Yoga and acknowledging our real natue

YOGA TO ACCESS YOUR TRUE SPIRIT

Yoga is a practice that is centuries old.   Sages, kings, queens and the common people have been practicing and turning on to this style of breath and movement for as long as it has been in existence.

One of the many benefits of yoga is that it enables the practitioner to access their own true nature.  Now what is our true nature I hear you asking and thinking.

Well that is a good question and something that I have only just been able to think about and answer.  Our own true essence or nature is the qualities, feelings and emotions that are our own and not affected by the outside experiences. 

I believe that it takes some time after the onslaught of adulthood to get back to our own true nature. Children are very lucky to be in their true nature and watching them experience life can remind us how to do it.  Kids do not try to impress or be anything other than who they are.  I am lucky to have 2 children to remind me of this. 

Adulthood and childhood actually can take us away from our real selves and emotions.  Depending on the safety and security of our upbringing we can wrap different protective barriers around ourselves to survive.  This takes us away from our own true nature.  Bless us for needing protection.

Yoga has the ability, if practiced regularly with a dedicated and ongoing open heart to remove these barriers and allow the flowering and opening of the heart and therefore our true nature to begin to find strength and colour our emotions.

I have a friend from London who is a very large science nerd.  He is one of the nerdiest people I have ever met and I feel certain that he will stay in this outer covering for all time.  I do not believe he will morph into a cool guy (as we all know and discern this). 

This guy however, has surrounded himself with yoga people and attends class or practices daily.  He has transformed his body into something that resembles a fit and able body.  He will remain a science nerd for all time this is true.  But what is more evident is that his true nature is far from nerdy.  He is a beautiful soul that has made it possible for his beauty to be received and also witnessed.  All the yoga people he knows and surrounds himself with no longer see the nerdy guy. 

They see his true nature which is lovely and that is all they will see every day.  It is possible that this man is changing the way everyone sees and interacts with him due to yoga.  The ability to rest the mind on the breath, regularly, in fact daily can only remove the barriers and protection around our heart.  It is something that will happen if yoga is continually practiced and my friend is living evidence of it.

I spend many years trying to be cool and hang with the cool crowd.  This did me no good and left me feeling empty and not very cool.  Didn't work for me.  Yoga did work for me and I feel that along with my London friend I am now living far more in my true nature. Thereby rendering myself very cool and not needing the approval of the supposed cool crowd to feel it.

I see the beauty and light within my friend from London and applaud his work on himself.  Keeping breathing the light, it is catching"¦.

• Living Abundantly in the Present, Letting Go of the Past