17/06/2025
FB is asking me ‘What’s on your mind…’ ?!!!!
Well…….. actually as you ask Facebook ….
I’d like to try to describe the basics of what I shared at ‘Yoga in the Park’
The title of the session was ‘Yoga for over-thinkers and anxiety sufferers’ and I only had 45 mins !!!! 🤣
I had three main points of reference :
1/ Establishing that no-one there had never suffered from either of the above - no hands were raised!
Conclusion - we are all in this together! And it turns out it’s not a case of everyone else having it all sussed and the rest of us just aren’t good enough. 😅😮💨
2/ That maybe people who experience everyday anxiety and ‘over-thinking’ are naturally of a deep caring nature and are generally thorough and aware which is a good thing but sometimes gets out of balance and can become over-whelming.
Conclusion - we don’t necessarily need to get rid of anything but maybe more like understand what’s going go on and be a bit kinder to ourselves.
3/ The practice on the mat is - developing the ability to ‘know’ exactly how we are feeling and to respond in a way that’s helpful and creates more of a balance. Eg where do you notice tension (in your body, breathing and/or mind) and can you, after allowing it, let go of any unnecessary holding or effort where-ever, however you feel it? This is a process of exploration with no judgement about the outcome.
Conclusion - Creating enough space to notice how we feel and to trust our intuition in order to choose how to respond is a transferable skill for our everyday lives which is actually the point of yoga!
Once we start to become more and more familiar with how we feel we can choose activities or the order of priority of activities accordingly.
This skill is especially useful when we are feeling overwhelmed by thoughts or emotions as the antidote to wanting to get rid or beating ourselves up is actually really simple!!
But this needs some habit breaking 😉
Because it turns out we are really good at being understanding and kind to others but not so good at doing that for ourselves !
So maybe when-ever we feel unsettled or overwhelmed we can listen, allow it and then check if it’s built on truth but ultimately choose something soothing and settling and whatever will make us feel happiest so that we can allow our body to regain equilibrium naturally. It may be yoga, call a friend, eat some cake or slob out on the tv to your favourite show (can you guess which one/‘s mine?!!) it doesn’t matter what it is, your body will soon let you know if it’s helping. If we can’t do it straight away, we can plan the next available time to do that!
When we know we are feeling full of beans then that’s the time to rip through the to-do list! The point is we ‘know’ how we are feeling.
I hope this is all making sense?!
So…..own oxygen mask on first and much much patience, kindness and understanding for ourselves in order for us to help each other even more - as one of my Tibetan teachers Tsoknyi Rinpoche says in his wonderful accent ‘double happy!!’ 🥰
If you got to the end of this then WOW and thanks for listening 🙏🏻☺️
Jacquelyn x
