Top 5 signs your yoga practice is depleting you not nourishing you
Yoga is a mind-body-spirit practice that should make you feel better, not worse. Some folks practice yoga because a doctor or friend or magazine article told them it will improve their health condition. And that absolutely may be true, but only if you’re practicing yoga that nourishes you and does not deplete you. Does any of the following sound familiar to you?
#1 You are more tired after yoga practice than you were before you started.
Does yoga leave you feeling more tired, sore, or cause post exertional malaise? If so, you’re doing the wrong yoga. Yoga shouldn’t make you feel like you’ve just spent an hour running on the treadmill. Yoga should make you feel like you just woke up from a nap in a warm, sunny meadow surrounded by fluffy bunnies. Or at least it shouldn’t make you feel WORSE than when you started.
#2 You feel guilty if you miss a yoga practice.
Do you set unrealistic goals for your yoga practice and then feel guilt and shame when you don’t meet them? Guilt and shame are depleting. Set realistic goals and then be compassionate with yourself when life gets in the way and you miss a practice. There is always tomorrow!
#3 You feel bad about your body when you are practicing yoga.
If you’ve seen yoga represented in a magazine or on a show, you might think that everyone who practices yoga is thin and flexible. If you’re practicing yoga and your body doesn’t look and act like the yoga magazine models, you might start to doubt your body and feel bad about it. Yoga should make you feel better about the body you have…not give you a “better body.” If practicing yoga makes you feel like there is something wrong with your body that needs to be fixed, that is a depleting yoga practice!
#4 You think there is one correct way to practice yoga.
If you fall into the trap of thinking there is one right way to practice yoga, then what happens when your body, your abilities or your health change? Yoga that nourishes understands that there are as many ways to practice yoga as there are people on the planet. You just need to find the way that will nourish you today.
#5 You don’t look forward to practicing yoga.
If you dread your yoga practice or don’t look forward to practicing, then you are doing the wrong practice. Yes, there may be days when you have less enthusiasm for your practice. On those days, maybe you simplify your practice. Maybe you skip your practice. But if you consistently feel like you have to do yoga, like it’s one more chore on your to-do list, then your yoga practice is depleting you. It is not nourishing you.
Does any of this sound familiar? If so, I invite you to register for my FREE 5-day Yoga Habit Challenge that starts January 22nd, 2023. Learn nourishing ways to practice yoga so that you look forward to your practice and then yoga will naturally become a habit. Let yoga nourish and nurture you instead of depleting you.