5 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Yoga
It has now been five years since I started regularly practicing yoga, and I thought it would be fun to reflect on the things I wish I knew when I first got started five years ago! In some ways my practice has changed dramatically over the past five years, and in other ways it hasn’t changed much at all. One of the things that hasn’t changed is my love for this style of movement and the massive impact it has had on my relationship with God and the way I view myself.
So, here they are, five things I wish I knew when I started practicing yoga!
1. Christians can do yoga!
I started with this point because this is the main thing that kept me from starting yoga sooner! As a Christian, I had heard from others that yoga was a bad and spiritually unsafe thing to do. This made me hesitant to take classes or start a yoga practice of my own.
I had grown up as a gymnast and dancer, so I already had a regular routine of stretching and working out on my own, but I never would have called what I did “yoga.” One summer I started doing basic yoga sequences with a friend, and I found it to be such an incredible way to care for my mind and body. After that summer, I continued stretching regularly and incorporating more and more yoga sequences into my workouts. I was intentional about using that time to pray and worship God because I didn’t want to invite in any negative things, like I had been warned about.
Over time, my relationship with the Lord, my body and myself started to change in amazing ways, and it was because of the time I was spending with him on my yoga mat. I realized that years of misinformation from others kept me from experiencing something that was obviously a natural way for me to connect with the Lord. I spent time in prayer with God and conversation with others about getting certified as a Christian yoga instructor, and I felt so much peace and excitement when I made the decision to do that!
Five years of consistent practice later, my only regret is that I kept myself from the healing and connection God wanted to offer me because I listened to the words of others who weren’t actually educated or experienced on what it meant to practice yoga. I’m so thankful God freed me from those lies and has allowed me to share the practice of Christian yoga with thousands of women!
2. It’s about so much more than the physical postures. (And, you definitely don’t have to be flexible to do yoga!)
Like I shared above, I was initially drawn to yoga because of the physical postures and the way it complemented my background as a gymnast and dancer. I thought doing yoga was all about becoming stronger and more flexible so that you could do cool postures. I had no idea that yoga was so much more than that!
The more I practiced and learned about yoga, the more I saw a difference in my mental, emotional and spiritual life as well. I had always been such a busy person, and yoga was teaching me to slow down and create space in my daily routine to connect with myself and with God. I slowly started to discover a new level of depth in my prayer life and my relationship with God.
I wish I had been more intentional about using yoga as a tool to care for my mental and spiritual health, instead of just my physical health, sooner. If there’s one thing I would say to someone who is starting a Christian yoga practice, it would be to make sure you are intentional about incorporating more than just yoga poses into your practice. Make time for prayer, meditation and journaling as well.
3. It will look different for everyone.
One element of yoga I love so much is that it is accessible for nearly everyone! Many people think you have to be flexible to do yoga, but that isn’t true at all. There are SO many different ways to create a yoga practice.
Yoga also celebrates listening to your own body and customizing every practice to fit your needs. Even if we do the exact same yoga flow, it will still look different because your body is different from mine. In the same way, postures that you are drawn to or that naturally feel good for you might feel challenging or awkward for me. When I learned to not compare my yoga practice to others, it became way more fun and creative!
Now I love breaking the “yoga mold” and finding ways to make my practice my own. Whether that’s doing a slow flow, incorporating HIIT (high-intensity interval training) movements, or even doing both in the same practice, I get to make every flow my own. By learning to not compare my yoga practice to others, I have also gotten better at not comparing myself to others. Many of my challenges with my body image stemmed from comparison. Yoga helped me to undo that mentality and learn to appreciate my body just as it is!
4. It has the power to change how you view yourself.
If you are familiar with my story, then you know that I struggled with disordered eating and over exercising for years because of the issues I had with my body. While I had grown up doing sports and loving to workout, exercise became a miserable place for me because I only viewed it as a way to try and fix the things I didn’t like about my body. Practicing yoga completely helped me reframe my perspective on exercise and my body.
It wasn’t an overnight transformation, but yoga helped me appreciate my body for what it could do, rather than just what it looked like. I began to celebrate when I could accomplish new postures, or even when I chose to honor my body by resting when I needed to. I had never known that I could have such a gentle and loving relationship with my body while still caring for it in healthy ways.
Yoga also helped me to connect with God in new ways, and that eventually transformed the way I viewed myself in other areas. I began to trust God more and found myself living with more peace and joy every day because I had faith that God was in control, so I didn’t need to be. Five years of practicing yoga later, and it’s hard for me to recognize the person I was before.
5. It will affect the way I live off of my mat.
Obviously my situation is a bit extreme for this point because Christian yoga has literally become my whole job, but even in small ways, my yoga practice has dramatically affected the person I am off of my yoga mat.
Yoga taught me to slow down and be more mindful about what I’m doing and how it feels in my body. By learning to notice how I feel in certain yoga postures, I have become more aware when I’m experiencing feelings of stress, anxiety or sadness and how that shows up in my body. I’ve become more gracious with myself and have learned to love and celebrate who I am each day, even if that looks different from the previous day.
When I first started doing yoga, my only hope was to become stronger and learn some new, fun postures. I never would have expected that it would completely change the way I choose to show up in the world, or that it would help me have the vibrant and close relationship I always desired with the Lord. It’s hard for me to imagine the person I would be if I hadn’t started practicing yoga.
Bonus: don’t neglect your breath!
This one isn’t quite as major, but I wish I had known sooner how powerful our breath can be during a yoga practice. It’s something that yoga teachers always talk about, but I didn’t understand right away. Once I went through my yoga teacher training and learned about the power of the breath, I became more intentional about focusing on it during my practices. It made a huge difference both physically and mentally.
Hopefully reading about these five concepts will help you make the most of your yoga practice and experience new levels of growth physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually!
P.S. - If you’re really ready to take your yoga practice to the next level, I’d love for you to check out our Christian yoga membership, the Stand Unshaken Collective! It has all the tools you need to start making yoga, prayer and meditation part of your daily routine.