Self-Love / Empowerment

Self acceptance is fostered through a yoga practice. We become more in tune and comfortable with ourselves.

Mindful breathing allows us to replace negative chatter in our heads with stillness, or a  mantra of self love.

Physically, we learn to become accepting of our bodies.

• Challenging poses build self confidence and empowerment. 

• flowing movements invite self-expression and connect us to our  wholeness. 

•  We learn to not take ourselves too seriously when we can't , for  example, stay in our tree pose. We learn to laugh at ourselves in  a loving way.

Yoga can also help change negative patterns or commit to positive ones. Cultivating self-compassion helps us stick to resolutions- and build a better life. Often, if we don't stick to our resolution, we become self-critical, judging ourselves, and feeling the fear, shame and guilt that accompanies this. If being hard on ourselves is counter-productive, then why do we do it?

According to Patanjali- the author of one of Yoga’s main writings -we mistake the behavior we want to change for who we are, rather than seeing it for what it is - a pattern or habit that's not serving us. A fundamental principal of yoga is that, deep inside, we are truly perfect just as we are. When we realize ourselves as fundamentally perfect instead of focusing on our flaws, we can see our negative patterns without judgment.

Yoga is the process of cleaning the mind and whatever is blocking the inner light - the part of you that doesn't need to be fixed, controlled or perfected. When we think of changing a pattern that's not serving us in this way- that is, cleaning away accumulated dust of the mind, which blocks your just-right Self- it causes us to view the negative behavior from a more compassionate point of view.