Turn Your Phone Off & Get To Yoga
I've been noticing lately that I'm kind of addicted to my phone.Eek. I feel gross even just typing that out.This addiction seems to be stemming from a few different places:
- I'm doing a lot more on social media with my studio, and it's so fun to check in and hope to see those little notifications that someone "liked," or better yet commented on, one of my posts.
- I have lots of fun classes and an exciting event coming up, so I find myself constantly refreshing my client management site to see who has signed up.
- The e-mails. Oh the e-mails! Between ordering new furniture on Wayfair and checking if it's shipped, to waiting on the birth announcement of cousin's new baby, to hoping (ahem, praying) our babysitter can babysit this weekend, the pad of my pointer finger is constantly landing on my email icon.
But now I'm noticing that this phone addiction is creeping into my yoga, because recently when I've finished taking a class, rather than lingering in savasana and letting that sweaty goodness settle in, I'm bounding up from my mat to "check my phone" ... for what?For literally nothing.
Those little notifications - the likes, the loves, the comments, the requests, the emails, the sales, the sign-ups - they're all a quick high that is soon forgotten.Enough.During a yoga class I took last week taught by the world-famous Audrey Holst (she's famous in my world!), she talked to us about not allowing those little notifications to interrupt our time.If you've carved out the time in your day to give self-care, leave the devices behind. They won't add to your well-being and in fact, they'll likely take away from it.We come to yoga to deepen our mind-body connection. We spend 90 minutes sweating and breathing and stretching and strengthening, and we can take the work we do in class to get to know ourselves on an extremely deep level even outside of the studio; we can bask in that sweaty glory long after class is done.That's the point of yoga after all, to work for 90 minutes or 60 minutes or however long the class is, but to have the work you do in class create change in your life outside of class.But that mind-body connection gets weakened when we let the phones guide us.Ever notice that you reach for your phone when you're a little bit bored? I know I do.What about taking a few deep breaths instead. What about rolling your shoulders back or stretching your neck?Or what about just being bored for a minute?Sure we live in a world of electronics and devices, but it doesn't mean we have to check in all the time or even every hour. Or even every two hours. Once or twice a day is probably enough.In Bikram Yoga especially, we learn to understand what discomfort feels like. Not pain, but discomfort. More often than not, that discomfort leads to change which creates transformation which brings us to something incredible.
But we have to be able to sit with that discomfort, breathe in that discomfort, maintain composure and control in that discomfort, long enough for it to change and transform us. We can't distract our way to transformation.
If we get up and run from the room and look for distractions or tap the phone hoping for notifications, all we're doing is delaying our own transformation.This happens whether we're in yoga or not.More often than not I'll look at the pile of laundry that needs to be folded and put away, and I'll check my phone instead. Looking at the laundry is uncomfortable. Thinking about folding it is downright painful! Checking Facebook for 20 minutes? Ahhh ... much better. Until the laundry is still there and my house is a mess and now the kids need to be picked up and I wonder why I can't stay on top of the laundry and I forget everything I just saw on Facebook anyway.Get it?The yoga room is hot. Really flippin' hot. This posture is hard. Really flippin' hard. It's uncomfortable to look at myself in the mirror because then I see right in front of me what I want to change. The lobby is cool. There's coconut water out there. I can stop trying to lock my damn knee. I won't have to look at myself in the mirror. I won't have to deal with this discomfort. Ahhh ... much better. Until my back still hurts and I can't touch my toes and all the things that I wanted yoga to help me change haven't even changed at all and that coconut water didn't help me all that much anyway.See what I mean.So I'm making a conscience effort going forward of having designated phone time and not straying from that. I'm actually kind of excited to see what my mind will think of and what I'll notice looking up and around rather than down!Remember, if something is challenging for us, it's likely going to change us.So shut your phone off.Get to yoga.Embrace that discomfort.And just love the heck out of yourself for showing up and working on you.Because in a world full of distractions, we've gotta take care of ourselves.Everyone else is too distracted to do so.
Illustration by Pawel Kuczynski