The yoga of self-love

by Fernanda Ausmus

 

Yoga is a billion-dollar business. Melbourne is saturated with yoga. It is now part of mainstream pop culture. Deep down it is the art of deep listening to our body’s inner wisdom. How did it divorce from its root of mystery and mysticism to become diluted as a selling point to athletics?

Why did You start yoga?

I started at the gym because my mother liked it and encouraged me to try it out. At the time the practice didn’t resonate with me as I felt a bunch of people stretching in a room wasn’t for me. Interestingly, as it currently stands a lot of yoga only focuses on the physical aspect: trendy clothes, mats, gymnastics and instagram pictures.

For me, 2012 marked the turning point; it was when doing kundalini yoga that I felt different.

I felt lighter, I felt clearer. Words don’t do justice to explain the experience but there was an inner shift which meant I wasn’t affected by my outer reality, but instead felt high from prana. My journey had begun. Something I never found in any church or religion, I found on the mat during savasana. When my mind was switched off for brief moments, when it was just the Breath. For me it was freedom from worry and neuroticism.

I feel most people do yoga to feel different.

Some may start because it’s a trend, something that’s everywhere, or because they get to wear funky leggings. But none of this matters. What brings you to the mat, be it devotion or decoration, doesn’t matter. The purpose is always similar: Connection. As Kino MacGregor once said about her journey ‘the teacher chanted OM and something in my soul answered Yes!’

This deeper searching, this inner yearning which is our ability to connect to something bigger than us which is simultaneously in us and part of us.

Some call it god, some call it cosmos, universe, higher self, bliss, meaning, peace and purpose. It isn’t the acrobatics that is yoga. It is what you are left with after the postures that closely resembles that glimpse. We think: “Do a stretch, breathe and feel good” is the yoga. Yet, Yoga is that which will remove anything that isn’t your truth.

Yoga takes us towards a state of compassion and inner peace. A practice of transcending the negative karma or daily drama to find consistency and contentness. Or in other words, it’s the knowing of your own divinity, the union we seek with the divine, that can be re-discovered through a way of devotion that resonates with your truth. The practice of moving energy to achieve higher meditative states of samadhi- that is Yoga.

The science of higher consciousness and the tool of understanding the full potential of embodiment. 

 

Fernanda teaches Hatha Yoga on Sundays. Find out more on our website and book through reception (03) 9482 4325, the website or app.