Practicing presence through yoga, meditation and mindfulness
Hello Gurus!
I hope you are doing well during this midterm season, and that you had the chance to reconnect with friends, family and most importantly, yourself, over the holiday weekend.
During this busy time, with so many life shifts and preparations for the new year, it can feel like there are countless checkboxes to tick off on the never-ending to-do list. As such, I think it is important to take time amidst the chaos to reconnect with ourselves and our bodies. That’s why this month, I spoke with student and yoga instructor Alexa Bates, who teaches two vinyasa flow classes at the University of Guelph Athletics Center.
Her insight into mindfulness and breathwork is both insightful and reassuring since Bates is a fifth-year environmental engineering student at the University of Guelph. If anyone understands the stress of midterms and upcoming grad school applications, it’s her.
Whether you are feeling lost, overwhelmed or just burnt out, this month’s habit is for you, as we will be covering the benefits of yoga and mindfulness as a tool to reinvigorate our sense of self, purpose and inner peace.
It can often feel as if life is coming at us, with overlapping assignment deadlines, bills to pay, messages to answer and the uncertainty of what’s next. Sometimes, it may even feel as if we have no control over anything in our lives. I’m here to remind you that this is not the case.
Despite it feeling this way in moments of busyness and burden, you are always in control. You have the ability to choose how to react and navigate through difficult tasks and times of uncertainty. Your power comes from within. It comes from practicing and prioritizing inner peace and presence.
When you master the art of presence, and focus on one thing at a time—one moment at a time or one task at a time—you not only simplify things for yourself by narrowing the scope of your concern, but you also take back your life and the time you spend worrying about things that are out of your control.
There is no better way to practice this skill than through yoga and meditation.
“Yoga fosters a sense of connection with yourself, [since] you’re moving through poses leading with your breath, and that breath influences the way you’re moving,” Bates said.
Integral to yoga’s uniqueness is its prioritization of mindfulness.
Specifically, Bates conceptualizes mindfulness as “intention and prioritizing feeling present throughout your day.”
The multiplicity of mindfulness is what makes it special.
“Mindfulness can look like a million different things. It can look like going to a yoga class, but it can also look like reading a book before bed and slowing down your body that way. Or mindfulness can even look like having a really healthy meal that fuels you,” Bates said.
To Bates, mindfulness is just “intentionally treating your body with a lot of care and love.”
This concept of self-care and self-connectivity is intertwined with presence and inner peace, which can be accessed through yoga and meditation. When explaining the relationship between yoga and meditation, Bates highlights how the two practices differ in focus and form.
She said, “Yoga leads with breath and flows through poses and movements. Whereas meditation focuses on stillness, and so you are still in whatever pose you like.”
Both practices involve breathwork, presence and bodily connection.
“It really doesn’t matter what pose you’re in and how you’re moving, or if you’re a little bit more of a beginner, because as long as you let your breath lead you, and you either inhale or exhale before you move,” Bates said, explaining the foundational components of the practice.
Bates feels that yoga is meaningful because “it gives students the opportunity to move their body and improve flexibility, while also moving through calm, slow and intentional breath work that naturally calms the nervous system, allowing for students to get the movement that they need in their day, while also prioritizing mental health at the same time.”
In terms of meditation, she feels that its value comes through its immediate pathway to a quick calm.
“You only need a couple of minutes to let your body fully come down with that really nice, intentional breath.”
She notes that you can practice meditation almost anywhere.
“If I can’t get to my mat, or I’m just going through my day, I can even meditate super quickly in class or on my walk, or on the bus.”
This on-the-go meditation can be achieved with unguided breaths to calm your nervous system. She also recommends the app Insight Timer that offers guided meditation, with recordings for sessions of two to five minutes that can “teach you exactly how to breathe and calm you down,” Bates said.
“You do not need a lot of time in your day to meditate or even focus on breath work,” Bates said. “It can be as simple as when you’re walking home from school, to just be mindful of your breath for that 10 to 15 minute walk and just see how you can calm yourself down with a really deep inhale and slow exhale.”
That itself is meditation, according to Bates.
So, get started! Roll out your mat, attend Bates’ sunrise or candlelit vinyasa flow class at the Athletics Center, match your breath to your steps or tune into the Insight Timer app she suggested.
If that all feels like too much, just start to notice your breath at moments in the day when you start to feel life pile up. The beauty of mindfulness and meditation is that you can use them anywhere and at any point in time, to reconnect with yourself.
So take a breath and just be.
Until next time.
Lots of Love,
Jorja