YOGA & KINDNESS: Practicing kindness on and off the mat

Sometimes the worst day can change around with a stranger’s smile. The smallest things, the tiny moments are what matter the most. I try to live each day, remembering to spread a little kindness around to others; family, friends or total strangers.

Unfortunately, this works both ways. It’s never a nice feeling if someone is rude or mean, however much we try to distance ourselves from such things, they always impact our day.

So, how about spreading kindness through your day? Treating others as you yourself would like to be treated. If more people tried to live this way, the world would just be that little bit better.

But before we can spread positive energy around to others, it has to come from somewhere. I feel that only if we learn to treat ourselves with kindness is it possible to feel positive towards the world. So, start from yourself, from the inside.

Here, I would like to speak of my daily Ashtanga Yoga practice.

It has been six years since I first took up a regular yoga practice. I start each day stepping on my mat, motivated or not, feeling good or bad, happy or sad. It has become like a daily shower or like brushing my teeth, just part of my routine.

Today, I finally understand that the most important thing is to have empathy towards yourself. Learning to approach this day’s practice with understanding your limitations, whether they’re emotional or physical. Practice kindness on yourself. Yoga is supposed to make us feel better, make our day more positive and help us be better versions of ourselves. Unfortunately, this realisation came quite late in my yoga journey. I wish I had met my current teachers earlier, to make me see this sooner, but maybe this was part of my journey.

I used to approach my yoga practice very physically, like going to the gym. It didn’t matter if I was tired or not, I worked out just the same. So, this is how I transferred from 6-day a week gym sessions to 6-day a week yoga plus gym sessions. I was making my body do much more than it was ready to, also advancing in the ashtanga yoga sequence too quickly. Not yet grounded in my practice, not yet ready to learn the next posture, but doing it just the same. But I did not question the way I was taught, I just thought „bring it on, I can do it!”. 

I will not put you through reading all about my injuries, but there were many. Starting with the knees, ankle, hip, shoulder and more... You name it, I had most possible yoga injuries. The injuries themselves, each and every one, taught me a lesson of what I should not do, how I should not practice.

I was practicing in a quite competitive environment, where everyone was hurrying through the sequence as quickly as possible.  I remember a day, when I was feeling exhausted and the practice was not going too well. My teacher then told me that yoga is hard, it’s not supposed to be easy. While I partly agree with this today, I did not really understand that correctly then. So, I decided to be even harder on myself, as it’s not supposed to be easy. And this way it went on, until one magical day two years ago, when I moved to London.

Here I found myself in a new studio with new teachers. I looked around and saw students practicing so slowly, with a lot of attention and concentration. 

My new teacher, seemed to see what was going on with me from day one. He told me he could see I was „beating myself up with the practice”. I did not understand what that meant at first. I was doing my practice, just ticking it off for the day and didn’t see anything wrong with that at the moment.

It took me two years in a totally new environment to finally come to an understanding and balance in my yoga. Today, I accept myself, my body, my pain and struggles. I step on my mat with no expectations, not trying to compare today’s practice to yesterday’s or myself to anyone else. Each practice is a new experience, each day totally different. One day I feel I am flowing through the asanas with such lightness and ease, the next feeling like a giant blob. But I don’t judge myself, just try to understand why I might be feeling this way. Did I eat too late last night, eat too heavy, not get enough sleep? Or maybe I’m just overworked, sad or a bit down.. 

Today, as a yoga teacher myself, I try to pass this on to my students, helping them accept their body’s limitations. Sometimes I hear my students asking, “is this the way this asana should look like?”. I always answer, that it looks exactly as it should. It is the perfect way this posture should look like for your body, on this specific day.

It’s important to see the yoga practice as a journey and learning not to rush through it, but just enjoying it as it is right now.

Anyway, back to kindness. Every morning I try to start the day being kind to myself on my mat and take that with me out to the world. Spread it to my loved ones, my friends, students, but also strangers, who I pass while hurrying to my next class..

In the Yoga philosophy we learn about ahimsa, non-harm, which is the first of the yamas. Kindness on and off the mat is a part of how I understand ahimsa. More on how I try to live according to the yamas and niyamas in upcoming posts.