s start with…

My Mind

I have experienced depression and anxiety for most of my life. And yet my profile on Twitter reads,

I laugh loud and long and love cheering people on in their learning and their lives! My students think I’m outrageous and I like it that way!

So how is this also my reality? Counselling and medication. Counselling and medication. Repeat, as needed.

1. Counselling has and continues to help me untie the knots that inevitably occur in my soul. Sure, I can untie a lot of knots myself now, but life continues to throw curve balls at us all, and at least for me, I sure appreciate getting a fresh perspective and wisdom from someone wiser than myself.
2. Medication gives me the opportunity to live life from a level playing field. Life is challenging but with my particular brain chemistry, without my meds, I feel as though I’m living life from a ditch; everything is that much harder. I am sooo thankful that I live in a time where the shame of struggling with mental health is not what it used to be. I feel the same way about my need to take meds, as I felt about my grandma taking her insulin. Grateful. Period.

And now I can add yoga to my toolkit for being healthy mentally. Physical exercise is a tried and true tool for dealing with anxiety and depression that I have struggled to incorporate into my life for a number of reasons (in another post I’ll share about my total ankle replacement!). Yoga, and specifically Curvy Yoga, gives me the opportunity to get moving and activate all those great endorphins that contribute to great mental health.

My Spirit

I am a spiritual person. It’s a huge part of who I am. I identify as a Christian, which is somewhat problematic these days because I’m not in agreement with what a segment of Christians adhere to as critical to their faith. For me, being a Christian means Jesus is my rubric. If I want to live in such a way that “exceeds expectations” then He’s who I look to as THE exemplar. And ultimately he’s the one I’ve derived my k.i.s.s. mantra from. When he arrived on the scene he called out the religious leaders on how complicated they had made the spiritual life and said, “you’ve missed the point folks. It’s about LOVE. That’s the big idea” That’s it. LOVE. Now that doesn’t mean that he or I don’t acknowledge that faith, hope, justice, mercy aren’t important. But they are by products of the big idea, LOVE. They happen because people choose LOVE.

So what does this have to do with yoga? Well, there is a segment of people in Christianity who would be disapproving or at least concerned, that I, as a Christian, have embraced yoga, in spite of yoga’s spiritual roots in Hinduism.

Well, rather than threaten my faith as a Christian, yoga has been another area where I am experiencing LOVE. It has opened another door for me to experience LOVE flowing through me which ultimately means it’ll spill out of me. Loving others and loving ourselves happen in tandem and yoga has been a practical bridge for me to cross from my over-emphasis of loving others to a more balanced place of loving myself as well.

So there it is,

via GYPHY

For my body, mind and spirit.

Keep learning,

Dianna