For those of you that are new here: On my 24th birthday, I published a free, very short and simple little thing called ‘Girl Meets Yoga’. If you want to read it, all you have to do is click here: It’s very easy to read in iBooks on iPads & iPhones, but since it’s .PDF I think it’s Kindle-friendly too!
Nowadays, whenever I have a little extra time (which is not that often, but still!) I write a little for the sequel of ‘Girl Meets Yoga’. The sequel will have a little more depth and it will be longer — since that’s what most of my readers requested. I’m writing more about what yoga is doing for me now, now that I’ve been doing it for a while, instead of what yoga has done for me while I was getting into it.
The excerpt below is basically how the book is built up: I may write about yoga, but it’s also about everything else. You can usually apply whatever you learn in a yoga class to lots of other areas in your life. Which is handy, I love a good multitask as you can read below. Enjoy!
“This may not seem very profound at first sight, but hey, Disney movies don’t seem profound either but they carry brilliance inside them. Remember that. So the thing is, in yoga class there is one posture where you have to bend your upper body over your lower body, to touch your forehead on your feet eventually.
Which in my case is still a million miles away from actually happening. Before yoga I was a runner, which means this posture is even harder for me. I usually spent the entire posture just trying not to bust a vein while pulling and stretching at the same time. You’re basically bent over yourself like a sheet of paper folded in half. It’s very tough on me: I usually can’t wait for it to be over the moment it started. .
And then all of a sudden, I’m in a class and my yoga teacher Isabella says: “Okay, now put a big smile on your face!” …Um, what now?
I’m upside down as it is, trying to keep my upper body against my legs while trying to stretch while trying to get my face further down my legs and now I was expected to smile to boot. There is only so much multitasking even a woman can handle.
But, obedient grasshopper that I am, I did it. Just the notion of me standing like that and smiling like an idiot made me smile like an even bigger idiot. And when I was genuinely smiling, the posture didn’t feel so hard anymore. I could hold on more easily and that really helped my alignment. What’s more, over time as Isabelle instructed us to put a big smile on our face whenever we did this posture, I actually started to like it. Had not seen that one coming!
Something crazy happens when you put a big smile on your face: Things become easier. I started putting a big smile on my face while experiencing a shitty writer’s block; it made the words flow more easily. I put on a big smile when thinking about other people. I started putting a big smile on my face while thinking of my problems*.
I could get into the whole neurochemistry thing that smiling triggers, but all you need to know is that a smile automatically releases neurotransmitters that make you feel good, or at least better. And feeling good helps absolutely everything in life. Not just in a yoga posture, but also when faced with a difficult client at work, going through a rough patch with your partner, a bad day or any type of other personal crisis.
I encourage you to try it. Think of a problem in your life and put a smile on your face. Whenever you feel down, consciously lift up the corners of your mouth and smile for a second. When you’re doing something hard at work, smile while you’re doing it. Try to maintain that smile as long as you can. It may lift you, help you.
…And even if it doesn’t, at least you’ll be camera-ready.
*most of them first world and nerd, but hey, even first world people & nerds have some genuine trouble in their lives.”
