Learn Your WHY & Find 5 Ways To Track Happiness Through Yoga

Let me ask you something…how do you measure your happiness? For me, it’s simple – if it puts a smile on my face, then I’m happy.

When tracking your happiness, what one thing can deliver on exercise, mental health, goal setting, making new friends and connecting to your why? All this wrapped up in one word - Yoga.

We all need tools to get through this crazy thing called life. And for me, and so many millions of others, Yoga is a brilliant tool to have in our toolkit, for many different reasons. Here, I list my top 5 reasons of how Yoga can help guide you through life, put a smile on your face and guide you to find more happiness:

1)  Asana & Dhyana (Movement & Meditation)

ASANA (MOVEMENT):

Yoga is a beautiful way to move your body. The movement you find on your mat, works every muscle, every joint, and every ligament in your body.

I started practicing Yoga to help look after my scoliosis – not only has Yoga helped me understand my body and my back, but it’s helped me to look at those ‘pain points’ within my body as a positive. Because with those ‘pain points’ comes queries and questions, and with those queries and questions comes answers as to how to look after our bodies and feel good. And boy, does yoga make your body feel goooood. And feeling good makes me happy, makes you happy.

There are many different types of Yoga styles, so I would always encourage everyone to explore and experiment different lineages of Yoga and find the best one for you. Here are just a few of them:

• VINYASA – continuous movement, creative like a dance, linking the breath to the movement of the body
• ROCKET – designed to get you there faster, an energizing power practice full of handstands and all the fun stuff!
• YIN – the complete opposite to power yoga, a calming soft and relaxed practice, holding a set of postures for multiple minuets to encourage the muscles to lengthen with time, creating more space in the body
• POWER YOGA – fast, energizing, think HITT on your yoga mat!
• ASHTANGA – a demanding series of set postures all designed to work the body, carried out in an orderly structure.
• HOT YOGA – think Vinyasa or Ashtanga in a sauna (35-42 degrees)! A fabulous way to sweat through your yoga practice, where the muscles relax and lengthen more as a direct reaction from the heat! (Definitely one of my favourites!)

Yoga Journal easily breaks down all the different types of poses – you can find them here: https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/types/

I teach Vinyasa and Yin (both types to compliment the body and mind – you can book your classes here and if you email me mention Tracking For Happiness, I’ll give you a free class…to make you happy! :)

DHYANA (MEDITATION):

Along with the movement of your physical asana practice, Yoga has a strong connection to meditation. The work you do on your mat becomes a moving meditation. However, Yoga isn’t always about the relationship you have with your mat. More so, the work you do off your mat, in meditation.

On a personal note, I struggle with meditation. But there are extra tools within the tools of Yoga to help with the practice. Meditation can be done seated, standing, listening to music, gazing into candlelight, even when walking the dog or dropping the kids off to school! Meditation can be 10mins or 2 hours – whatever works for you.

When we can calm the mind down, and learn to meditate, our relationship changes to the world and the reactions it demands from us, thus making us more calm and relaxed, ultimately giving us more peace and happiness. And having more peace in my life makes me happy, makes you happy.

Gelong Thubten’s speech on ‘A Monk’s Guide to Happiness’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1gY7RWE48U&t=6s hosted by Action for Happiness beautifully describes meditation is made up of three things: breathing, noticing, and returning. Over and over again. And if your physical asana practice is a moving meditation, then notice the journey of your breath returning over and over again throughout your yoga class. Gelong Thubten also beautifully describes how your meditation practice is like the sky – ‘your mind is the sky and your thoughts are the clouds…let them pass by’. Simple. Beautiful.

Personally, my WHY is to be ‘strong and confident on / off the mat.’ Strong and confident on my mat with my asanas (arm balances, inversions, headstands, handstands – you know, all the fun stuff but all the hard stuff!) Strong and confident off my mat in daily life and the challenges it brings (enter Covid-19 and lockdown!)

To quote Find Your Why Foundation: ‘yoga can provide you with techniques to teach you how to, at any moment, step into the eye of the storm.’ https://findyourwhyfoundation.com/finding-your-why-through-yoga/

So, what does my WHY give me? It gives me ease, strength, confidence and guidance, but ultimately peace and happiness. When I think back to the quote highlighted above by Find Your Why Foundation, I get a warm sensation and a little smile starts to form – not because life is easy or joyous 100% of the time. But because I’m using the tools I have in my toolkit to deal with the storm head on! And wow, my toolkit is ever growing, which makes me happy, makes you happy.

So, I would urge you to find your WHY. And if you don’t know what it is – that’s fine. Explore it, dance around it, then connect and nurture it through your Yoga practice.

4) Achievement

Ok, so I know we shouldn’t mark ourselves against success, but we’re only human, right? Through the physical asanas you practice on your mat, you can see the fruits of your labour as you come back again and again to your mat. What I noticed early on in my Yoga practice was how you could easily measure your success and development.

There is nothing like the feeling of trying to balance in Pincha (forearm arm balance with legs in the air) – a pose you might have been trying to accomplish for ages - for you to finally ‘get it’, and hold it, and nail the arm balance, if only for 2 seconds!! The smile on your face stretches from ear to ear as you punch the air with your fist and you do a little happy-dance! This will always make me happy, make you happy.

All the hardwork you do prior to that ‘get it’ moment has paid off – this is known as ‘the edge.’

'The edge is  where we come up right up against ourselves and what we can do and be. It is the boundary between where we are and where we grow, the place of comfortable discomfort, where all the growing and healing happens. The edge is the point in every pose when you are still within your capacities but are challenging yourself to go just a little bit farther. Stepping up to this edge and daring to leap is how you break through and thus break with old ways of being’ – from the book Journey Into Power by Baron Baptiste.

5) Friends

Last but not least on my little list of ONLY 5 ways to find happiness through Yoga (it was hard to narrow it down to only 5!) is friends. Making new friends through new loves, new passions, new hobbies, is always good, and always deliver happiness!

Cherish the new friendships and new journeys your friendships take you on – yoga retreats in Ibiza or Portugal, yoga festivals in the English countryside – you name it I’ve done it! And all with friends and smiles on our faces! Happy friends, happy faces!

So there you have it folks, my top 5 ways to find happiness through Yoga. Yoga is a practice that makes you more mindful and more present – so ask yourself this: why wouldn’t you want to be more mindful of your happiness? Why would you want to maybe take that happiness for granted? Next time you smile, take the time out and witness the feeling in your cheeks as your lips curl up either end and your eyes widen with excitement and happiness! Enjoy the moment. And hey, this could even be your meditation for the day! Embrace it!