The Journey Back to Self
Falling back in love with yoga
In all honesty, I’d say that yoga saved my life. It set me on the much-needed trajectory of healing. I couldn’t imagine who I would have become without it.
It peeled back all the layers of life’s excess that I’d accumulated in my body at the age of twenty-five. It gave me the space to process life in a healthy and real way because at the time I was more than happy to push forward with my “goals” without ever honoring my spirit’s needs.
Yoga prepared my body to sit. It prepared me to do the work of bravely sitting with my breath and accepting all facets of what my mind showed me without judgment. It gave me a safe space to be present and calm the chaos.
Fast forward to my first pregnancy where I was managing large and sometimes excruciatingly painful uterine fibroids, I began feeling extremely disconnected from my body. The relaxin floating around in my pregnant body created so much elasticity in my joints that all the stability I normally felt from the years of doing and teaching pilates and movement was slowly becoming a distant memory. It hurt to move some days with the size of the fibroids, so I begrudgingly didn’t. Then I would feel I was doing myself and my daughter a huge disservice, so I would move within my limitations, but I can honestly say I didn’t enjoy it as much. I’d work so hard to be so strong in my body only to have to surrender throughout pregnancy–that was beyond humbling.
Somewhere along my yogic journey, it became about how smoothly I could make my transitions and how elegantly I could flow through my Surya namaskar (sun salutations). Understandably, amid the pandemic, multiple moves, and the birth of two humans in three years, I’d lost my deep tether to yogic philosophy. It felt like I was moving through life without the very thing that kept me rooted in myself.
Recently, I’ve found my way back to my mat in a softer way. It required a sense of genuine appreciation for where I was and some radical acceptance of where I currently am. Throughout all the discomfort, I just had to keep getting on my mat.
After some time, I was no longer stepping on the mat and judging my postpartum body for its aches and shifted strength. Soon, I was stepping on the mat in gratitude for the time I committed to showing up, my body’s power to grow and birth two humans and slowly heal itself afterward. My yoga blanket and blocks were no longer weapons that made me feel weak, but they’d become tools that make the medicine of yoga accessible to my healing body.
I’m finally getting on my mat more regularly without much mental debate and I feel the shift in my entire being and all aspects of my life. I’ve finally returned home to my soul self. I was so gratefully reminded that the physical practice of yoga has never been about how I showed up on my mat, but it’s the very act of showing up every day and flowing through linked movement and breath. It’s about making time to lie in Svasana to allow the practice to dose me with its medicine. And for that, I’ll forever be a yoga practitioner.
In times of deep internal disarray, how have you returned to your soul self? What tools have you used? Has yoga been a source of solace for you? Please share your experience(s), I’d love to hear!
As always, thanks for reading.
Until next time–be easy,
Sabine
I’ll forever be grateful to my yoga teachers at yogamayanyc.com. Big love to Bryn Chrisman: thank you for seeing me before I saw myself and for sharing such a genuine, beautiful, and respectful interpretation of yoga. It’s forever etched into my whole being.
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