ONE of the more uncomfortable aspects of yoga, certainly for beginners, is the inner focus.
When you look inside and get quiet, the first thing you’ll notice is the noise.
The mind chatter, the hum, and the unhappy thoughts and feelings.
Yoga, by its nature, allows our shadowed parts to reveal themselves.
As Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate”.
These voices, deep-seated feelings, and belief structures need to be seen and acknowledged. But they can feel heavy and are often dense and sticky places with tendrils that reach into our ancestral and cultural roots, making them even more challenging to contend with.
Many of us are well conditioned to disassociate from discomfort and numb-out through distractions or substances. So, when we first learn to face our shadow selves, it’s an act of real courage.
We also realise that whatever we are facing is not unique and millions of others have experienced these same challenges. Once you put the shame, the sadness and the regret into perspective, you will find the learning, the growth and the freedom.
The practice of yoga reminds us that the picture is bigger, that we are bigger, lighter and brighter than we realize, and that we are safe in this very moment.
Yoga allows us to increase our capacity to hold all sorts of feelings and discomfort and let these emotions move, express and transform.
