Unlocking Spirituality in Yoga

Yoga is a funny thing.

Is it just exercise? Is it just meditation? Does it right off the bat mean you’re “spiritual” when you practice yoga or the moment you strike a downward facing dog pose, light incense, or chant “ohm”?

The answer is no (lol). It’s the same as saying you can become physically fit, lose weight, be healthy, and mentally resilient overnight after doing two pushups, eating spinach, and doing a 5-min meditation. Spirituality is a journey, and it’s usually an evolving one. And the beauty is you get to define what that looks like for you as you grow in the different chapters of your life.

I’m still defining what spirituality is for me. And even though I’ve been teaching yoga for over a decade, I only started developing a spiritual practice within the last year. In fact, I had to be coached. As an Army veteran with a background in the IT world, I’m highly logical and analytic, constantly calculating cause and effect in whatever decisions I make and trying to foresee chess moves of others based on mine. There was a false sense of control, gripping, and constant action that sometimes lead to burn-out, exhaustion, and irritability. This is so far from being spiritual that learning how to be more heart-based, to trust in my intuition, to let things “be”, and just follow my gut-instincts was hardly a conscious thing. However, it became clear that being a mom of my three boys totally leaned on the spiritual side. I trusted myself on navigating motherhood and my family. I’m also an artist, a writer, and a creator. I leaned into the trust on when to create, how to create, what to create, and just knowing or feeling when something isn’t quite right. It’s less analyzing but feeling and finding flow and ease…once I allowed it.

For me, it also meant leaning into my femininity (as much as I still hate to admit it), and learning how to soften my dominant masculine traits. All for the sake of finding balance. For now this is how I define my own path to spirituality. It’s actual very simple. It’s a path to understanding who I really am and coming back to her. The decision to start looking inward and doing the hard work of being more “spiritual” opened my world. I started leaning into things that had always gave me more joy but never allowed myself the time to indulge without guilt. In a year’s time of spiritual work I completed writing my first book, hosting my first ever gallery of cat paintings, and on the path of leaving my corporate job… successfully.

So what does Unlocking Your Own Spirituality mean for you? If you’re ready to start or dive deeper into your own path, join us on Sunday, September 21 from 12-5pm for our playshop with Triccia Ramos, my own personal mentor and coach! I’m so excited to share her with you all and hope it kickstarts your own transformations in exploring you own inner world.

With so much love,

-Christa