3 Reasons to Find Permission to Pause
YOGA, as well as a really cool physical practice that gives us a great outer bod, also encourages us to take a look under the hood (so to speak) and tinker around for some deeper solutions to life’s daily challenges.
Today’s yoga solution is: Find Permission to Pause.
Let’s be real, only when you draw that line in the sand, pin your flag to the mast, dig in your size sixes and scream ‘enough now’. Then and only then, can things start to shift in your life, evolve – move along baby.
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, whatever you want that result to be is, as Einstein famously put, insane.
I’m not calling anyone crazy, here, but maybe, urmm aren’t we a little?
5 Yogi Answers To Your Pre 26.2 Problems
Yogi-In-Training Q&A
Q: I’m on London Marathon Countdown. How can yoga help me prepare for my best 26.2?
First of all awesome work. It takes big-ass discipline and determination to get this close to your 26.2 and I know it’s not easy. I earned my medal (that’s mine opposite) four years ago. I was a super fledging yogi-in-training (BC – Before Chopra) and using yoga asana (poses) purely for the physical benefits, as a lot of us do.
Truth is I didn’t really get that there was much more to it. I may even have shrugged it off as not for me. Big mistake.
I didn’t know just how much yoga could offer a massive edge to my training, performance and overall wellbeing. I’m here today (AC – After Chopra) to show you how it can and if you’re open, to share some yoga inspired pre-marathon preparations to send you on your way to your best 26.2. Feel free to share them with your athletic friends and family.
Girls’ Get up and Go Guide to Yoga
In 5 Easy Steps
Girls has your get up and go, got up and gone? Are you sleeping yet still hitting snooze. Eating less but carrying excess. Popping pills but catching ills? Can you remember when you last felt your best self?
Yoga has your back…
…No Yoga Pants Required
Chickadees however you feel about your health today this does not have to be your normal. You do not have to be resigned to it or get used to it. My mission is to show you how yoga can get you back – to you.
3 Ways Yoga Can Help You Taper
Yogi-In-Training Q&A
Q: I’m in training for a spring marathon. How can yoga help me taper?
A: Taper, peak, fade – whatever you call it, it’s that period when you’re supposed to be training less than you have before. You’ve logged the super long miles or sessions and the plan says it’s time to pull back, let the body catch up, recover. Sounds great, you can do that right?
Not so straight-forward. Why? Because it’s way, way too easy to fall into the human trap of thinking more is more. (You know you think that way – you’re a competitor. It goes with the territory.)
So you stop trusting the plan and maybe add on a few hours. Or you pull back and your mind starts flipping you out, the confidence you’ve worked hard to accumulate takes a dive and before you know it, your anxiety is through the roof and you don’t even have your old faithful sport to distract you.
The solution: Drop a few key yoga tools into your taper plan.
3 Yogi-in-Training Ways to…
Overcome your open water fears
Hang on… before you ditch this blog. Before you say ‘no way Josie’, I’m no triathlete, nope, not a chance…why would I want to do that? Hear me out.
Ask yourself first my yogi friends, do you love to exercise and stay active? Great, me too. It makes me feel better physically and mentally. Simple. But did you know the setting you exercise in can add on extra benefits?
Water and “blue” space helps us relax and can potentially give us more of a mental boost than slogging it out in the gym, or at home where we’re dodging distractions and sensory stimuli. You know – your phone, TV, music, apps etc.
When we’re near the water, under the water, we get a cognitive rest. We find a sense of calm and clarity. We know intuitively and instinctively that being in and around the blue stuff makes us feel great and it’s also a very real thing scientifically.
Check out your latest Yogi-In-Training blog to learn more and maybe I can tempt you to dig into these 3 top yogi tools to get you over any first-time open water fears.
Go on, dive in…it might be cold, but it’s also totally exhilarating.
Yoga-In-Training: Introducing the journal
A list of the small stuff
Start where you are and keep going. It’s a great mantra for us all. Just get going and keep going.
So, that’s what this yogi-in-training is doing. Taking small steps, easy steps that feel good right away to move me a tad closer, any amount, to where I’m headed – a wildly successful yogi and business entrepreneur. (We can move small but there’s no reason to think small.)
Now, it’s hard to see how those little things add up, so I’m tracking them. I want to see how this all unfolds. What will be the long-term results of doing the work, showing up…?
Introducing the journal…. log it, blog it, just get it down on paper/screen and watch life change…
A list of the small stuff. Some of it, so far…
YOGI IN TRAINING BLOG: The entrepreneurial adventures of a Yogi in Training.
A never-ending story.
Does anybody have it all figured out? Got it together? Sealed the deal, nailed it down, have it locked and loaded? Really? Does anybody know what they are supposed to be doing? Do you?
Well I don’t. And you know what? I think it’s ok not to have the answers – all the whys. No one does.
What I do know for sure is that I like to ask questions, experience everything I can, explore and learn and that’s always a good place to start.
If you’re out of answers, lost sight of a goal, don’t know what your next step is, come with me as I explain how I’m pushing past a sticky spot and why that means Yogi In Training the Blog is making a comeback.
Hygge or Yogi?
And how to be happy.
Did you know there’s a bunch of people out there who research our happiness? These guys are actively working out which places are happiest and why.
Sadly, my copy of Waitrose Weekend (above) tells me the UK rates at just 23 in the UN’s World’s Happiness Report. It’s the Danes that are taking the top spot in the joy stakes. The reason? A ‘brand of Scandinavian cheer’ called Hygee which is being exported in the form of a book called The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking.
So, what’s the deal? We could all do with some more happiness, right? So, I’m keen to discover what the Danes are up to that us Brits are not… and the answer my yogi friends, got me-a smiling.
7 Day Meditation Practice Challenge
Easy does it….
Most of us know what’s good for us, but choosing to show up and do the work is…dag nam it… sooo, so hard. Even the push of a New Year, the promise of a fresh start, doesn’t stop us from giving up, sometimes before we’ve even started.
Here’s what’ll help – start by making stupidly small, ridiculously easy, steps that throwing up resistance becomes (quite frankly) absurd. This works with any challenge, and it can work with starting a meditation practice too… which leads me to..ta dahhh…
The 7 Day Meditation Practice Challenge.
Each day I invite you to take on one small challenge that will move you slowly in the direction of your meditation mat and hopefully, in small easy steps, to a daily meditation practice.
Have fun diving in to some stillness…
Why is my physio saying yoga is a good idea?
Hands up if you’ve ever had physio? Hands up if the reason you called your physio was down to any one of these?
- Pain
- Limitation
- Frustration
Probably all three right?
Now ask yourself, was something way, WAY off balance before you actually made that call. Had your body stopped talking in whispers and started shouting – “You got to help me out here. Stop doing the thing that you are doing and let’s try and fix this.”
Oh yes – I’ve been there and I know I am not alone.
According to the NHS, the things we mostly seek physio out for include one or more of the following: