This is a blog post I guest wrote for KaileenElise.com last week and I thought I’d share it here as well.  Please do go and check out Kaileen’s site though, it’s magnificent!

“Yoga is to attain what was previously unattainable”

(picture taken by me in Sydney Botanical Gardens, NSW, Australia)

The quote above is from TKV Desikachar, son of Krishnamacharya and author of yoga must-read The Heart of Yoga, is one that has resonated with me for years, and one which I have come back to again and again.

When I first read it, way back before I had even thought about training to teach yoga, I automatically associated it with yoga asana (poses). There were so many asana that seemed unattainable to me and I thought if I practice, practice, practice I could do anything.

This turned out to be true, just not in the way I originally thought.

Many years and many teacher trainings later, there are still asana that are unattainable to me. But what yoga has helped me attain is a greater sense of acceptance. Acceptance of my own limitations as well as my strengths and areas of improvement.

I genuinely believe that a regular yoga practice (and by regular I mean whatever is right for you – it could be a weekly class, or 10 minutes of mindful breathing each day, some stretches when you get out of bed, or just lying with your legs up the wall after a day at work) can help to bring acceptance into all areas of your life.

Let’s look at your creative life.

So many people say to me, “Oh but I am not creative at all, I’m just not that type of person.”

I have news for you! We are ALL that type of person. We are all creative, whether we paint or draw, write in a journal regularly, bake cakes or make curry. Whether we knit or sew, blog, help our kids with school projects or take photographs. We are creating, creating, creating all the time and sometimes it takes unrolling a yoga mat and getting your stretch on to help us see that.

When I work with one-to-one clients or with workshops looking to unleash their creative sides I use three very simple techniques. All of these are powerful in their own right, whenever you have the time or space but I believe that they work on an even deeper level after a yoga practice. So next time you unroll your mat, why not see if you can wake that creative spark with one of these ideas?

1. Make a Dream Board
Dream Boards, Vision Boards and Collages are all over the internet these days – and for good reason. Not only are they an easily attainable creative tool, but they work! After your practice, set yourself up on your mat with some old magazines and tear out any pictures that speak to you or make your heart sing. Paste your pictures to a large piece of card or pin them to a pinboard somewhere you will see them regularly and be inspired by your own creativity and the images that ring true. You might want to keep your Dream Board with your yoga mat for practice time or have it on the wall near your practice space.

2. Write in  a Journal
After your yoga practice why not write about it? Just take a few minutes to jot down thoughts and feelings, how the practice made you feel, what you found challenging, what you found felt good. After a while you might find that you are able to write more and more, tracking your emotions and their effects on your practice. You can even combine a Dream Board idea into this by pasting inspiring quotes and pictures into the pages or onto the cover of your journal. It is from the pages of such a journal, started during Yoga Teacher Training, that this blog was born!

3. Bake a Cake
Yes really! If in doubt, bake a cake. Get off your mat and into the kitchen and apply the same mindful concentration to the preparation of ingredients that you did to your practice. And when it comes time to eat the cake eat it slowly and mindfully as well. Savour it. Enjoy it. Know that you created this! I have some simple cake recipes up on my recipe page.  Go check them out if you like!

How do you unleash your creative side?

Earlier this year I’d had enough.  I’d had enough of writing about yoga, of talking about yoga, of posting sequences and videos here on this blog.  I know you guys were all loving it, but sometimes you have to step back from what you do and look at it with fresh eyes and learn to let go of what no longer serves you.

In January my business really started to change.  Up until then my focus had always been on group yoga classes and a few one-to-ones.  Then with my massage qualifications finished the focus switched to massage clients – and consequently, maybe because I began thinking about individuals rather than groups, the number of one-to-one yoga clients I got increased rapidly. And group classes began to fade away, something for other people in the area to do.

At the same time my interest in the yoga blogosphere waned a little.  The whole of 2010 seemed to be one yoga controversy after another and when it rumbled on into 2011 with the constant bellyaching about what constitutes “real” yoga I stopped reading.  I had other things to write about what with going to Australia and the Foos releasing a new album.  I just blogged about whatever came into my head.

This weekend I had a bit of a breakthrough/breakdown (the two have a tendency to go hand in hand).  There have been a couple of major changes to my schedule over the last few weeks.  Things that I had been teaching that, come September I will no longer be teaching.  It all came as a bit of a shock at first – I won’t go into details here, just suffice to say nothing is ever easy is it?

And then I realised that the time has come to let these things go.  The time has come to move my focus to working with individuals on a much deeper level, to help my clients get ownership of their own bodies again, to help them remove blocks, create energy, enhance joy!  Because who wouldn’t want to do that?

The upset and reluctance comes from a lack of belief in myself.  Who am I after all to think I can work with people on this sort of level?

Someone with six years of training and experience that’s who!! And yes, there’s a lot to learn – the final stage of my Pilates training starts in September and then there’s something else even more exciting that might happen – but that doesn’t mean the time isn’t right to take a big step forward.  Just because group classes are what I’ve always done, doesn’t mean it’s what I will always do.

And yes, Cambridge readers, I will be keeping my lovely Sunday morning yoga class.  I’m not giving up on you all completely!

This realisation has reignited a spark in me to write about what I know – yoga, massage, holistic bodycare, business start up – things I’ve done and loved.  There’s no agenda, no particular regularity but there will be blog posts and I hope you read it.

So much has changed over the last 12 months since I wrote this post and so much will continue to change, because that’s life.  It’s time I embraced the journey!

And for what it’s worth, “real” yoga? Well it’s whatever works for you!

Today I have a little present for you all.

A 30 minute yoga sequence for you to download along with a pdf overview to help you along.  It’s a nice gentle sequence to help soothe the breath and balance the senses and it’s suitable for everyone.  Just right click on the links below to download.

(NB I uploaded this sequence for the blog last October so some of you may already have this.  That download link ran out a few weeks ago so I thought I’d do a more permanent link for you all)

Breath + Balance Sequence mp3

Breath + Balance Sequence pdf

Enjoy your Wednesday!

(image source)