Being honest is a start, and joining a yoga community is a good first step toward real candor.
Making personal changes is rarely easy, particularly when modern life seems to throw so many obstacles in the way of our individual, personal change models. How can you change your life? Being honest is a start, and joining a yoga community is a good first step toward real candor.
You might be thinking, "I thought yoga was more of a physical fitness regimen." This may be true for some of the most tiring or high-intensity yoga systems, but those that promote peace and reflection often address the brain at least as much as they do the body.
In essence, the best, most effective yoga styles deal with the delicate connection between the mind and body. Becoming a better person, learning to accept oneself, achieving a state of equilibrium and inner peace – these are all goals that involve plenty of mental work.
Fortunately, yoga attends to the mental needs of practitioners. Holistic health contains all facets of a person – their inner self, the outer persona, their connection to the community, their affinity for nature, their commitment to mankind and their ability to be honest with and open to the world.
The inability to be honest and committed is one of the reasons that so many people enter yoga programs looking for a big personal change, not to mention the countless Americans pursuing ongoing therapy or counselling.
In fact, a whole therapeutic movement, called Radical Honesty, has sprung up around the perception that candor is supremely important. Its founder, Brad Blanton, maintains that "if you go out and tell each other the truth, you'll be happier. You're better nurtured in a world in which you're telling the truth than you are in a world in which you're cowering, hiding and lying."
Like many yoga instructors, Blanton – who called Esquire Magazine "pretentious" in an article published in, what else, Esquire Magazine – maintains that honesty and openness are the gateways to happiness and wholeness.
Related items
Tags: Making personal changes, personal change models, personal changes
