Are you wondering where to take your yoga practice from here? Have you ever thought about yoga journaling? How can yoga journaling deepen your practice and bring you closer to revelation and epiphany?
Well, let's find out, shall we, as we explore three of the central benefits of engaging with yoga journaling?
1. Self-Awareness
The use of a yoga journal isn't just for those who obsessively chronicle everything on paper. Rather, it has been and continues to be a vital part of many people's yoga practice.
One of the key things that yoga journaling can help to strengthen is the ability to practice yoga with a considered level of self-awareness. One of the most important parts of practicing yoga is ensuring that you are engaging with the past, present, and future simultaneously, reflecting on both the present yoga session and the physical practice of yoga more generally.
It can be all too easy to just go with the motions, both in a yoga class and in the present moment throughout our daily lives. Yoga journals offer another way where self-study is not only allowed but actively encouraged. Thus, any yoga enthusiast worth their salt and clearly looking to properly develop their practice so that, through writing, they can better connect to their flow would be best advised to try yoga journaling.
Disconnecting from the self in an act of dissociation is not unheard of even for those with considerable experience on the mat and many yoga hours under their belt. Taking the time after your sessions to properly reconnect with yourself through writing is the best way to go about it.
Furthermore, even if you feel able to stay connected to yourself on the yoga mat, you might still struggle to engage with any meditation practice afterward. This is where the disconnect and dissociation will be most obvious when you feel you can't sit still and stay focused on the practice at hand.
Perhaps you might like to try some spiritual journaling prompts to get you started. Alternatively, you can try some mindfulness journal prompts to tackle it from a different angle.
2. Mindfulness
Speaking of which, now would be an important time to talk about the effect that yoga journaling can have on our mindfulness, whether or not we separately engage in mindfulness practice.
It can be very easy to lose sight of situating yourself in the here and now, not necessarily losing yourself in it, but finding yourself so deeply in it that your focus is heightened while simultaneously allowing you to be incredibly relaxed.
In this way, while engaging in yoga journaling, you can hope to pay more attention, both to the large and holistic things and feelings that move like water within you, as well as the small things that might otherwise go unnoticed over the noise and tumult of modern life.
Even these small things don't have to form a part of a larger, holistic tapestry. Rather, to notice these things is ultimately to enhance your practice for the better. The whole point of mindfulness is to help situate yourself in your own body and to help you stop dissociating and letting your mind fly you elsewhere.
Yoga journaling is one of the best things you can do for simply allowing you to sit within your own body during a yoga practice, to really feel out how you were feeling through every step, and ultimately to make adjustments to your practice accordingly.
If you already have an idea of the kind of changes you want to make to your practice, then a yoga journal is simultaneously the best way to keep track of these changes. In this way, you can track the progress of your own developments as well as notice any smaller developments that you might otherwise miss when moving day to day.
Looking for a template for your own yoga journal? Then look no further and click the link!
3. Wisdom, Clarity
In a lot of ways, the most important thing a yoga journal can do for you as a practitioner of yoga - a yogi if you will - is to help keep track of and chronicle the various breakthroughs that you might have on the mat.
Often, when you have such an epiphanic moment on the mat, it can come and go so fast that it might be difficult to remember it - how it came about, where it came from, and what it meant for you. If this sudden clarity, greater understanding, or something else entirely threatens to wriggle from the grip of your mind quickly, then you should keep the journal close to hand so that you can make a note of it as it happens.
If, though, you feel your mind is a little less soupy, then you can always use your journal afterward to make notes about your experience during that particular session, noting any especially epiphanic or revelatory moments that you might have had during the experience.
We have all been privy to just how quickly the modern world moves - part of the appeal of yoga and meditation practice when it first started to be absorbed by Western society 50 or so years ago up until the present day is that it offers a reprieve from this madness, no matter how brief.
This is something that can be easy to forget about once you have returned to the real world. The best and most simple way to remember the revelations and epiphanies you have on the mat is to make a note of them once you're done.
Final Words
So, there you have it! Hopefully, you are now feeling ready and able to engage more deeply with your own yoga practice.
FAQs Yoga Journaling
What is Yoga Journaling?
Yoga journaling is the act of journaling about your yoga practice. Though this fact may appear self-evident in the name, it can mean a whole lot more than that if done right, allowing each yogi to engage in their practice far deeper than they might otherwise.
What Are the Benefits of Yoga Journaling?
The benefits of yoga journaling are many and often deeply personal to each individual person, though there are a few general benefits that are likely to enlighten most who engage with it. These include a greater self-awareness overall, a benefit that is closely married to the increased level of mindfulness, as well as an easier adoption and absorption of revelatory moments.
How Can Yoga Journaling Deepen My Practice?
By engaging with a yoga journal, you are effectively engaging more deeply with your yoga practice, setting yourself up to understand and process your yoga explorations more thoroughly. This includes all the smaller and more centered moments just as it includes any grand epiphanies or revelations that you might have on the mat.
