When we talk about gaining confidence through yoga, we don’t mean just confidence in how you look (because we aren’t going to lie, those chaturanga arms look sharp.) We’re talking about the way yoga makes you feel – about yourself and about your ability.
A regular yoga practice can completely transform your life physically, mentally, spiritually and even socially. We’ve got 3 key ways that yoga helps boost confidence.
Yoga promotes self-awareness.
When you’re on the mat, it may be easy for your mind to wander for a moment, but you’ve always got something pulling your attention right back to the here and now. Maybe it’s a shaking muscle that feels it’s been in warrior 2 just a few breaths too long. Maybe it’s the need for a drishti when your half moon wobbles. Maybe it’s the instructor reminding you to bring your attention inward.
Whatever it is, yoga has a way of keeping you in the moment, forcing you to look at your movements and mindset to make small adjustments along the way to help you through the class.
As you practice pulling your attention within, you become more attuned to how you feel, how you think, how you react. That self-knowing goes a long way in gaining confidence.
Yoga lets you know you can grow
There are very few things in this world where you can track your progress so clearly. With yoga, a pose that may have been completely out of the question for you on your first time on the mat may get closer and closer with each subsequent class. That might mean something as little as having your fingers an inch closer to your toes during forward fold, or it could be as big as nailing your first headstand.
Whatever it is, it’s a very real, very visual representation of your ability to grow your skills, knowing that every time you try you may not succeed, but you are getting just a little bit closer.
Yoga increases your ability for self-compassion
One of the biggest hits to our confidence come from our own negative self-talk. We’re constantly criticizing ourselves, holding ourselves to much higher standards than we’d hold anyone else.
Yoga helps you let go of that. In every class, in every pose sequence, you’re faced with challenges that may make you stumble, shake or fall. Literally, you may fall right off your mat. And that’s ok. In yoga, no one judges you, and you have the opportunity to get back up, get back in the pose and try again.
And sometimes, that self-compassion comes from knowing that you can’t be 100% all the time. Poses that come easily most of the time may not be in the cards for you during a particular class. While it can be annoying the first time it happens, eventually you start to see that this is a normal part of being a human, and it’s ok to be where you are today.
It’s something small, but when you practice forgiving yourself for, say, wobbling in tree pose, you start to be more lenient on yourself in other aspects of your life instead.