Strengthening and Stretching our Minds and Bodies Through Yoga

For a long time, I pushed yoga away and never felt connected to it, but recently, I have found the beauty, joy, and immense benefits of incorporating yoga into my life. As someone who struggles to slow down and focus on one thing at once, yoga has helped me do so. I still need much improvement in that department, but I have become more aware of these tendencies. To me, yoga helps us connect more deeply to ourselves through mindfulness, breath, and movement. It reminds us of the interconnectedness of the physical and the mental; our mind affects our body, and our body affects our mind, which isn’t a concept taught enough.

Slowing down and focusing on one thing at once connects with practicing presence, which yoga helps with as well. I regularly practice yoga with Yoga with Adriene, and throughout her practices, she reminds us to set aside what we have going on and focus on our current movement and breath. When she says this, I often notice I have been thinking about what I have to do next and have almost forgotten that I’m currently doing yoga. It makes me wonder, why do we always think about what’s next? What about what's now? We let the present slip away as we obsess about the future, and when the future becomes the present, we think about the future again. It's a continuous cycle and causes us to miss out on the intricate, simple beauties of the present. While I think this is a lifetime battle and natural human habit, yoga helps bring awareness to it, and awareness helps us push ourselves to improve.

There have been times when yoga has helped me work through something and move forward through acknowledgment and awareness. Last summer, I had this repetitive, unnecessary, and unproductive thought crossing my mind. I went to a yoga class one day, and the instructor asked us to set an intention for the practice and set aside unhelpful thoughts. Resonating with this, I narrowed in on this goal, acknowledged my thought, and let it flutter away. When it returns, I think of this class and how it felt to let it go.

Yoga has presented me with many physical and mental benefits by strengthening and stretching my body and mind. These benefits, and yoga and its philosophies, need to be made accessible to all. In the United States, yoga has been westernized, culturally appropriated, and stereotypically available to only white, wealthy people due to its high costs and the areas where yoga studios exist. People are typically not educated about yoga, and it's regularly misunderstood and misinterpreted. I once thought yoga was just slow stretching through particular poses, but it's so much more! Teaching yoga needs to become normalized and prioritized.

One beautiful thing about Yoga with Adriene is that she provides countless diverse and quality yoga classes online for free. She has exposed people across the world to yoga and has made quality yoga and mindfulness accessible to the greater community. The other week I wrote an article for the Commonwealth Times about Project Yoga, an organization in Richmond known for its donation-based yoga classes and with a mission to make yoga accessible to all. The organization’s operations shut down in Fall 2022, but they currently work to rebrand, reorganize, and rename themselves to better reflect their mission. I spoke to the organization's founder, Jonathan Miles, who explained he felt the organization had become too corporate and big for what they wanted to do. He hopes to refocus the organization on fully representing yoga and providing all communities in Richmond, particularly marginalized ones, with access to yoga. People like Adriene and Jonathan help expose more people to yoga and its philosophies and create a non-exclusive and accessible environment.

As the world becomes more aware, in tune, and proactive about mental illness and health, it is more important than ever to continue to increase yoga’s accessibility and better incorporate it into mental health. That could mean more free yoga for all or incorporating yoga into the education system. I have observed that when confronting mental illness, the solution is oftentimes medication. While mental illness medications certainly have their place, in many situations, it's providing a quick solution, not a long-term one. People need lifelong practices such as yoga, to help them live with strong emotions and be aware of them. Yoga helps embrace, acknowledge, and notice emotions, which aligns with working through challenging feelings and mental states. Yoga will ask you to observe and recognize the sensations and feelings felt throughout your body and mind, helping you become closer to and more aware of yourself. I believe these practices will help create a positive understanding of mental health and provide healthy practices when living with mental illness.

Yoga has provided me with many benefits, and it makes me joyous to see people like Adriene and Jonathan working to make it accessible for more people because it could have a positive place in everybody’s lives.