Yoga Isn’t Just Asanas, It’s the First Time I Heard My Own Mind

When I first stepped onto a yoga mat, it wasn’t because I was seeking spiritual awakening or inner peace. I was simply tired. Not the kind of tired a nap could fix—but the kind that makes your body feel like it’s carrying something invisible and heavy.
Work stress, emotional clutter, and sleepless nights had piled up, and I hoped yoga would be the adult version of “recess”—a break for my body, maybe a little flexibility if I was lucky. I never imagined it would teach me how to hear my own mind for the very first time.

It happened during a slow-paced evening Yin class. We weren't asked to flow or push or do anything Instagram-worthy. The teacher just said, “Be still and listen.”
I thought she meant listen to her voice. But what I ended up hearing was… me.
Not the curated, externally-presented version of me. But the real one—the anxious voice that constantly overanalyzes conversations, the tired girl who puts on a brave face, the mind that never stopped running even when my body did.
For the first time, I wasn’t reacting. I wasn’t judging. I was just watching.
And honestly? I didn’t realize how loud my mind was until I sat in complete silence.

It’s easy to mistake yoga for just exercise. What we often see online—people doing handstands on cliffs or balancing on one toe in Bali—is only a sliver of yoga. Those poses are called asanas, and they are just one limb of an eight-limbed path described in ancient yogic texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Here’s what yoga really includes:

1. Yamas – Ethics toward the world (non-violence, truthfulness)
2. Niyamas – Discipline toward self (cleanliness, contentment)
3. Asanas – Physical postures
4. Pranayama – Breath control
5. Pratyahara – Withdrawal from senses
6. Dharana – Concentration
7. Dhyana – Meditation
8. Samadhi – Liberation or bliss

By the time I had only touched the third step (asanas), yoga had already softened something inside me. Not physically, but emotionally.

There was a day in class when I went into a supported heart-opening pose, lying back over a bolster, eyes closed, hands resting beside me. And without warning, I started crying.
No one had said anything. Nothing had gone wrong. But I felt something inside me unlock—a grief I hadn’t known I was carrying. And for once, I didn’t stuff it back down.
Yoga gave my body permission to feel what my words never could.

Anxiety had made me believe something was wrong with me. That I needed fixing, rewiring, reprogramming. But yoga whispered a softer truth: I wasn’t broken. I was just disconnected—from my breath, from my center, from my self.
In holding a pose, in feeling my breath expand and release, I started seeing anxiety not as an enemy but as a signal. A message. And unlike my usual coping strategies—scrolling, overeating, numbing—yoga asked me to do something radical:
Listen.
Not to advice, not to social media, not to what I “should” be doing.
But to me.

Yoga doesn’t always feel good. Some poses made me cry. Some made me frustrated. Some showed me how inflexible not just my body but my mind had become.
And yet, I kept coming back.
Because yoga never demanded I be perfect. It only asked me to be present.
It was the only space where I could breathe unevenly, shake during balance, fall out of a pose, and still be told, “You’re doing great.”
When was the last time the world let us be this human?

Slowly, what I learned in those 60-minute classes started showing up in unexpected places.

• I started pausing before reacting in a heated argument.
• I began noticing when I was holding my breath during work stress.
• I found myself being kinder—not just to others, but to myself.

Yoga wasn't changing me from the outside in. It was peeling away layers of fear, control, and judgment—from the inside out.

If you're intimidated by yoga, you're not alone.
You don’t need to touch your toes. You don’t need to chant if it feels strange. You don’t need to wear fancy leggings or do a headstand on the beach.

All you need is:

• A quiet space
• A willing heart
• And maybe, just maybe, the courage to sit with yourself

Because that's the real yoga—not the posture you hold, but the presence you meet within.

In a world that constantly tells us to do more, be more, hustle more—yoga taught me the power of less.
Less noise. Less proving. Less pushing.
And in that stillness, I found something I didn’t even know I was missing:
Me.
Yoga didn’t “fix” me. But it reminded me I was whole all along.
If you’ve ever felt lost in your own head, I promise: yoga won’t give you answers overnight.
But it might just give you the most sacred thing of all—a chance to listen.


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