Meet yourself on the Mat
What does it mean to meet yourself on the mat? It’s means to use your yoga practice to face your real life problems. The work that you do on your yoga asana practice can transform the work you do off the mat. Anger, self-sabotage, negative self talk, procrastination, resistance, can all be faced head on when you meet yourself on the mat.
What I’m currently working on is leaning into the “edge” or the intensity of a posture. I love vinyasa and I love to flow, so being still is really hard for me (I have two mutables in my personal planets: Virgo Rising and Venus in Pisces). Through out my flow I tend to just pass through the practice, especially if I am offered to explore a challenging asana. Even though I have a really slow and steady practice, I still shy away from intensity. I’m really great at modifying or personalizing a pose, and I even love showing people how to do that. But when it comes to myself, I always try to skip over the “hard parts”.
I was even shown this during the unmedicated labor of the birth of my son. part of my birth plan was to go unmedicated, but as the intensity started coming, I wanted to run, I wanted the meds. But I could not run, it was too late for any intervention! Running seems like a quick and easy solution, but running only delays the moment we finally get to meet ourselves.
Meeting yourself on the mat is a bit of cheat code in this embodiment work. Through meeting yourself on the mat, you get to rehearse, practice, and train your mind to face your shadow or your challenges in a simulation on your mat. For example, poses like chair pose utkatasana are designed to turn up the heat or “tapas” in our body. Tapas is a type of heat that shapes and molds the bodymind for self-discipline. Breathing through the stress and tension that is built up in utkatasana sends signals to our body and energy centers to be able to breath through a challenge that might show up off the mat.
Some people might be aware of how their reality shifts and changes after stepping onto their mat. There have been several times when I’ve gone into my routine yoga practice with no expectation and have woken up in a whole new reality timeline after savasana. The work that we do on our mat, especially for highly sensitive people, is a type of energywork by way of the body. This energywork allows us to be be embodied and congruent in mind, body, and spirit.
When you typically step into any yoga studio, you’ll often hear the teacher say “leave all of your problems outside the door, they’ll be there when you get back”. My offering to you is that you take all of your problems with you into your asana practice, and integrate it into your each breath. Watch the tapas of the intensity of your practice run through your body and your energy centers and reshape you and remold you to remove the old self and the old body. Meet yourself on the mat by facing your challenges with truth and courage. Meeting yourself on the mat may look different at every moment, and it will certainly look different from those around you. Meet yourself on the mat to remember your authentic and most embodied self, and take what you learn and apply it to your real life!
If you’re ready to meet yourself on the mat, book a one on one Empower Flow Yoga session with me. This power yoga class that while very physical, also emphasizes the energy work component of yoga to strengthen the relationship with the fitness of your energy, mental, and emotional bodies. I have 7 premade themes to choose from for your session, including:
Healthy Boundaries
Unconditional Love
Art of Allowing
Grounding & Stability
Balance
Vitality
Inspiration Flow
You are welcome to present your own themes for your session as well. The link to join is here.
