Coming back to yoga after a big break has been such joy. It’s like I have the eyes of a complete beginner but better because I secretly know how wonderful I will feel at the end of class. Having taken some time off to have baby number two it took me a lot longer to come back to my physical practice of yoga than it had with my first born and I have been so excited to move my body again and step in time with my fellow students in the flow of yoga.

I wasn’t sleeping well with Leo, my second born and was exhausted learning the ropes of managing two kids under three. I had missed my yoga so much, my time alone, my time to move and stretch and go within. It seemed like a distant memory to have the luxury of 90 minutes to myself. But with what seemed like military style logistics and planning, my husband and I were able to get me back to class at my beloved BodyMindLife studio.

Just to walk into the room was almost enough, to roll out the mat I was already there…so to then begin class was just sublime – like opening the doors to the infinite once more.

It’s not that I hadn’t done any home practice but it had been very restorative and gentle and I wanted to be lead in a room by one of our teachers and to be with the group energy of class. I had lost some strength but to my amazement my body did really remember so much and anyway, it didn’t matter to me whether I could hold Bakasana (Crow pose) or jump back into Chaturanga. I was happy in child’s pose and in the modified variations throughout class.

This way of practicing coincides with my meditation practice – releasing the ‘trying’ muscle to allow for the opening potential of body and mind. Going with the flow of life/breath/movement. I actually did have a smile on my face the whole way through those first few classes and my heart, needless to say, was wide open and singing.

However it’s interesting how quickly this child like bliss and enjoyment faded and how the ‘trying’ began again. The judgement of my practice and the attitude of wanting to ‘get some place’. The old habit of self-criticism had reared its head.

So often we are held by old beliefs and habitual thought patterns which constantly keep us restricted and held in a certain space. If we can have some perspective and release those old and often non serving thought patterns, we can set ourselves free and begin again with new and improved outlook. Having had time out I was able to see this old pattern reasonably easily and see it for what it was.

I was keen to find a way to hold on to the sense of celebration that comes with a yoga class. It seemed to me more powerful, beautiful, fun and sensual than ever before and I wanted to enjoy that for as long as possible.

The secret to holding on to this sense of celebration for me is remembering the ancient words of advice in Patanjali’s great Sutras – stirra suka. Finding the balance between effort and sweetness. The only thing that was mentioned in the yoga sutras in relation to the physical asana was stirra suka, and it aims to express the need for this beautiful state of ease within the pose.

This is a lot easier of course when we have been practising a lot and we feel strong and robust and light and free…it’s a lot harder after injury, if we’re feeling unfit, overweight or in my case two kids under the belt and not much sleep/exercise etc etc. But none the less it was a great opportunity to dive into a place of acceptance and really be present with where I was at…with a smile in my heart and on my face. With that acceptance and total surrender into the place that I was at that stage, allowed for ease. With that happiness I was able to release all the stress around it and it just allowed the force of life and strength back into my body and my practice.

It’s all very well to practice thoughtfully and safely but we don’t want to ‘try’ so hard that our practice becomes contracted. We are if nothing else, trying to release contraction, release stress from our lives and bodies.

One of the things I love best about vinyasa flow yoga is that we can move though the postures with breath and with grace so that we create this power to unblock and open areas of stagnation and contraction. Like a full river flowing down the banks of the river after a massive rain. Life is flow, nature is flow, breathing is flow, the tides and the moon and stepping into that with yoga feels so good.

We can so often self-sabotaging things. Simple things and over complicating them. Adding opinion, judgement and protocol, control…rather than just letting go a bit…letting go into the space of love. Move the body a bit. Sit in stillness a while and then watch the magic happen. Bringing it back to simplicity, bringing it back to joy…because it really is joyous.

That’s the beautiful thing about yoga. It teaches us to first be present and then to recognise ourselves in this world and then we gain the tools to reinvent thought patterns and habits so that we can be set free to enjoy life’s treasures to their maximum potential.

To keep the advice of the most ancient yogic text alive in our modern practice is key to unlocking the path to freedom. If we stay so concerned with our asana, our body and the body’s ability to ‘do’ yoga we prevent the yogi practice from taking us to where it was designed to take us…to our hearts and to freedom from our minds and to a place of sweetness! So release a little of the intensity of asana and dive in to the celebration of the process of opening the body so that we can sit and over time and without trying too hard, slip into the infinite with a big fat smile on our happy faces and a open singing heart. The best part is when this becomes the focus the body will naturally open more easily and become stronger and less energetically congested and less injury prone because our energetic systems will be more receptive to change when our minds are free of muck and hearts open.

It all comes back to love. Letting go with love…..