What happens to you when your body is stressed physically, you’re out of breath and your muscles are fatigued? Do you quit, do you face the challenge, and do you curse yourself or start to blame the people around you for your uncomfortableness? We all fall into these traps of reaction, but the good news is that we can learn to manage these reactions to physical challenge with a little more grace and ease. By doing this we create new behavioral patterns that lend to a healthy form of reaction to the stresses of life.
Joga is a challenging physical practice that completely throws you out of your comfort zone. The work is focused around the smaller muscles groups that are usually not tended to in regular workouts. Joga teaches you how to use your core more efficiently and move with awareness though the kinetic chain. What’s interesting is to observe how each individual reacts to this practice that requires attention to detail and precision.
The goal is to give techniques- whether it be through breath or visualization to help the practitioner get through the challenge and help them try not to react to the physical threshold their bodies are being faced with. The reality is- faces begin to grimace, flashes of glares are thrown at me, the instructor, and sometimes you may see someone just quit and walk out the room.
So how can we change? The key is to become aware of what you are re-acting to- is it the physical challenge, fear of failing – maybe the judgment of others. Once we bring awareness into the equation, intelligence follows shortly. Whether it be fear, challenge or judgment- if we could just breath and count to five, the negative emotion that begins to surface will subside, we reach the other side with no harsh reaction, and most importantly, we create a positive association to a stressful situation.
By creating these new habits, not only do we begin to practice non-re activeness in physical situations, but we are then able to translate this new behavior to stresses of life. We become more aware and emotionally intelligent – a more pleasant human being. After all ‘life is 1% what happens to us and 99% how we react to it.’
