-
HW: Journey to Joyful
I enjoyed reading Journey to Joyful. This book is very insightful in how to improve your life in so many ways. There are some lessons that definitely resonated with my life and my teaching styles.
1. You are what you eat – this is definitely true. I have gone through times that my eating habits are great and other times where they aren’t so great. I definitely feel way better when I am eating healthier. That said I do believe everything is okay in moderation but you always need to have more natural nutrient dense foods over the empty calorie junk food.
2. You are what you think – I have struggled with anxiety and a little bit of depression throughout my life. I am definitely one that can spiral down the anxiety rabbit-hole or play the “what if” game and it can get out of hand quickly. Positive thoughts are so important, even though they can be hard to see when times are challenging. I always try to encourage my class participants to breath in the positivity and exhale the negative they are feeling to help them focus on the positive feelings and emotions they are experiencing in their life.
3. I agree that placing expectations on external things always leads to disappointment or suffering. This is something that has caused me problems in my life in the past. I find myself saying “they should have done…” or “it shouldn’t be this way…” and my frustration tends to come that I had high expectations for a person or situation to happen/act/speak in a certain way. This lesson is a super hard one for me to learn and I am still actively working on it in my personal life.
4. We must first learn to love ourselves before we can love others – This lesson has come so true in my personal life recently. I have been struggling to love myself. My husband and I had a deep conversation about improving our relationship and I realized I was having trouble showing him love because I am not loving myself. This is definitely something that I have to work on daily to improve my life and my relationships. During my yoga class, I have my participants do a mini meditation session halfway through class. While standing I have them take deep breaths in and exhale completely. I then have them inhale something they love about themselves and exhale any negative they feel about themselves or stress they are physically feeling. I do that for a few breaths and then I have them continue to breath in self-love and exhale love for someone else. I give them the option to name a person and send love to them or generally send love out to the universe. I explain after that you can’t love others if you can’t love yourself so self-care and self-love are so important. I have had many participants tell me that sometimes, especially after a really hard or long day, that is the best part of my class. Some have told me they need to take a few minutes of deep breathing and self-love but they forget to do it because society is always rushing around.
5. Gratitude and Appreciation – This one is so strong for me. I definitely have noticed that when I am struggling or experiencing hard times gratitude is so strong. When I am forced to think about what I am grateful for, it gets me thinking more of the good things in my life. I struggle to be positive when I feel like life is overwhelming so finding the one thing I am grateful for forces my brain to focus on the good and it slowly becomes easier. During my class’s mid-session meditation I spoke about before, I will have them breath in something they are grateful for and then exhale anything that is stressing them out. Depending on time I will have them go through this a few times thinking of different things (including people) they are grateful for.
-
0 Replies
Sorry, there were no replies found.
Log in to reply.