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“I want longer hamstrings. I want my hips to open. “I want longer hamstrings. I want my hips to open. I want stronger arms. But then I read that in yoga I’m not supposed to strive. So which is it, am I meant to give up wanting it?”

No, you don’t.

The wanting is what gets you to your edge, on the mat and everywhere else, the same thing at eleven at night when you’re working out whether you’re doing enough with your life. 

What goes wrong is when it carries on past that edge, and you end up with a niggle or an injury, or just lying there, stressing yourself out with nothing more than the thought of it.

Growth happens right on the line, where you feel intensity and not pain, and it stops the second you brace and get tense, whichever room you’re in.

✨ The edge, not the strain ✨ is up on Substack/@catherinehaylock and on my ‘Reflections’ blog this week, link in bio↑.
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#ashtanga #ashtangayoga #yogaphilosophy #yogasutras #patanjaliyogasutras yogaforthemind innerpractice sthirasukham yogateacher ashtangaprimaryseries
Think about what actually happens on the mat or on Think about what actually happens on the mat or on the cushion. We connect to the body and the breath, and that one connection is what keeps us centred, and once we're centred the mind and the nervous system follow along.

A daily morning practice reinforces that connection, of course it does, but the connection itself doesn't have to disappear just because there's no energy for the hour in the morning. It's already familiar to us, so it becomes a matter of training ourselves to hold it for the whole day, not only the hour we usually give it 😉

And once that's true, the morning hour stops being what decides whether we practise or not, the practice has simply moved into the day itself.

This is the work I teach one to one, the Inner Practice, yoga for the mind, no mat and no postures. If you want to know more DM me the words 'inner practice'. 🙏
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#innerpractice #yogaforthemind #dailypractice #ashtanga #meditation #yogatherapy #midlife
I remember my Mysore students telling me they woul I remember my Mysore students telling me they would come back to the daily practice once life had calmed down, once they were in the right space again. It's funny, because the practice is the one thing that could give us stability in turbulent times, and for some of us it becomes another drain of energy instead, energy we don't have to spare.

And that's the trap, the morning practice that would help is the one practice we have no capacity for. Knowing this doesn't get us out of it either, because knowing was never the part that was missing.

When it feels like the practice is only available to us on the days we can actually get to the mat or the cushion, and we've no capacity for it, that's enough to make us think we've lost the practice itself.

But what's actually gone is just the slot, the place in the day the practice used to take up. The practice itself is still there.

I wrote the whole piece on this on my blog 'Reflections', link in bio if you want to read on.
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#innerpractice #yogaforthemind #dailypractice #ashtanga #meditation #yogatherapy #midlife
A morning yoga practice already gives us that conn A morning yoga practice already gives us that connection to the body, and the confidence that comes with instantly feeling when something isn't right.

It's strongest right after practice, so all it takes is keeping a thread of that body awareness going through the day. The physical heart, the palms of the hands, wherever we can feel it. Because the body reacts before the story does.

Without that connection, the first we hear of it is once we're already deep into the argument in our head. And skipping past the feeling doesn't get rid of it, it just leaves it waiting for the next thing that provokes it.

👉 Save this for tomorrow morning, after you practise.
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#theinnerpractice #innerwork #yogaforthemind #ashtanga #ashtangayoga #morningpractice #yogaoffthemat #embodiment #yogaphilosophy #yogateacher #londonyoga
Small annoyances can rile us up, and it's often ea Small annoyances can rile us up, and it's often easier to just let them pass. But that's exactly why they're worth paying attention to. 

The small stuff never asks much of us, which makes it the safest place to build a skill that matters a great deal once life sends something far bigger our way.

Notice where the annoyance actually shows up in the body, the chest maybe, or the belly, and just stay with it. Don't narrate it, don't run the story of what that person did and how irritating it was, the story is what keeps the emotion alive. 

Just the sensation itself, and you'll see it disappears on its own within a minute or two. ✨
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#theinnerpractice #innerwork #yogaforthemind #emotionalawareness #overthinking #busymind #nervoussystem #selfenquiry #mindfulness #meditation
Discouraging thoughts don't show up when you're do Discouraging thoughts don't show up when you're doing the small, familiar things. They turn up the moment something feels too big, when you're looking up at a mountain wondering how on earth you'll climb it.

The brain's first job isn't to make us happy, it's to keep us safe. It does that by trying to predict everything that could go wrong, and it reaches back to our past for the nearest old failure and holds it up as proof. “You couldn't then, so you can't now.”

The catch is the brain can't tell real danger from the merely unfamiliar, both signal threat. So at the exact moment something asks for courage, the voice gets loudest.

Those thoughts aren't a fault in you. They're the brain doing its job, a little too well. 

Seeing that clearly is where the work starts, not with silencing the voice, but with no longer taking it at its word.
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#theinnerpractice #yogaforthemind #overthinking #thinkingmind #selfenquiry
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Catherine Haylock

Yoga for the mind & body

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