5 Ways Yoga Builds Inner Strength
“It is within you that you will find the strength you need”
-Unknown
As the world begins to open up and brighter days are ahead, many people are feeling anxious about how to navigate the transition back into the world. The key to feel more centred and balanced as life transforms again is cultivating your inner strength.
Inner strength is often believed to be mental strength, however they are not the same. Inner strength is the strength of your soul and your core strength as a person, mental strength is the strength of the mind. Your mind is used for feeling and thinking. Inner strength is the inner-capacity to observe your own thoughts and emotions and the ability to respond wisely and compassionately to what you are experiencing.
A regular practise of yoga promotes health and well-being, stamina, flexibility and strength and also builds self-confidence, self-esteem, self-acceptance, compassion and inner strength.
It boosts self-awareness and gives you positive energy and relieves negative emotions. It is an amazing tool to find inner peace, strength and harmony.
The process for building inner strength is similar to that of physical strength, requiring the use of both mental discipline and physical determination. Building mental and physical practices are vital to cultivating your inner strength and yoga is the perfect way to do so.
Here are 5 ways yoga helps you build inner strength:
Cultivates more confidence
Without confidence fear can take you over and paralyse you from moving forward in your life. Yoga is a powerful tool to build confidence and is key to cultivating inner strength, helping you to face your fears and move through them.
When you feel strong and powerful in your body it helps you to feel more self confident and stronger from within. Yoga teaches you to recognise and let go of all the stories, limiting beliefs and circumstances that are holding you back. As you get to know, accept and love yourself more, you become more self confident and feel a deeper sense of inner strength, and fear fades away.
Builds self discipline and willpower
When you practice the physical part of yoga known as asana, you learn how to play with and hold more challenging poses, riding the waves of emotions and resistance that comes up from engaging in more challenging postures. This builds inner strength and works on our self discipline, our will power!
Get in touch with your emotions and thoughts
The practise of asana requires you to be fully in the present moment and connected to your breath. It allows you the space to just be and become aware, to become the observer.
When you are in the present moment and aware of what is going on, you can observe your thoughts. By simply sitting with those thoughts and emotions, you actually help take the edge off and as a result you keep those thought patterns and emotions in check and understand yourself on a deeper level and tap into your inner strength.
Builds connection
With a daily yoga practise, the mind and body become more united and the feeling of being disconnected fades. Consciously uniting the mind and body through breath and posture, your mind becomes calmer and your attention is focused on the pose and the breath, rather than on your thoughts. This is where you begin to feel a deeper connection to your body.
Finding inner peace
Yoga is a powerful tool to relax and reduce tension in the physical body and also in the mind. It releases emotions and helps you feel more connected to yourself and your body, which not only builds your physical strength but also helps you to build inner strength.
However, the most powerful part of finding inner peace to build inner strength is through meditation. The more you can sit with yourself in stillness, the more you go inwards and develop a deeper understanding of yourself allowing you to feel more connected, grounded and stronger from within.
Building your inner strength is a journey of self-discovery through introspection, self inquiry, letting go of negative patterns and being around uplifting people daily, using the practice of meditation to cleanse, calm and balance your mind, as well as a deep sense of awareness of your body and the mind, body and soul connection.
If you are ready to build your inner and outer strength look no further than our immersive yoga teaching training programmes