Baptiste Yoga With Austin

We hope you enjoyed the Seven Most Common Mental Mistakes in Yoga Practice … and How to Avoid Them series!

Yoga is so much more than the physical experience. It’s important to remember that there is huge mental component and inner game that goes along with yoga and of course, life.

We hope you learned something from these and that you will come back to them again and again when you feel stuck or lost in your practice.

Which one was your favorite of the 7? Let us know in the comments 👇

Like the moon and the tides, resistance and growth are intertwined.

To this day we still face our own resistance in yoga and in life. Sometimes it is a drag to get to the mat or to get up in front of the room and teach. Ironically, we’ve found that the days with the most resistance usually lead us to the biggest breakthroughs.

Resistance can be a great teacher. It exposes our state of mind and being - our fears, attachments and limiting beliefs. Then it’s up to us to choose whether to keep our existing thought patterns alive or expose them to the light to be dissolved.

In yoga practice, we use the postures to open up the body to reveal pockets of resistance in the body. The key is to face the resistance without fighting it. If we ignore it - it will continue to keep us stuck beneath the surface.

Remember - you can try as hard as you like to find ways to more around the blocks in the path, but the thing that blocks the path IS our path.

In a real way, yoga teaches us how the mind and body affect each other. We store emotional tension in our musculature. Our muscles and joints can actually hold on to memories of past trauma and tension.

As our teacher Baron says, “The key to working through your resistance is always a radical inner surrender, a calm determination, and a commitment to letting go.”

In yoga, we will inevitably encounter all kinds of resistance - resistance in the tissues, resistance in the mind, resistance to practicing, resistance to teaching, and resistance to transforming our lifestyle and daily habits that impede growth.

Remember - anytime you feel stuck, look for what is blocking you. Your blind spots will reveal the path you need to take to move forward in your practice and life.

6 years in and we are still working on this ourselves.

In yoga practice, sometimes less is more. Not always - sometimes more is more, but there are moments to push and moments to surrender.

For all of us - sometimes modifying, lessening or backing off of the pose can propel us further forward in the long run. It takes a long time for ambitious overachievers (us) - especially those who are accustomed to succeeding in life through hard work.

For those who tend to push it frequently, the edge might be you can do to make your pose healthy and search for ways you can back off.

In yoga it’s important to aim for equanimity rather than perfection, so we can lay the foundation for emotional stability no matter what happens.

How do we know if my less is more for us?

1) Injury. If you have chronic pain you’ll want to make sure not to aggravate it. Yoga isn’t about barreling through pain, but finding modifications so we can work with and through it.

2. Pain - ‘Bad’ pain is clear. It’s usually sharp and electric. It is your body telling you to back off. It’s essential that you obey your body in these moments. It’s feedback and a warning sign that could mean you’re going too far which will result in injury.

*Note - this is different than discomfort or a deep stretching sensation in your muscles which can be soreness, a deep stretch of an intense holding in a pose. “Comfortable discomfort.”

3. Panic. If you start panicking in a pose (and life) it is time to pull back. If you can’t maintain equanimity and steady breath - you’re most likely pushing too far. We never want to panic on our yoga mat - it means we’ve gone into fight - or - flight survival mode. We’re toast at that point because all we can focus on is when it’ll be over.

It’s a delicate balance to mastering our edge in yoga by maintaining deep breathing during strong sensations.

We have nothing to prove in yoga to ourselves or others. Work within your limits and watch yourself and your practice soar.

It’s very real to start feeling competitive as you come to your yoga mat. It’s human nature to look around and assess and compare ourselves against others.

Competition and comparison aren’t inherently good nor bad. They are a basic modes of thought which help us assess progress. How else can we know how far we’ve come if we can’t compare it to where I’ve been?

How can we learn how to improve and grow without learning the difference between us and those around us? Comparison serves us here if it feeds our soul and helps us grow. It’s harmful when we use it to put ourselves above or beneath others.

The mental trap here is if we become obsessed with comparison and competition and all we can focus on is how much “better” or “worse” we are than those around us. It’s when we lose sight of what really matters that gets us into trouble.

The remedy? An appreciation and understanding of where WE are at in OUR practice, process and life. When we’re secure in ourselves, we can appreciate the strengths and successes of others without feeling challenged or threatened by them. We can even learn from each other.

Remember, it is common and natural to judge, assess and compare. The important thing is to notice when it’s happening, reorient our attention and focus on what is important moment by moment. Allow them to come up and then choose to let them go.

Accept, appreciate, relax, breathe and focus on where you are at. That’s the way forward and out of unhealthy comparison in yoga and in life.

Yoga practice and training is the progressive development through time. It is a journey with no end. We’ll grow and transform along the way, but there is no arriving. The second we think we’ve arrived, we get squashed like a bug.

This is why it’s important to look as yoga as a practice to help us gain a new perspective of everything within and around us.

