Balance
Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day to day life and endows skill in the performance of ones actions – BKS Iyengar.
Life just like yoga is about cultivating balance. While you practice yoga asana you are growing your bodies ability to find physical balance. But, if something isn’t quite right, your posture is slightly off or your mind is wandering from thing to thing, you might find that balance difficult to hold. Balancing out the good and the bad, the highs the lows is what life is about. Yoga wont make you better at balancing your life but it will help you to see balance differently. Spending time listening to yourself – your needs, turning your attention inward rather than constantly outward.
Balance is a practically impossible thing to achieve as a Mami. Our lives are busy, full and usually we spend most of our time thinking about or looking after other people. Often reacting to situations as we go along. While placing our needs further and further down the list of priorities which, at the time feels the right thing to do. Ultimately finding it harder to find that time for yourself. That time to switch off and to give attention to yourself. Have that cuppa, take that walk, spend time on your yoga mat. Your mind will feel clearer and the people around you will benefit from you being happier. If you are happier, it reflects off you onto the things that you do, the people you meet, your children, even the way your food tastes!
Yoga isn’t about getting out of your mind, but getting into it. It sounds ridiculous when I try to explain it. My mind doesn’t go blank during practice. I feel that it shines a light on feelings or memories and allows me the chance to reflect on things in a calm and safe place. I pour my thoughts into my practice, like having a big mental clear out. My practice differs everyday depending on the mind stuff that I have brought to the mat that day. This process helps me to find the balance. Not a balance in the sense I have found a way to do it all and do it all brilliantly, AKA my ability to be ‘SuperMami” (which is often what is thought about when speaking about balance in Mamihood). Balance for me is the ability to find time for yourself, to remind yourself you are not just Mami. You are woman, and you are most definitely human.
