It’s kind of easy to explain how to practice yoga breath-work to other people.

It’s feasible to relay the benefits of “open” hips and limber leg muscles.

It’s possible, too, for anyone to learn how to flow through yoga asanas with modifications, the right tools and proper teaching.

But this morning when I talked with a friend, I realized what I couldn’t tell her—how yoga actually changed my life.

I called her right before my morning practice.

We spoke about her upcoming childbirth and she had questions for me since I had recently gone through my own second positive birthing experience.

She wanted to know about yoga breath and if that helped my labor. While I told her that surely it did impact it, the real benefits I couldn’t tell her about.

And then we hung up and I went into my little yoga room; where the spaceheater had been dutifully warming my space; where my body was about to move and flow and breathe—and as I held myself in my first postpartum bound side-angle pose, I realized exactly why my practice had helped me give birth naturally, and it was the same reason that my practice has completely revamped my life and myself.

And the reason, though simple, is huge when I think about it’s overall impact. Because life, for me at least, throws curve balls. I find myself in situations that I hadn’t planned for and I feel stressed and overwhelmed and, occasionally, depressed.

And then I get on my yoga mat.

I inhale and lift my arms—and my heart—skyward, I exhale and bow humbly towards the earth that always manages to hold me up, and I learn over and over again the lesson that has truly changed my life—that I can breathe through anything.

I can make it through one more labor contraction. I can breathe through one more challenging moment as a parent. I can inhale and exhale into, essentially, my life—I can breathe along with my life rather than through it.

My life has profoundly changed because yoga taught me to stay present and live moment by moment. More, it’s taught me that life is both more joyful and more manageable when I live this way.

So, as I spoke with my friend for a few minutes on the phone, listening to her concerns and sharing my own experiences in return, I was struck, later, as I stood tall in tree pose that this—the methodical breathing and the postures—are merely tools for what my practice actually is: a life-changing process of self-liberation.

Because I’m free of my past and I’m free of my future when I inhale into my present—yoga taught me this. My yoga practice has also taught me that I am capable of anything, one breath at a time.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

Photo: Joel Nilsson Nelson/Flickr; Dennis Yang/Flickr.

The post How Yoga Really Changes Your Life. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

My shoulders settle down my back and my heart lifts at the clickity-clack sound of my fingers dancing across my laptop.

My ring turns on my right hand, so that the family heirloom diamonds point down and towards the softer skin of my palm. I twirl it back into place with my pinkie but it slips back and I don’t care.

I feel my head settle down and into my heart space as I anticipate purging myself through words.

Sometimes life requires purging. 

I sink into my chair with my tall spine jetting up towards the sky; my posture only slightly slumped at my tired shoulders, but it’s more of a softening and a giving in to my need to write and open up than a wilting droop.

Because sometimes life makes me want to envelop myself in bedsheets and tears and drown myself in slow, steady-thumping music as my chosen backdrop.

And then I’m driving down the windy road and feeling this need to blast the music too loudly for the little girl safely nestled in a carseat behind me.

I want to roll down the windows and feel every ounce of wind that I can across my flying, tangled hair and I want to drive off, away from the rising sun, towards a place that awaits in the shadows; calmer, gentler than the life of my past few weeks.

But I can’t.

I learned a long time ago that we cannot run away from our problems or from ourselves and that this only serves to prolong inevitable discomfort.

So I keep the music at a more moderate level and tell my daughter in the backseat that I love her.

I place my hands consciously at ten o’clock and two o’clock and drive to the yoga studio to drop off a few more copies of my just-released book and then to our local eyeglass shop instead of towards some imaginary oasis of pure fun and end-of-summer laughter.

But how do I eradicate my tensions and my stresses, and my over-filled life, when I no longer want to run my feet into splints or starve myself sick or drink too much wine while cooking dinner?

How do I become clean and new in my skin—right now—and my heart and my over-worked brain? 

