Written by Katy Wicks - Happy Citta Founder
It may come as no surprise that Happy Citta began as a yoga journey. The name itself (Originally 'Happy Citta Yoga') was intended as a nod to Sanskrit, the original language of yoga (Citta - pronounced 'cheh-tah' in it's original language, most closely translates as the word 'Mind').
When I dabbled in my first ever yoga class, I was travelling through Africa and had the opportunity to take a sunset, rooftop yoga class on a beach in Zanzibar. Idyllic, right?
Well, for all of the beauty of the picture I paint, it was horrendous. I could never foresee from this experience that yoga would go on to become one of the most stabilising forces in my life.
I was 26 and I did not consider myself to be a tense, inflexible or unfit person, until that moment. There were no discussions about the abilities of the group and it became quickly apparent that the other six attendees (all of whom I'd been travelling with for a few weeks already) not only knew their way around a yoga mat, but had spent more than one of their previous visits to it in a downwards facing dog. Awful posture for the untrained, not at all comfortable, enjoyable, relaxing or uplifting, despite the claims made by the rest of my classmates.
It was 2013 and I swore that my first yoga class would be my last.
In the years that followed, I spent quite a lot of my time at various beaches, running and stretching - also activities I'd done very little of before I left my home country, but it felt like a missed opportunity to be in these beautiful countries where the temperature meant that the outdoors could be used as a free gym and nobody knew me so I didn't have to be embarrassed if I was seen.
Over time, as I started to get a little more comfortable with it, running solo along the shoreline started to become a form of mindfulness for me. I was alone with my thoughts and sometimes those thoughts were about my day ahead, or conversations I'd had the day before and sometimes they were very directly about the movements and sensations of my body. I was gaining a level of physical self-awareness I hadn't set out to, but I didn't know at the time how much of this would also be relevant to yoga when I one day gave it a second chance.
In 2016 that moment presented itself. I was in the middle of nowhere (somewhere in Australia), living and working off-season at a bar with about five customers in as many months and had very little to entertain myself with outside of night sky photography and trying to find the source of the scratching sound coming from behind my bed. I found myself stumbling across a YouTube tutorial from the well-known channel (though not to me, at the time), 'Yoga with Adriene' and I thought since it looked quite gentle and there was no one around to see me fail this time anyway, why not?
This was the first of many videos I followed from the American Yoga Instructor, Adriene Mishler and she will likely never know that her channel is the reason I made my way to India two and a half years later, to Rishikesh, the birthplace of yoga, to train to teach it.
Initially I had no intention of teaching it professionally, but purely because in those years it became so important to me to have that physical and emotional practice and it gave me such a sense of peace and, (judge the cheesiness of this phrase if you will, but I have no other words for it...) belonging within my own body, that I felt really strongly that I now needed everyone who I loved and cared about to be able to get that same benefit, and I wanted to know how I could safely share that with them.
Inevitably, when my family took absolutely zero interest in using me and my new skillset to support them, I decided to to broaden my offering to the masses and teach in my town, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Adriene Mishler and her helpful sidekick, Benji
Why am I telling you all of this?
Because in my recent mental health decline (and in fact, for easily the past year prior!) I have barely visited my yoga mat. When I stopped teaching yoga two years ago, it was because my love for yoga does not extend to a love for 'Business-Building' or 'Social-Media-Influencing' and I began to feel like it was all becoming too much about the income and far less of an authentic practice. I became a happy student again, and although I missed preparing and sharing classes, I knew I was on the verge of burnout if I kept running things that way with little-to-no financial return. What a sad world we live in, when the things that pay have to take priority over things that bring us joy. Can't I just trade my yoga skills for gas and electric at home? I grew some mad-sized carrots last year that I reckon could have paid a month of my mortgage if I'd offered them to the right people!
I digress...
When life ran away from me recently and I found myself struggling with every aspect of it - work, relationships, lack of direction or ambition, physical aches and pains from too much desk time and an attitude on the surface that could rival Joan Rivers for rudeness - I set myself the challenge of utilising all of the skills I've learned over the years in a more structured way to resolve my problems, inside and out.
In January, I started the Therapist in Self-Administered Therapy six-week plan, and yoga was placed at week four. It wasn't delayed to start at week four, so I have been drawing in small practices to bring my physical body some relief and my emotional health a little respite within those first three weeks too.
As a recap:
Week one utilised Compassion-Focused Therapy to help me reduce the negative self-talk, specifically when dealing with my high workload at the desk. Alongside the CFT practice, I also introduced a few calendar reminders - every 90-minutes where my diary allowed, but otherwise, just between meetings when it felt achievable - to drink water, stand and move, or roll my chair away from the desk for a moment of seated stretching.
Week two continued to review my thought processes, but this time with Neuro-Linguistic Programming as the method, which gave me an opportunity to dig deeper into the rules I was unconsciously living by. This helped me to recognise how the outward behaviour was tied to a series of thoughts I wasn't actively aware of. The realisations I had in my second week, frankly, blew my mind, as it gave answers to a few behaviours I'd been fighting with myself about. Not to excuse myself from them, but to be clear about what my logic had been when I had perceived myself as behaving badly.
