Adriene emphasizes in her videos: "Trust your body to tell you what it needs."
This was revolutionary for me. You mean if I feel hungry that means I might actually be hungry? Shocking. You mean if I feel tired that means I might actually be tired and I should slow down or take a nap? Mind. Blown. You mean if my hamstrings feel like they could use a stretch that I should stretch my hamstrings? My whole world was upside down.
The idea to listen to my body was not completely knew--my therapist had been harping on this for a long time--but I had never really, truly put it into practice on a daily basis like I was doing during the yoga challenge of April 2020. Doing yoga on a daily basis gave me a new way to relate to my body.
Adriene constantly reminds her yogis to focus on "sensation over shape." In other words, pay attention to how the move feels, not what it looks like. Adriene tells the viewer not to just follow her blindly but to listen to their body and “Find What Feels Good" (I capitalize this phrase because the acronym born from this phrase, FWFG, is Adriene's motto and logo for her business.) She often tells the viewer to close their eyes. She encourages practitioners to not just watch the video, but to make adjustments or changes according to what feels good in their body. This started to change the way I communicated with my body.
On the last day of the 30-day challenge, Adriene looked up at the camera and told us she would be taking off the microphone shortly.
“It’s Day 30 and today’s session is called Journey which is what this thing is all about: the journey home...
Don’t panic. Because this is what it’s all about. You have the tools. You've always had everything that you need to uncover, to find what feels good and to reveal what matters most...
You’re going to use the vocabulary that we’ve learned together thus far to create your practice and to create your experience.
Today embodies the spirit of yoga, which to me is this essence and spirit to take care of myself...Enjoy. Find What Feels Good.”
It blew my mind. I felt like a warrior and a tree, a flower and a cobra, a dancer and frog, a lizard and a dog, a camel and a happy baby. I wanted to cry. I wanted to laugh. I felt so free. What? I had the freedom to do what I wanted?! I felt courageous and strong with this newfound freedom.
Adriene's message echoed in my mind: You had all of the tools all along. It’s just about discovering them and using them.
I had really never felt this sense of happiness and freedom emanating from someplace deep inside myself. It was happiness from the inside out. I was used to external pleasures, of course, being a privileged white person in America with plenty of food, warm showers and soft sheets, but this was a distinctly different experience.
I had this realization: You don’t need to search outside yourself for a safe, comfortable, or accepting place. All of the love you will ever need is inside yourself, always and forever.
The video ended with an epic soundtrack that made me want to reach my hands up to the sky in welcome and surrender and cry all at the same time. In fact, every time I hear that soundtrack I cry because it brings me back to that time during COVID, that terrible and awful and beautiful and wonderful time where I got to be by myself and struggle through my relationships and fear and anxiety in ways that I had previously not experienced.
At the end of the video, Adriene had a scrolling message for the viewer, that read:
To be continued...
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