5 Essential Life Lessons I've Learned by Doing Yoga

Since I started doing Yoga a lot of different points of view opened in front of my eyes and the perception I had updated with new beautiful colors.

I’ve started to see the world through brighter glasses because Yoga thought me 5 things that will change your perception on life.

These lessons are true no matter if you do Yoga or not, no matter if you know them or not and no matter if you care or not.

5. The Present is All that Matters

We are used to wander through our past, relieve it over and over again, sometimes even twisting it into something that never really happened. Most of our time we plan our futures but as John Lennon said, Life passes exactly while we are busy planning our futures.

The main goal of Yoga is resurfacing you in the present moment. This is achieved through focusing on our breathing and our existence in the present moment, here and now.

There are no worries here and now, you just exist and that makes you happy. This realization makes us understand that 99% of what we think our reality is, doesn’t actually exist, the only thing that exists is that moment, the present, here and now. The only thing we were ever able to control is our present. The most important thing is the present moment; it is where we build our future present moment.

4. The 2 Sides of Pain

We spent so much time of our lives afraid of pain but what we don’t realize is that the pleasures which we desperately seek are actually as same kind of sensation as pain. The only difference between pain and pleasure is the intensity.

Yoga poses include stretching and when we stretch sometimes we experience pain. But, the point of Yoga is not pain of course. So, why do we feel pain when we are doing Yoga poses?

The thing is, because the intensity of pleasure is smaller than pain sometimes we neglect the pleasure and over-stretch ourselves inflicting our bodies with pain. If we just forget about improvement and focus on the moment and the pleasure in the moment, without over thinking what we should do but feeling what we should do, we will master Yoga in no time.

And not just Yoga but real life also. Many times we destroy beautiful things in life because we over-think them, because we try to improve them.

If we focus on feeling them instead of understanding them we will enjoy them more instead of making them painful. There is no point in forcing pleasure because force transforms the pleasure into pain and harmony is the only way we can bring the pleasure back.

3. Love vs. Fear

There are 2 ways you can perceive everything with, through love or through fear. There are 2 ways you can act upon anything, through love or through fear. Love opens and fear closes, love frees and fear imprisons.

Love creates and fear destroys. Many of us live our lives not even aware of how afraid we actually are. Some of us don’t even know what fearless love feels like.

While you do Yoga, as I said it is necessary to do certain poses in which it is required to stretch your body. While we stretch we usually stress our bodies, we think if we tighten our muscles we would stretch more which is absurd. All we need to do is let go and relax ourselves.

When we are relaxed our joints and whole bodies can stretch more, that’s a fact. So, why do we tighten our muscles? It’s because we are scared we won’t do the exercise good enough, we are scared to disappoint the instructor and most importantly ourselves.

Fear tightens our muscles, increases our heart rate, promotes production of adrenaline and shortens the blood flow in our brain. In other words fear prepares us for battle no matter if you are just arguing with your boyfriend. This physical profile disables us to reason, to think clearly and find solutions. Fear imprisons us in our own mind. What love does is the opposite.

Love relaxes us, love makes us enjoy the present and be happy. Love makes us free to follow our heart. Love makes us do the exercise as amazing as we possibly can.

2. Focus is The Most Important Element for Success

How many times you felt overwhelmed, like you are doing your job and all, but at the end of the day, when you recap what you’ve done it turns out that you haven’t done anything. This is because we lack the ability to focus. We are constantly multitasking with 2, 3, 4, 5, sometimes even more things throughout the day.

In Yoga when you focus on one thing, let’s say counting from 100 to 0, everything else blurs. Yes, you still have distracting thoughts, “Where did I put my phone?”, “Where is my other purse?”, “What will I eat for dinner?” but if you don’t let any of them to actually break your focus, in a short time they disappear.

The clarity of your mind enables it to use its full potential on the task you are doing. “Being focused on one thing.” - This is what 1000 successful people said when being asked what was the most important skill to their success.

1. Being Yourself Means Harmony Between Your Mind and Body

Have you ever thought, who is this that is thinking? We are not even aware that there are 2 personalities in most of us, the one is your true self following all of your passions and not caring how the hell it acts wherever it is, and the other is that voice in your head that judges you. Some distinct these 2 personalities as the Soul and the Ego.

In Yoga, it is necessary to establish harmony between your mind - the way you control your breathing - and your body - the way your body moves -. This process merges those 2 personalities into one and you become whole.

After Yoga you are more harmonious with yourself which means your soul and ego are 1 and you are acting through your own intentions without judging yourself because, well that’s what you feel like doing. Yoga is the practice of getting to know yourself.