Accessing your Inner Self
I went to an interesting lecture given by a Life Coach this week which was about understanding and connecting with our inner selves. I was able to relate a lot of what was discussed with how yoga can help with the awareness, connection and exploration of our true nature.
There can be many versions of our inner self and how we show up to different places with different people will not be the same. For example, how we act and feel at work will be different to how we are at home or with our friends. When we are born we have a whole self which we start to lose or change in response to how we need to behave and react to the surroundings and experiences that we face. Depending on what experiences we are subjected to, how we are influenced or the paths we end up taking in life for whatever reason, the more we may find we lose parts of our inner self. In some cases, we can end up feeling that we have lost our identity, don’t understand how we feel or what we want from life.
If you are feeling like this then there are ways to help get back in touch with the components of your inner self and yoga is also a fantastic tool for this.
Awareness
Approaches to develop awareness of ourselves include the following:
Tune into the moment and be present
Active self-reflection - e.g. methods include journaling, just sitting with thoughts, for some people it might need to be more visual such as drawing how they are feeling or other ways of expressing how they feel.
Meditation – simply being and just notice what comes up, whether that’s thoughts or feelings and then letting go.
Through a yoga practice we can develop greater self-awareness. Thoughts will come up as we go through our practice and these will be different on one day to the next depending on how we are feeling and what is going on for us at the time. Through being aware of this attitude we have to our yoga practice on a particular day, we bring more awareness to how we are feeling and once we understand this better, we can work to soothe or give ourselves what we need.
Connection
The life coach in the lecture talked about visualising the characters behind the thoughts that come up. For example, there might be critical sides of our character, adventurous or confident sides. Once you can visualise or give these parts of yourself an identity, it is easier to identify and connect with these thoughts and potentially challenge them. Another way we might identify with these feelings might be visualising them as landscapes with contrasting states of mind being calm vs. rocky. Or perhaps as weather – maybe feeling sunny vs. stormy.
This approach of characterising how we are feeling is often used in mental health recovery such as eating disorders. For example, anorexia patients may find it helpful to visualise their illness as a character and associate the thoughts that result from the illness, with this character. By doing so, the patient is then able to choose to disconnect from the illness. When living with the illness and before starting the process of recovery it can be difficult to be detached from it because sufferers are consumed and connected to it and feel as if they would be giving up a big part of themselves if they were to let it go and get better. If they feel the illness is part of them they may feel lost, uncomfortable and vulnerable if they were to give it up. Instead if they can characterise it as an enemy they can develop the determination to fight it.
Dedicating time to a yoga practice is a way of connecting with ourselves, checking in and appreciating how we feel. We connect the mind, body and breath and through accepting the feelings and thoughts that we discover once we quieten the mind we become better connected with ourselves.
Exploration
Exploration can start to take place once you connect with parts of your inner self. A life coach may ask the client to talk to the part of themselves that is currently present in their thoughts or consuming their current state of mind. Through this internal conversation they can challenge the ideas or beliefs that might be holding them back or find answers to things they are unsure about. Questions that could be asked could include the following:
What do you want to achieve?
What do you enjoy the most?
What would make life better for you?
What do you want to share more than anything else?
Through connecting with ourselves in a yoga practice we can also start to explore and understand the thoughts and feelings that come up. Once we feel connected with ourselves we can work to understand why we are feeling a certain way, why certain thoughts arise, our attitude towards ourselves and other things that come up in our practice.
Conclusion
By developing methods of being more aware of how we are feeling and identifying with these parts of inner self, we start to become more connected and can then explore our inner self and true nature. We can challenge the thoughts or the parts of us that are making us unhappy and become more connected with the different parts of us that we have previously lost or suppressed. Once we are living with all elements of our true nature we will be able to find true happiness. We are the only person that can really truly understand ourselves so the work ultimately must come from us. Yoga is an excellent tool for helping us to do this. It is a very personal practice and we guide ourselves through the journey to ourselves.
