Transformation - Feb Practice Theme.
How have you transformed as a person, in your lifetime? Can you think back to any periods of your life where you realise, you were a completely different person?
I mean sure, some transformations are incredibly obvious! We go from being a cute little baby, to a fully grown adult. We go from long hair to short, from one style of dressing to another. The outwards facing transformations are easy to see and celebrate, but what about those inner transformations?
I have felt those inner shifts, SO intensely. And in fact, let me catch you up to speed - I am a completely different woman now, than I was even 2 or 3 years ago. I feel like I have only recently, grown into being my own woman. Dear reader, can you relate?
I feel as we get older though, we often transform in ways that aren’t perhaps for the better.
We become more serious, less inclined to play or do things just because. We transform into more sullen, more serious versions of ourselves, who have forgotten how to enjoy our own company, and need constant stimulation from the outside.
The older we get, the heavier the weight of everything often seems to become. We forget how to play, or perhaps we feel like we cannot. Or perhaps even worse, the mindset shifts into the fact that we should not. Some internal transformations could perhaps be better described as a compression, the very joyful light of our lives, being squished and compressed down, compacted into something hard, and dull and dare I say it, a little bit sad.
But, it is not all doom, gloom and despair! This very path we walk together, the path of yoga, of self-transformation and realisation, is one which lends itself very nicely, to helping us to consciously transform our inner landscapes.
As I’m sure you’ve heard me say a million times on the mat, “if we’re unaware of something then we are powerless to do anything about it! If we are aware of the situation, then we are given the superpower of responsibility - we can choose to take action, if we so wish”
February Yoga Practice Theme - Transformation | The Joyful Wild Yoga Membership hosted by Emily HardingOne of my greatest inspirations in Yoga, the Indian mystic and scholar Jagadish Vasudev, aka Sadhguru, (meaning ‘uneducated guru’!), explain the power of awareness and responsibility on transformation as this -
“For one, many believe that taking responsibility compromises their freedom. This seems to be logically true, on a simplistic level. Existentially, it is completely off the mark.
Let us consider a concrete scenario. Your pen falls off a table. If you see you are responsible for it, you have several choices before you.
You could simply bend down and pick it up. If you are unable to do that, you could ask someone to help. Or if you aren’t inclined to act on it right now, you might pick it up later. You have a variety of options.
If, on the other hand, you don’t take responsibility for it, what can you do? Nothing. Which is freedom? To have choices or to have none? Your logical mind tells you, “Give up all responsibility and you will be free.” But in your experience of life, the more you are able to respond to everything around you, the freer you are!
The logical and experiential dimensions of life work in diametrically opposite ways. Logic is not without its uses, but these help only to handle the material aspects of life. If you handle your entire life with logic alone, you will end up a mess” - Inner Engineering.
So, at the heart of Yoga, we are moving towards some sort of transformation.
For each of us, it may be in slightly different ways, but ultimately, we are looking to transform ourselves into the best versions of ourselves. We are walking down the path of yoga, with the view to reaching the point where we no longer suffer. Where we are free from suffering.
We come, in our earliest days of the practice, to the physical practice, finding ourselves within our anamaya kosha, or gross body* and learn how to be kind to them, and simultaneously we transform the way our mind (manomaya kosha) interacts with our bodies and our selves. We transform as well, through our powers of awareness, our energetic body (pranamaya kosha), helping to strengthen it, support it, listen to it, and heal it, through our transformed actions in the body and the mind.
For a very quick overview on the 5 Koshas (sheaths or bodies) - check out a short Sadhguru explanation here.
So, in this month’s practices on The Joyful Wild, we will be looking at what it is to transform ourselves, and how we can consciously walk along that path together, towards a place of awareness, responsibility and (you guessed it), Joy!
I hope that as we journey together this month, you’ll carve out a few minutes each week for a little svadhyaya (self-study/self-reflection) and contemplate your own transformation so far.
If you feel heavy, defeated, tired and grey, and have transformed into a less joyful version of yourself as you’ve got older, are you able to write down a couple of ideas why? And how you can take action to reignite your joy within? When reflecting, try to be kind to yourself, try to approach the reflection with compassion for yourself and your circumstances.
Perhaps, you’ve become tired and jaded because of your job, your pets, the responsibilities you hold within your family and to your children/parents/partners! I understand how difficult the process of recognising that the new routines you find yourself in with the people you love, might have caused you to transform into someone that deep down you know you are not, and don’t want to be. Our sense of responsibility and duty, can often lead to us forsaking ourselves. Glennon Doyle writes it so beautifully in her book Untamed:
“Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.
What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.
If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.”
I hope that, whatever is going on in your life today, the practices this month bring you an opportunity to play. To transform your mindset. To transform your relationship with your body, with yourself. To find a lightness and a joy in the little things and moments in your life.
Whatever you want to transform, you can. That journey of 1,000miles, starts with a single step.
I’ll always be here, just a message away if you ever need me.
If you want to chat, to ask a question about a practice, a pose, an idea, or just to say hello, feel free to book in for a quick Yoga natter with me.
Journal prompts for Feb & Transformation.
Which areas of my life do I want to transform? How? And why?
What is the transformation in my life so far, that I am proudest of?
Who is someone who has been on a transformation journey that I respect and admire? Why?
Where in my life do I feel stuck? How could I consciously do something different in that area?
How do I connect to my intuition? How does it speak to me?
Visualize the ideal life you want, what stands out the most. Why? Begin with, “In my ideal life I…”
(*note - this is NOT to say your body or my body is gross, like eeeeewww! Haha, quite the opposite dear friends, your body freakin’ ROCKS! Gross here is in reference to the fact that it is physical)
Ahoy pals! I’m Emily, London-based Yoga Teacher, and anti-diet-culture supporter!
Find me on:
Instagram @yehyoga
Youtube
TikTok
Twitter
