After a beautiful indoor cycling, the best thing you can do is to have a cold shower and going to a sauna to relax those quads, calf, hamstrings. Breathing slowly, diaphragmatic breathing, cross-legged.
And yes I know what you are thinking, you are practicing yoga, why would you do something else than yoga. Well just because you are a yogi doesn’t mean you cannot do anything else than yoga. We have the bad conception of what a yogi really is.
You see all the gurus, and all the images of how a yogi should be, flexible, and a skinny body, eating vegetables, or being vegan.
Well it is like we are always following these stereotypes created by everyone, how you should be, not to do etc. How is this any different from the stereotype the society is creating, what it means to be the MAN or the Woman, both business successful very rich, because if not you are not “successful”, expensive cars, diamonds so you can show yourself in big events, that you are so much better than everyone else etc. The thing is that if you fell dominant, you will not prove it, if you know you are better there is no point proving to someone that, because it is just stupid. You don’t have to prove nothing to no one, you just have to believe it yourself.
But the idea is that, success is different to everyone of us, has different meaning, some in their frustration want power, some want “everything”, to compensate the fact they feel they are nothing inside, so you need everything to fill an infinite empty space, and so on.
It is about loving yourself, and realizing you are more than all those people, just because you chose your own path, that makes you special, not choosing a path that has already been walked.
So for me when two yogi are the same, one of them didn’t understand what this existence is all about.
Yoga is about being yourself, unique. I am not trying to be neither Jesus or Mohamed, Patanjali or Buddha, I don t wish for supernatural powers to fly and to heal everybody, I just want a better version of myself.
Yoga is not about being super flexible, doing handstands for hours, bending your body like a contortionist.
For me being like that, and bragging about it, or the need to show your students how advanced you are is like Showing a “special”(handicap) person in a wheelchair how fast you can run. You just don’t do that.
And I m just pointing out the difference between practicing “on and off”, and be devoted to your practice.
Yoga is about raising yourself, and then help others to raise themselves.
Is the place where there is no judgement, where you came and face your fears, the fear of new, the fear of being yourself, the fear of committing to something, the fear of silence, the fear of knowing who you are.
Yoga is about being conscious, awake, and when you take a decision like eating meat, you will know how that will affect you.
When you have one glass of wine more, you know what that will bring in you. When you eat chips and drink coke, you know the pain you are inflicting to your stomach. But is a choice, you are making and being responsible for it, to yourself, not to others.
You have the freedom to do whatever you want!
Now you can still make those choices and nothing is wrong or wright, you just have to realize the price you are paying.
It is ok to do mistakes, that is how 99% of people learn, just some small percentage learn from the mistakes of others.
Mistakes is what makes us human, and let us change this word “mistake” is like something is bad. It is ok to have experiences that are not all, positive.
“Good judgement comes with experience, experience comes with bad judgement.”
It is like the best lessons in life, we take by suffering. We need this kind of drama in our life , to see the beauty of this world, there is no good without the bad. So having a beautiful life is not about, dodging the bad all the time, is to realize, that when something bad comes into your life is ok, is like rain, it will pass, and the sun will shine again, and the fact that you are in that situation to learn something, and the lesson will be amazing.
There is no beauty in our idea of a God without the idea of Devil, so we should be thankful to the devil, he s doing a great PR job. Even if God and Devil, are one and the same, but we ll come to that understanding later, when the mind starts seeing the bigger picture.
Yoga is about building a strong unique identity, being yourself, fearless expression of yourself. Rising to the full potential of your mind, body and spirit.
Create your own stereotype, and make of yourself the example you want to follow in life.