Beginnings and returns on the mat are the hardest. And that’s NORMAL.

Often, when we start a retreat or when someone comes back to practice after a long break, I hear it: you’re scared of the shape you’re in. So I want to say this clearly today: it is completely normal and absolutely inevitable. When I start my own intensive training after the retreat season, that moment: the moment of starting is the hardest one for me too.

It happens for two very specific reasons.

In yoga, we begin with our weaknesses.

Instead of strengthening what we’re already good at (which is what we’re used to in sport, where we train what we enjoy and what comes naturally) we first come face to face with what needs work. What requires our attention, and above all: our gentleness.

Often the hardest poses on the mat become our favourites over time. And the magic of this runs deeper than it seems: by patiently and calmly working on our weaknesses on the mat, we build enormous resilience off it — in our everyday lives. When a problem arrives, instead of panicking, we’re able to meet it with steadiness. That is what working with your own weakness teaches you.

It’s not that yoga reveals everything in your body needs fixing. What’s happening is called thawing.

In yoga, you begin to breathe consciously. You start to pay attention to the sensations in your body and to actually feel them. What has been tense and pushed aside in daily life suddenly receives attention. And you begin to feel what you’ve truly been blocking and holding in your body, which remembers and stores every experience you’ve ever had.

And that means your path to healing has just begun.