Yoga is sweeping the nation. People from all walks of life are falling in love with the practice and actively finding ways to deepen their understanding of this thing called yoga. One might suspect that the reasons people love their yoga rivals those of people who love running, or spin classes, or a good cardio workout at the gym. However, it would appear that this is not the case. When inquiring of our community members their specific reasons for loving yoga, the answers revealed were vastly differently from one might expect.
Did people come to yoga to gain physical strength and tone their bodies? Did people furiously purchase studio punch passes to lose weight or become healthier? Perhaps as a New Year’s resolution?
Not really. 
Instead, people shared reasons that were personal, heartfelt and insightful.
Selfishly, some of us love yoga because it is … “ the one thing in our lives where we can focus solely on ourselves, on our bodies and our souls, without having any outside distractions,”
and because it is…
“One of the only times and sacred spaces during which we can return to our true nature. On my mat and with my breath, I find the sea of calmness that I struggle to find in the external world. From this place, I return to my core self – including my authentic beliefs, feelings and reactions. For a few brief moments, I feel at peace with the world and with myself.”
Others of us love yoga because it is “ a practice… always a practice… there is no test or exam or big game Yoga has no performance standard.” Instead, yoga reminds us to embrace the present moment through breath and movement from the heart. It keeps us honest in this way.
It is also…
” Free of judgement. We are liberated to move and to play in a way that feels authentically right for us – in this given moment.
For others, yoga is a deeply spiritual practice, a sacred opportunity because it connects us to the divine. The place that we know is always there that we sometime lose in the chaos of the fast pace world.
“Yoga is my space to go deep within ourselves and become one with nothingness. It’s the most magical place there is.”
And for many of us, yoga is an avenue for finding stability and grounding in a world, whirling wayward in chaos, worry, fear and stress.
Although a consistent yoga practice will likely strengthen and stretch our physical bodies, making us “feel” healthier, it is the deeper aspects that truly heal us. Perhaps the better question is, why not love yoga?
When we practice yoga, we release energies bound up in our physiology.
These energies have to go somewhere. Some of these energies comes off our bodies as heat. Some as emotional releases. Some, I’d argue the larger share, is released through our chakra system to our higher dimensional, higher consciousness, Source Selves. That part of our Being that exists beyond the physical.
The connection through our chakra system to our Source Self is a two-way connection.
What we release is proportionally returned to us through that connection.
You can think of it like a jello mold.. If you push your finger into jello, your finger goes in, and jello squishes out.
The bound up energy we release from our physiology can ‘process’ through our chakra system and return to our Source Self, that giant jello mold in the sky… and squishes back into our physiology as unrefracted Source energy.
You can make of that what you will, but don’t hold yourself to it..