Consistency is a word I feel a bit icky using in regards to yoga as it has so many toxic connotations of working hard, gruelling schedules and well, it sounds like a drag.
However, consistency can be the key to that elusive feel good quality you probably started yoga for in the first place – without the endless effort or the temporary artificial high.
Consistency in yoga may be once a week or once a day, it could even be once a month and no one’s counting so it’s personal to you but if you practice you will feel shift. Whether your starting point is wanting less stiffness, less discomfort or more calm, more mindfulness or headspace, the one thing that will actually bring about these changes is by practicing.
And consistency beats intensity. Finding an accessible practice you can return to again and again and again is gold.
So what does that mean? Well it could be a physically accessible practice or it could be when or where. Despite having a yoga studio in my garden, my personal practice isn’t even usually on a mat but in my tiny kitchen where I can touch the ceiling and walls if I reach. But I do actually crack on and do it there because it’s zero effort, no dress code, absolutely no audience or expectations.
Yoga shows us we are already whole and don’t need the input of goals, poses or progress. We are fine as we are and don’t need to change to become a different version of what we think we should be. These distractions take us away from our self and each target pulls was further away from the yoga, the idea that we are already enough.
Advanced yoga isn’t a headstand, advanced is balancing life’s trials, highs, and lows with integrity. Advanced isn’t how often you go to class or how much you sweat but about constantly showing up for yourself. Life will pull you but consistency in your practice means you respond to turbulence by saying, ‘Ok, but on my own terms’.
So yoga isn’t a tick list of poses to achieve or collect, it won’t mend us because we aren’t broken. Yoga simply asks us to relearn befriending ourselves.
I had a great private teacher in my early days, very strict, very unforgiving, and I come back to their words a lot;
‘Oh you are tired today? Do your practice.’
’Oh you don’t feel like it? Do your practice.’
’Feeling pleased with yourself? Do your practice.
’Happy? Do your practice.’
’Sad? Do your practice.’
’Sore? Do your practice.’
’Angry? Do your practice.’
Showing up to yoga when you don’t want to and when you do is the same teaching as in a balance or a pose when we talk about being ok if it happens and ok if it dosn’t.
The detachment and the doing is a powerful place to be. No one’s coming to fix things or rescue you so, do your practice.