In that second week, part of what I learned was that I needed to find small moments that made me feel more warm inside. Moments as simple as sitting with my book instead of my phone, watching the sugar dissolve slowly into my coffee (I recognise that caffeine and sugar are probably not helping much, but I don't smoke or take drugs, let me have this). Many of those small, warming moments were actually quite aligned with the mindfulness I mentioned earlier that I used to feel sometimes when running. Running... Something else I stopped a long time ago and now feels pretty difficult!
Week three was Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, where we learn to become comfortable in discomfort. This might not sound like it would be the goal of therapy for many people. Surely we want to improve our lives, not just get comfortable with feeling crappy? But when the situation around you isn't going to change overnight, sometimes you have to work with what you have and soothe yourself and your attitude to it for a while, as you progress towards the changes you need to make. Decisions to make changes in our lives are not always a finger-snap event and I, for one, did not expect that this week and the self-talk I put myself through would result in me making a dramatic change to an important aspect of my life.
Nevertheless, I did, and that brings us to the planned week four of yoga.
Initially the reason behind choosing yoga and somatic movement for this week was because one of my original complaints had been bad postural habits due to my long desk hours and it had caused me some back and shoulder pain. I was also seeing burst blood vessels in my shins and calves from long hours of sitting (Wow... Genuinely, how did it get this bad?!).
Technically that week four plan was immediately after ACT and it was absolutely perfect for a break from the thinky stuff for a week and to focus more on movement as a form of medicine, but due to the unexpected big change that I chose to make in week three, I decided to let my body choose the direction for the week that followed. Instead of ploughing on ahead with something that felt like it was just out of reach, I found myself moving between wanting to go for a gentle walk or do some easy restorative yoga postures to wanting to drink wine, eat carbs and cry in front of the TV. I have zero regrets, frankly.
I didn't stop all of the work I'd put in so far. I just used an extra, therapy-free week to recap and build on what I'd already learned and worked on. So let's call it an extension...
Week four, part one: Recovery
I allowed myself space from what had been stressing me. I did a few 'feeling-sorry-for-myself' activities, and a few 'get-up-and-get-on-with-it' activities, but I did not give yoga and my physical posture my full attention as I had originally planned.
Week four, part two: Recommitment
This has seen me taking myself for a gentle jog around my neighbourhood to try and blow away the cobwebs - not to 'get in shape' or 'track my progress', but to replace my usual morning vegetative-doom-scroll with something that didn't make me sadder.
I don't carry my phone when I run, or wear a watch. I just pop out and do a little shuffle along the river, barely even 10 minutes - enough to get my heart rate up - and then I make conscious choices about what stretches might feel good for the muscles I've just used and the ones that aren't going to get much love while I do my desk job all day.
At the end of my working day, or just before bed (sometimes those two things are still, unfortunately, the same thing), I take 5-10 minutes with a bolster (heavy pillows work perfectly too) to get into a supported, restorative posture, like 'child's pose' or 'legs-up-the-wall' and just let myself listen to my breathing. Feeling the way that my breath moves into and out of my body, conscious of how my physical being feels to be in this position and visualising the muscles and joints gently releasing the tension of the day. I remind myself to relax my jaw, and the space on my forehead, just between my eyebrows. Sometimes I even give myself a moment of gratitude, a little shout-out to me, for making this a priority.
This week has reminded me that after that first rooftop session in Zanzibar, thirteen years ago, it was really easy to put all yoga in the 'too-hard' box, because of one uncomfortable posture. I went ahead and did that again two years ago when I decided that teaching yoga was too difficult because of the uncomfortable aspect of marketing that felt so alien to me. This past year I have allowed my busy schedule and tired body to brand all physical movement as too difficult to prioritise because of my available time, but had replaced it with overworking and doom-scrolling instead because they were easier.
Do any of my screens bring me the sense of peace I feel when I'm hugging my bolster? Do they ever result in the same sense of quiet achievement I get from my gentle morning jog? (not that quiet, I tell everyone who I see that day that I've "been for a run" as though it was a half-marathon).
In both cases, no. My screentime is a necessity in my working day, and frankly, the algorithm on my phone knows exactly how to keep me hooked and even has me spending my hard earned money on the latest pointless but cute creative outlet (very excited for my upcoming delivery of air-dry clay, for making some 'whoknowswhat').
This week, I didn't have a mind-blowing moment where therapy helped me learn something new about myself. I had a beautiful reminder of what I've long already known. Yoga and physical movement are exactly the mental health support I need. They can't fix every problem, but they are the one extra thing worth prioritising in my otherwise still busy schedule, because they keep me sane, calm, strong and ready for almost anything else life throws my way.
If you'd like any help or support in starting your journey with yoga, or any of the other therapeutic methods mentioned in this article, please don't hesitate to reach out and contact me, Katy, at Happy Citta.
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