The shower I took kind of worked.

I let the water wash over me as I quickly rinsed off, and I felt a little bit lighter in my stuck emotions as I toweled off my  dripping hair.

And that long, deep drink of water felt nice.

The soft feel of it on my tongue and the releasing it brought to my dry throat made the center of my chest soften just a touch.

But these are temporary fixes—just like alcohol and pounding the pavement.

Sure, there are long-term benefits to appropriate exercise and I’m not one to diminish the joys of moderate drinking either, but, still, when I go to bed tonight my problems will still be there and their weight will not have lessened.

So I’ll open up a book, after turning on just enough light to read by; holding the loved, worn pages up to my nose as I transport myself out of my bedroom.

I’ll let my eyes droop for too long until I finally admit that I need to flip off the light and, putting my book to the side, finally curl up under my bedsheets.

I’ll will my pre-slumber thoughts to be positive—things that conjure my gratitude and my love for my inhabited human skin—as I feel the way that my body tingles right before I fall asleep.

And maybe I’ll remember a few of my black-and-white dreams or maybe I’ll get up once or twice to use the bathroom, but when I wake, in the soft grey light of my bedroom, I’ll have a split moment in time before the sleepy fog clears and my mind once again turns to my everyday reality, and in that instance I’ll have purged myself of my yesterday.

So maybe, sometimes, we can’t do much to move forward from our troubles.

Instead, we dig in our heels and feel it all and hold the people we love tightly.

We let tears fall and we do, from time to time, roll all the windows down in the car and turn the music up too much.

And we acknowledge that tomorrow will be different from today, even if we don’t purposefully seek out this change. 

We recognize, too, that our daily choices of health and joy help attract these things back into our lives, but, equally, we understand that life is often beyond the control of our own two hands (no matter how well placed at ten o’clock and two o’clock).

I notice that my diamond stones—the ones that even my great-great grandfather wore—are once again perched on the top of my finger, and I honestly don’t know if they rolled back on their own or if I unconsciously shifted them back there while my fingers danced.

I observe, too, how my shoulders round a little bit more and, glancing at the time, I note my readiness for the evening to be enclosed in darkness.

And I tell myself that tomorrow will rise up new and clean and pure from today’s ashes, simply by my continuing to put one foot in front of the next.

Because sometimes that’s all we can do.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

Photo: João Lavinha/Flickr.

The post When All We Can Do Is Keep Walking. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Saturday rolls around and it’s easy to get caught up in the mental scan of household chores and family needs.

But it’s important to consider that weekends are for more than grocery store trips and lawn care.

I remember waking up as a kid on Saturday morning and being allowed to spend these early day hours in favorite, cozy pajamas watching my favorite shows. It was special.

I’m sure my parents cut the grass, weeded the garden and cleaned the house, but that’s not what stuck with me.

What stuck with me was the family hikes on local trails, playing in the backyard and family meals, which is exactly why even as an adult I’m careful to not let my brain become overloaded with what my adult self wants to accomplish come the two adjoining days that many of us have off.

And life is not a to-do list.

We’re so willing to check things off an imaginary societal list of ordinary accomplishments.

Graduate high school, check.

Go to college, check.

Move out on your own for the first time, check.

Graduate college (many years after you initially started), check.

Get married…have kids…blah, blah, blah.

And when someone doesn’t coincide with these essentially made-up expectations, we question their societal worth and placement or encourage them strongly to fit back into line; to keep checking off this list.

Yet here’s my thought on this particular Sunday morning, where I sit typing at my nicked, antique wooden table, with my daughter and her favorite cartoon in the background and my husband on a mountain bike ride:

What if we threw away our to-do lists?

What if we pretended that each day was something to just be in awe of?

What would happen if every morning became a fresh start towards who we want to be and a new beginning of potentially the best day of our lives?

And, yes, we’ll weed the gardens and mow the lawns. We’ll clean the dust off our bookshelves too. But we’ll also not pretend that this is what life is about, because it’s not.

