image courtesy of a4gpa. Taken on Mt. Timpanogos, Utah

I realize that after a string of personal finance and investing posts, to have one about the benefits of yoga is quite a change! To some of you who come here for advice about investing, this post may seem a bit new-agey, a bit fluffy.  But my commitment is to bring you big ideas in bite size portions, no matter the source.

In the few years I have been practicing, yoga has improved my life in ways I doubt I could find anywhere else.  Now that my wife does it too, yoga is something we enjoy together that enriches our relationship.  Here I will show you five lessons (there are probably more) that yoga has taught me about life in general.

Breathe

In yoga, the breath is the measurement of every action.  Movement follows the breath’s pace.  Time is not counted in the artificial constructs of minutes and hours, but in the natural, organic breath.  Most yogis discourage having clocks in the studio, allowing the yoga session to advance naturally.

Besides breathing exercises to help calm or energize, yoga’s focus on the breath has taught me to pay more attention to the rhythms and cycles of my body, rather than the dictates of the clock.  Your body will tell you what you need better than the clock or other artificial measures we tell ourselves (or society tells us) to follow.

Exist in the Now

One of my favorite yoga poses, Warrior 2, has the practitioner spread their arms wide with the hands pointing in front of and behind them.  This pose is meant to symbolize the practitioner’s existence in the now.  The hand pointing behind is our reminder of the past, where we have come from.  The hand in front points us to the future, to what we will do and become.

And we are in the middle, in the present, where we can act and use the past to chart out our futures.  Personally, I have a fixation on the future.  No matter where I am or what I’m doing,  if I do not consciously focus on what I’m engaged in, my mind drifts to what I’ll do next and what needs to be done after that (and after that, and on and on).

Yoga taught me this lesson that is now a popular saying:

You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you’ve collected a lot of empty yesterdays.

Simplicity is Key

How much equipment do you need to practice yoga?  Only two things: your body and your mat.  By stripping away the extraneous stuff, yoga practitioners focus on the essential.

Emerson said, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”  Try ridding yourself of some of your excess stuff and magically see how much more you can focus on the essentials: relationships, health, and faith.

Be Aware

Removing all distractions, yoga forces you to focus on your body.  The breath, the movement of muscles, the strain of difficult poses.  It connects the mid to the body.

Like I said before, my natural tendency is to think about the future and neglect the present.  Yoga reminds me to direct my energy to what is happening now. What am I doing? What am I feeling? Who am I with? What are they feeling?  I can testify to the fact that being aware and engaged in the present leads to a richer life experience.

Let Go

One of the main focuses of yoga is flexibility of the body and mind.  In order to achieve the more difficult poses,  the mind has to let go of doubt and the muscles have to let go of strain.  The practice of actively telling one’s muscles to let go, to loosen up and live, has a parallel in what must be told to the mind and heart.

Some of the previous lessons tie into this one.  By focusing on the breath and body we let go of artificial measures.  By existing in the now, we let go of worry about the future. We let go of  our regret about or yearning for the past.

What Has Yoga Taught You About Life?

I am barely into my yoga journey, but already it has improved my physical, mental and emotional health.  What about you? Do you practice yoga? What has yoga taught you about life?