The awesome thing about yoga is there is no limit to how far we can go. There’s always another depth to reach. Yoga can help us shift from being goal-oriented to process-oriented. Both teaching and learning are an unending process of refinement.

It’s very common for beginner’s to push too hard and fast instead of working with where they’re at in the process. Just like nature, it’s best to trust the natural order of things - the progressive development through time.

Yoga is the art of dealing with plateaus. Part of the process is sometimes taking three steps back in order to go six steps forward and vice versa. Sometimes we might even feel like we’re making no progress or even that we’re getting worse, but really that’s all apart of the process. Sometimes we’ll feel stuck, and then bam, we break through to a new level.

Remember, sometimes results are barely visible, but every fraction of an inch of progress is meaningful. Seek 1% of change instead of big changes and watch your practice and your life transform.

We can hear advice, seek out guidance, and even ask for help, but ultimately, it is us and us alone who knows what is best for us.

This one hits home in particular for us. Over the past 6 years of yoga practice, we have fallen into the mental trap of trying to be what we’re not. Looking outside ourselves for answers. Looking to others for the way forward.

It took us a long time, and we’re still working on it - but we have a better compass for where we are headed based off our own truth and intuition.

Growing up - no one told us to trust ourselves and look within for the answers. We were constantly told to look outside ourselves. What we’ve come to learn is that through practice and stillness, and when we learn to trust our intuition and ultimately ourselves, our life works on the highest level.

Trust yourself and look inside. Within is the best place to look.

“Any creative person knows not to despise the days of small beginnings - the first brushstroke, the first word on a blank sheet of paper, the first bite played. Those fragile beginnings are precious, for no masterpiece could ever come without them.” - Baron Baptiste

In all disciplines there are sequential stages of growth and development. Each step is important and and each one takes time. Nothing can be skipped.

On a ten-point scale, if you are at level two and you want to move to level eight, you must first go through levels three, four, five, six and seven. The irony is that you can only move to the next stage in your development once stop resisting where you are at the process and begin embracing it.

We this very commonly when students wish to hit the more advanced and technically complex poses (asanas). They will do anything they can to force themselves into the pose. More times than not it doesn’t work and they are left frustrated and defeated.

When we embrace where we are at in the process and double down on our fundamentals and basics, we actually get further faster than we would by forcing the result and trying to skip ahead.

“Our doubts are traitors - and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt.” - William Shakespeare

Ever doubted yourself? Yeah - Us too. We know first hand the evil effect doubts can have on our yoga practice and lives. Doubts are not real; they are just illusions created to keep ourselves from taking risks because we are so afraid of failing.

Everyone has doubts. That’s not groundbreaking, but those who know how to manage their fear and doubt their doubts are the ones who make progress.

We all have the capacity to move beyond where we are right now.

We are like clay. We can reshape ourselves and transform if we are willing to - there’s nothing static about us.

If you are experiencing doubt - consider it a sign that you’re up to something and on track for the right thing for you. Also it’s probably a mental block more than it is physical.

If there wasn’t any doubt, you’re probably shooting too low or you don’t care enough about what you’re doing (in your practice & your life).

So today we encourage you to use your doubts as a radar to let you know you’re heading the right direction and replace it with Faith.

Having faith will propel us to places we never imagined.

Almost everyone new to yoga practice is subject to mental mistakes (including us too here).

With practice we can recognize these common patterns to help us get a healthy perspective on our practice.

On the pathway to mastery, it’s our job to help our students and viewers avoid these mental pitfalls.

By eliminating these mistakes, we set ourselves up for massive growth and progress on our yoga mat and in life.

Tomorrow we’ll start with mistake one. Stay tuned!

We’re very proud to share that Vanessa taught the whole Journey Into Power Sequence tonight to Austin!

Vanessa is journeying on her yoga path from a practitioner to a teacher of yoga.

This is also a milestone for us at - our first student / client to study and learn the Journey Into Power Sequence!

Well done, Vanessa!

If you’re interested in working with us to grow your practice or your teaching, reach out to us today.

VITALITY SERIES ⚡️

Slide 1: Crescent Lunge
Slide 2: Revolved Crescent Lunge
Slide 3: Warrior II
Slide 4: Extended Side Angle

Slide 5: Thunderbolt Twist
Slide 6: Fingers To Toes Forward Fold
Slide 7: Gorilla
Slide 8: Crow

This is where the practice gets intense. We use dynamic poses with added twists and this is our first time doing an arm balance, in crow pose.

An arm balance is any pose where you balance your body on your hands. Crow is a great gateway pose to other more challenging arm balances and poses as you progress in your practice.

Give this series a try and let us know if you feel the VITALITY flowing.

Ready for VITALITY week? It’s about to be lit 🔥.

The Vitality Series consists of dynamic poses which bring your heart rate up and get your energy flowing more vigorously.

Remember to set your eyes (Drishti) and breathe (Ujjayi) through this challenging series!