They say that people on their death beds rarely wish they’d worked more or accomplished that one nagging task. Instead, they wish they’d spent more time with their children or opened sheltered hearts to love with more willingness.

But life is hard.

It’s filled with things that need to get done and sometimes, unexpectedly, shit happens. At the same time, though, we possess the internal ability to simply shift perspective and, often, it’s this little, teensy tiny inner transition that makes huge life changes.

I wake up and yawn and stretch through my toes and roll over to my side. I grab my glasses lying nearby and wait until my daughter wakes up so that I can see her sparkly eyes and good-morning smile. And while I know that our day will have errands and things that I need to do, I don’t focus all of my energy this way. Rather, I borrow her wonder-filled, childlike mindset that enables her to see these every-day routines as fun and part of something much larger and not, incorrectly, a mundane reality.

I hate doing the dishes.

Yet when I ask my daughter to help me with them, every single time I’m rinsing off the last wine glass and singing one final round of The Wheels on the Bus and wondering how it all got done so quickly.

And, no, I’m not suggesting that we ignore our chores or even our societal check lists (I’m glad, for example, that I got married and had kids). But I’m not going to pretend that all I want out of my life is a clean house and short grass.

Maybe that’s why we have the prevalent midlife-crisis syndrome.

We spend so much of our lives climbing monetary ladders and putting checks next to arbitrary accomplishments that we forget to listen to beating hearts and to feed the fires that ultimately fuel us for longevity.

So, today, I’m checking “love passionately” off of my to-do list. Yep, done.

I’m also putting an imaginary mark next to “watch favorite cartoons.”

And as I hit “save” and prepare to more officially begin my Sunday morning, I’m walking into the next several hours with an open heart and mind, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll even have some fun doing the laundry (if it gets done, that is).

Photo: Anna Gutermuth/Flickr

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post Life is Not a To-Do List. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I was in yoga class, in downward-facing dog, when I reached my right leg high and long behind me.

It felt like my toes touched the studio ceiling.

And I know that this was intrinsically connected to my internal manifestation and declaration of something that I had been burying for far too long within my cumbersome chest—since my youthful days when it was expected: I Am a Rebel.

And this is my Rebel’s Manifesto.

I wear my heart on an occasionally tattered sleeve.

I have a college degree, but I consider myself to be educated through life’s experiences, teachings and my willingness to learn from them.

I value kindness.

I eat what I want to, what feels good for my body, and I try to purchase and eat my food mindfully. I don’t eat for the latest vegetable craze or what someone else thinks is healthy for five minutes before it changes again.

I move my body because it feels good, not because I want to fit into a certain size or shape.

And I don’t buy that fit is the new skinny. That’s a gross exaggeration of what’s normal too.

Self-indulgence is not self-care. (Thank you to my friend for putting this one so eloquently into words.)

I stopped coloring my hair because, as it turns out, I like both my natural brown as well as my greys, but this doesn’t mean that I’ll never have blonde highlights again.

I like to feel the sun on my skin, but I’d rather be hiking and sweating my butt off than lying in a reclined chair with my bikini on (although those days were thoroughly enjoyed and not regretted).

I do believe in regrets. But I don’t have any.

I like some of the most obscure bands that are nearly unheard of…and I own more than one season soundtrack of Glee. (My ears don’t know what’s cool, just what gives my tender flesh goosebumps.)

I would rather watch one of my husband’s nerdy science documentaries than most of the shows people are talking about on Facebook. (But don’t tell him please.)

Sometimes the weight of my breaking heart feels like a rock in the pocket of my dress, bringing me down to the bottom of the lake as I walk into the water. Just as I realize that I have no air left to breathe—my wounded soul depleted—the dawning sun tickles cheek and I feel my arms being tugged at, freeing me from my gloomy despair. My savior? Myself.

