How Yoga Is an active form of journaling
It’s beyond any measure of doubt why so many humans throughout the world are drawn to and become devoted to yoga. Not only is it a practice that involves physical movement of the body, but its sacred and spiritual elements also make it a movement of the mind.
Just like a person’s emotional state varies from one day to the next, one’s yoga practice is never the same as the one that came before it.
We can think of one’s yoga mat as a microscope. On the mat, we can peer into our being and see what thoughts, emotions, or sensations arise we might not have noticed just going through the motions of our daily lives. A journal and an accompanying pen work in this way, too.
When we journal, we are making room for self care, contemplation, reflection and allowing parts of ourselves to rise to the surface. While many people would say that yoga is more of a physical practice whereas journaling is more of a mental one, the truth is that these practices have more in common than meets the eye.
How Do Journaling and Yoga Compare?
“Yoga is the rule book for playing the game of Life, but in this game no one needs to lose. It is tough, and you need to train hard. It requires the willingness to think for yourself, to observe and correct, and to surmount occasional setbacks. It demands honesty, sustained application, and above all love in your heart.”—B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life
The most effective way to get to the root of how yoga and journaling compare is to replace the word “yoga” with the word “journaling” in the B.K.S. Iyengar quote above. By doing this, you see how the quote, written by one of the most renowned yogis of all time, stands true for both yoga and journaling.
The first yoga practitioners, or yogic sages, developed and harnessed the practice of yoga not solely for its physical benefits. In fact, yoga’s purpose is dominated by the intent to “stop the churnings of the mind”, known in ancient Sanskrit texts as the “citta vrtti.”
What is meant by the churnings of the mind exactly?
We experience so many varying thoughts throughout the day, and the majority of them take us out and away from the present moment. Both yoga and journaling are tools to tune into the self and notice or listen for anything that, if given a chance to be expressed, will diffuse its hold on us. In turn, this allows us to become more present, rather than being ensnared in thought.
In this way, both yoga and journaling are modalities for looking within and becoming familiar with our truest selves.
Svādhyāya, or the “Study of the Self”
In the ancient texts that are attributed to yoga’s origin, there is a Sanskrit term that means the “study of the self,” known as svādhyāya.
Svādhyāya is one of several personal observances that a yogi can reap from their practice and infuse into their lives. What this means is that through yoga, one looks into a mirror of non-distortion and discovers themselves from a place of honesty and awareness.
What better describes journaling than a studying of the self? By looking into a mirror of non-distortion byway of a journaling session, an individual is seeing their thoughts, emotions, and narratives for exactly what they are and committing their observances to paper.
Svādhyāya is taking an honest look at where one has arrived in their life and searching for areas of improvement. By discovering what changes need to be made, if any, they can further themselves in their practice and in their life. Journaling is no different in this light.
How Yoga Can Bolster Your Journaling Practice and Vice Versa
While the benefits of both practices on their own are numerous, there’s a trend on the horizon where one journals during their yoga flow.
With a journal and pen lying at the front of their mat or using a digital journal like this one, they jot down any thoughts that arise during their practice that they would like to journal about later. Such thoughts may include how it felt to perform a challenging pose, where the mind wandered off during certain phases of the practice, or a need to instill some self-compassion when perhaps a pose was inaccessible or challenging for the practitioner on that given day.
Whether an individual would like to infuse their yoga practice with journaling or not, the commitment to one practice inevitably bolsters the other.
In yoga and in journaling, there is one quality that is required, and that is awareness. As you move through your yoga sequence, bring your attention to the churnings of your mind and observe them with a childlike wonder.
When you wiggle and wobble in a pose, find it challenging, or fall out of it completely, how does the mind react? Do you get frustrated? Do you judge yourself?
Conversely, do you instead feel fluid throughout the yoga flow? Do you feel calm, have a sense of ease, an ability to focus on the inhalation and exhalation or simply the present moment?
And when you are in the midst of a journaling session you may find a thought or emotion that needs to be expressed
Perhaps holding onto or ignoring this thought or emotion is causing your body to constrict or contract. Maybe even just thinking about it causes your breath to shallow or become rapid.
If that is the case for you, pause and take up a yogi state of mind. Meaning, bring your attention to the inhalations and exhalations and work out the feeling by taking a deep, restorative stretch. Work out the thought on paper the way you would work out the body on your mat.
“If we are a mansion with hundreds of rooms and corridors, we might say that normally we are always in one room or another. We are in our minds, in our memories, in our senses, in the future, eating so that we are in our stomachs, and thinking so that we are in our heads. We are always in one bit or another, but never occupy all our inheritance. To experience the totality of being is to be in every room of the mansion at once with light streaming out of every window.” —B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life
May bolstering your yoga and journaling practices, and seeing their benefits and healing capabilities as one and the same, allow light to stream out of every window of your being!
Author Bio: Katie Rutten is a yoga teacher and a devoted meditation and breathwork practitioner. At the core of her work is the practice of what ancient yogis call svādhyāya, or the “study of the self.” Her online guided journaling blog, Soul Primacy, mostly orbits around topics like yoga, breathwork, meditation, and other spiritual subject matter. All in the name of svādhyāya. She lives in Georgetown, Colorado with her husband and two cats, Goop and Chester.
