3 Ways Yoga can Help You
to Thrive in Uncertainty
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly”. – R. Buckmister Fuller
We all know the cardinal rule: Everything changes always. Yup, We can definitely count on that, for the seeming better or worse. Everything in nature moves in cycles and waves.
And even though we intuitively know that, change can be hard to readily and easily accept and embrace.
Let’s face it, this has been a tough few years – if not for you directly, then for many of your friends, family and loved ones. Whether you’re thriving or surviving, literally everyone is being effected in some way, shape or form.
As a collective, we’re being called out of comfort zones and invited into the great mystery of life in a whole new way. Some of us have lost our work as we know it, some of us have lost loved one.
Relationships are shifting, and what we’ve counted on as solid up until now – the ground many of us stand on – has been fully shaken. The future can feel sometimes dauntingly uncertain.
Many of us are asking ourselves how to be ok, how to find balance and connection, how to overcome stress and overwhelm, how to BE in relation to this wild moment in time.
Every challenge and change offers us the opportunity for transformation or trauma. Sometimes both!
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So how can Yoga help us Thrive in Uncertainty?
3 Practical Keys
1) Yoga is a Practical Practice. It teaches us Self-Discipline, Self-Care and Self-Love.
Focus on your own personal growth and transformation. Work on your self and your well-being.
We are at the core of our own experiences. All we can ever control, is our relationship to what each moment presents. For most of us, finding and maintaining strength, balance and flexibility, in both our outer and inner worlds, requires deliberate PRACTICE. This will help you immensely to stay balanced, centred and grounded.
Yoga as a practice helps to teach us to keep watching the mind, and the stories we are telling ourselves about the moment – to watch the feelings, thoughts, and sensations arise and release identifications with them . The practice is to keep coming back to the breath, and to open and move our bodies and move stagnation and stuck energy.
Looking after your body, eating healthy whole, balanced, foods, drinking plenty of water, taking care of your hygiene, getting enough exercise are simple, beautiful and important aspects of our daily self-care regime, that when honoured, can help to build more self-love, respect and self-worth Take care of your body. It is the temple of your spirit.
2) Yoga helps us to Consciously Cultivate Awareness, Presence & Adaptability.
So we can Allow, Let go & Create New Dreams
Lean into the discomfort. Let all the feelings arise and breathe in to them. Allow the feelings of loss, grief, gratitude, nostalgia, emotion, endings, new beginnings. Let yourself be fully present with any discomfort. Practicing letting yourself completely feel whatever is there for you to feel in relation to the changes, whether you perceive them as positive or negative.
Yoga as a practice is designed to help awaken our consciousness to the illusion of separation. it is a pursuit of relinquishing suffering by virtue of come into direct awareness with our true nature.o slow. Breath into it. Trust that it’s a process. And when you’re ready, start dreaming new dreams and growing towards more light and purpose.
Being able to witness passing thoughts as clouds moving through the mind, as one might in a buddhist mindfulness meditation practice, can help us to establish a space between a stimulus – a thought, feeling, or sensation – and our reaction. That space of awareness, creates the opportunity to instead of moving into reaction, we can cultivate more supportive responsiveness.
Dream. Plants and Grow new seeds. Cultivate them with your awareness and love. The Yogic practice of sankalpa, of creating intentionality in our lives, connecting with the ultimate feeling we desire to be experiencing or rise into – whether that inner calm and peace, or abundance and love – can really helpful in supporting the conditions for thriving.
3) Yoga helps us to Strengthen & Resource Ourselves
To Welcome Connection, Support, Learning, Letting Go, Growth and Transformation
Our basic human needs for connection, belonging and purpose are still there, and are important ingredients to include in the recipe of thriving. If you’re feeling alone, reach out – let yourself connect and be supported. I know it can be hard. Remember the ol’ adage “ask and you shall receive”. You are not alone, even if it feels like it. People care about you – I promise.
Connect with community, support and let yourself be supported. A key component of a spiritual practice is to support yourself with a sangha – a supportive community of like-minded seekers who are committed to the path of love and evolution and help you to ask important questions, seek truth, and rise to your highest self.
Stay curious. Breathe into it. What is adversity teaching you about yourself and life in general? What can you learn from your emotions, from what’s happening all around you? Yoga teaches us to reflect – svadyaya – to study ourselves, to know ourselves. To see all the tricky ways the ego works to keep us in sufffering and separation.
Yoga gives us mantras like “om mani padme hum” – a powerful mantra for peace and compassion from the buddhist tradtion. The mantra translates as the “the jew is in the lotus flower”. The basic symbology of the lotus is a representation of the human journey – Rooted in the mud, the lotus rises in beauty and grows towards the light. In the other words, and in the words of Thich Naht Hanh – “No mud. No Lotus”. When we repeat this mantra, we practice replacing our negative or looping thoughts with this sentiment that we hope to realise – that even if we feel we are in the mud right now, there’s more beauty to the picture that we can’t yet see, that will be there as a direct result of having been in that mud.
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E-RYT 500 Yoga Alliance | Post-Grad Dip. Education, Queensland University of Technology | BA Psychology / Philosophy, McGill University
Yogi, Life Coach, Musician, Entrepreneur, Enthusiast. Community Activator. Event Producer. Multi-Passionate, Free-spirited Lover of Life and Gypsy Soul. Francie is the inspired founder of the award-winning Pure Flow Yoga School in Thailand, voted one of the top 8 Retreats worldwide by the Guardian, 2018,
As a devoted practitioner and life-long student, Francie has studied thousands of hours with master teachers worldwide, and has curated and led more than 150 + Yoga Retreats, teacher trainings, workshops and programs with over 600+ students from all walks of life.
She has been a featured presenter at the acclaimed Bali Spirit Festival for the7years, as well as Island Elements in Australia, Oregon Eclipse, Symbiosis Gathering. In addition to presenting, Francie has also been involved as a festival producer with True:Nature Experience, Air Festival, Sacred Circularities, and other global festivals, retreats, trainings and gatherings online and worldwide.
Francie’s signature style embraces the most intuitive, creative, graceful and flowing movements that the practice has to offer, while tapping into the nurturing and powerful insights of the ancient tradition. She offers all-levels, inspiring and playful classes in Hatha Flow, Vinyasa, and Yin styles and retreats that weave in-depth instructions on alignment, sequencing, and awareness of the breath with her love of flow, embodiment, storytelling, music, and dance with her knowledge of mindfulness meditation, pranayama, energy anatomy, and Yogic philosophy and wisdom.
Francie is known for her enthusiasm, joy, and dedication to helping to uplift inspire and empower people to live embodied, joyful, aligned, connected, playful, and awakened lives, and is committed to being in service and to living an exceptional life of community, co-creation, celebration and flow.
Francie is based in Koh Phangan, Thailand and Ubud, Bali, where she offers her one-a-kind Cosmic Flow Vinyasa, Hatha Flow and Yin Yoga classes, Masterclass workshops in Philosophy, Lifestyle and Vocal Awakening, Kirtan, Sacred Music concerts, Sound healings and her Signature intimate, magical & life-changing “Yoga in Paradise” Yoga & meditation retreats.
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