I have a temper, and a wildly passionate spirit.

I’m impatient, and I’m wonderfully proactive.

I have flaws and idiosyncrasies—thank God.

I believe in something much bigger than me, but I don’t believe in praying to it for what my human incarnation wants—yet I’m genuinely inspired that some people do.

I want to teach my children that worth has nothing to do with dollar signs, collected trinkets, or countable paper accolades.

I want to teach my children to be rebels.

I want them to know that the best person they can be is a reflection of much more than a status quo.

I’ve realized that embracing rebellion doesn’t mean fighting for no reason or standing out when it’s not necessary. It means letting the fire within us shine so brightly that the blaze can’t help but catch the world on fire.

And I want to live in a world with light.

And I’ve always been different.

I had six nicknames in preschool that I made up for myself—J, Jenn with two n’s, Jen with one—and I made my teachers call me by my name of the day.

And we’ve all always been different. I have an identical twin and she is not my doppelganger.

Before we write in with parts of this manifesto that we don’t agree with, let’s set the story clear that I hope anyone who reads this has an entirely unique list, made from items completely contrasting my own.

All that I ask—the declaration that set me free in my downward-facing dog—is that we not get so caught up in our need for societal acceptance and belonging that we forget whose approval really counts: our own.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The post The Rebel’s Manifesto. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

There are many universally known truths about life.

One is that life isn’t fair; another is that you don’t want to sit downwind of your lactose intolerant friend after she just ate cheese—and here are a few more:

1. No one trusts a gossip.

2. Numbers on the scale only mean so much.

3. It’s unnecessary to wash your hair every day.

4. But it’s okay if you do.

5. Facebook friends who constantly share workout advice in the vein of P90X and how many squats they did before breakfast are annoying.

6. If you’re still talking about it, then you haven’t “let it go.”

7. Women like sex too.

8. Lying only works for so long.

9. Everyone needs help.

10. Money really doesn’t buy happiness.

11. But having enough doesn’t hurt either.

12. Laughing makes you feel better.

13. Vagina isn’t a bad word.

14. Asshole is.

15. Great love takes work.

16. We all have time to exercise.

17. Perfection isn’t attractive—your wonderful, little quirks are.

18. We should speak the truth, with love.

19. Thoughts become words and actions, so hone your thoughts into the words and actions that you want to live.

20. Live each day like it’s your first, not your last.

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.” ~ Elvis Presley

Photo: Kate Ter Haar/Flickr.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post 20 Important Life Truths Everyone Should Know. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I have this amazing friend.

She inspires me.

She shows me love.

She makes me feel beautiful and smart and special—and right now she needs a boost.

Because she’s not sure of who she is or, rather, of what her role in this world is; where her place lies—and that’s an awkward and painful space to inhabit (although we all do from time to time).

So, dear heart, this is for you:

Quotes to remind you that you are big, you are bright and you are capable of everything and anything your spirit is capable of envisioning.

(And this is also for everyone and anyone who ever wondered where they fit in and what lies beyond the realm of pain.)

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self, so therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

“To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

“My potential is more than can be expressed within the bounds of my race or ethnic identity.” ~ Arthur Ashe

“I don’t want to be perfect, but I do want to be a role model. My mom always tells me that imperfections equal beauty. All of us are imperfect.” ~ Miley Cyrus

“I’ve never been a conceited person or cocky, never felt boastful, but I always had a sense of self-worth; I always had a real sense of myself.” ~ Will Ferrell

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” ~ William Shakespeare

“Girls see these defined roles they’re supposed to follow in life, but when I was a young child, my parents told me I could be anything.” ~ Joan Jett

“Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright’s pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.” ~ Maya Angelou

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.“ ~ Marianne Williamson.

“The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.” ~ Albert Einstein

 

Photo: Wagner Machado Carlos/Flickr.

The post Identity Crisis: 10 Quotes to Inspire & Remind Us of Our Worth. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.