HomeBody and Home Practice
As a recovering perfectionist, I am a huge aficionado of home practice. I was valedictorian at my high school, and even through college felt the compulsion to keep straight A's. This created pressure for me around learning - it became about the performance of knowledge and the ability to prove myself and maintain a status rather than authentically digest and absorb what I was being taught. It made the experience of learning brittle and one-dimensional and focused not on what I was taking in but instead on what I could spit out. My home yoga practice has been deeply transformative and healing of the very way that I engage with a subject and learn. For the past 18 years, I have had a committed home yoga practice. Every morning I wake up, have a cup of coffee in the early morning dusk, and head to my basement for an hour or two of personal practice.
When I learn at my own pace, I can pause and slow down if there is a moment where I need to connect the dots in my body, stay connected to my inner rhythm, re-calibrate proprioceptive awareness of my body in space if I notice a blindspot, look something up, or pause in compassion of a limit in strength or balance. I can discover the patterns and teachings and brilliant system of yoga at my own pace and set my own goals. It has been a joyful and healing process and my most preferred way to deepen and understand the practice. Each day when I sit on my mat at the beginning of practice, I ask, what do I want from my yoga and what does the yoga want from me - and from there I let that move through me. I come up from the basement and joke with my husband about "breakthroughs before breakfast". The delightful feeling of really understanding and discovering something new that your body can do by going at your own pace is deliciously rewarding and the "aha!" moments we can find on the mat are truly limitless.
If you are looking for some self structured yoga at home this Summer to reconnect to power, presence, and purpose, I would be honored to be your guide! Please check out my 30 Day July Yoga Challenge and unroll your mat to dive in at your own pace today: