Journal entry 01: On what yoga taught me
How yoga became more than movement, but a practice of remembrance. In this first journal entry, I explore healing beyond the physical, returning to faith, and what it means to finally feel at home within my body.
My yoga practice is deeply personal. It takes me back home. Back into my soul, my heart, my vessel. I've been practising movement in one form or another my whole life, from dance as a child to eventually discovering yoga as the soulful, regenerative practice it is today.
When I first began practicing yoga consistently, I was living with what felt like a permanent knee injury. It had appeared suddenly, with no clear explanation or path to healing. It hurt constantly, and no physiotherapist, doctor, specialist or herbal practitioner could offer a solution. Eventually, I accepted it as something I would simply have to live with. I wore a knee brace almost every day until a PT told me that a brace just weakens my brain-body connection (where the brace signalled pain and stagnation to my brain). Eventually, the pain began to slowly shift and subside. As my yoga practice deepened, the pain gradually disappeared. Every now and then it still whispers, but the pain is nowhere near like it once used to be.
Photography by Rose Werle
The journey:
Through consistent asana (repetitive posture, yoga flows) and pranayam (breathwork, meditation and breath control), healing and transformation arrived in a way I least expected. My body wasn't the only thing that changed. My window of tolerance was once shut, sealed, super-glued. It felt almost permanently ruptured. My capacity to navigate challenge or uncertainty was little to none. I was deeply sensitive, highly reactive, and constantly anticipating danger. Emotional. Mental. Physical. Internal. External. I used to say that ‘letting go’ or ‘endings’ were the ‘biggest fears’ I had in life. This limitation only set me up for constant hurt, pain and heartbreak. I did not cope well with change or endings. I literally remember crying at school as a young child (from 5 years old) whenever I was left alone or away from my mom, whom I was anxiously attached to. Up until my early twenties, my childlike curiosity, creativity, and sense of play were suppressed due to this narrow window of tolerance. I could not see beyond (anticipated) fear and limitation. Looking back… I guess I was chronically anxious since I was a child.
In my adolescent years, I struggled to sleep in the dark. There was a period when I had to leave the light on all night because I was too afraid to even face the wall. I wasn't taught how to feel safe inside my own body. Nor was I particularly close to my faith during this time, not because I didn't want to be, but because I hadn't yet found my own way to spirit and faith. Over time, I slowly returned to spirituality through prayer, meditation, movement and yoga. My practice became less about flexibility and more about remembrance. I initiated a sacred process of introspection and change on a cellular, neuroplastic, and cognitive level.
What yoga taught me:
My sensitivity and deep ability to feel became my superpower and tool for compassion and empathy - both towards myself and others. My creativity and my self-development became a playground of exploration to transmute pain into beauty and self-expression. My biggest fear to release became my anchor: self-preservation and unification - not just with the external world, but the universe, with God (the Divine). I spoke to the cosmos every night. My bedroom window became the place where the dark knight of the soul processed deep discomfort and worked tirelessly to guide me towards my ‘higher self’, the self who accepted my experiences, strengthened my identity, evolved my values and stepped closer to my goals.
Yoga was a tool that brought me back to myself. My childlike joy, play, and expression. At 27, it became the way I greet each morning. It became my ritual of intention. My way of opening myself to the day before the world asked anything of me.
I thanked Allah for guiding me back to my body, my mind and my heart. I thanked Him for carrying me through the tired mornings, the heavy ones, the uncertain ones. Slowly, I began to get back into my body after unconscious states of survival and suffering. I learned the language of my body, when it needed slower days to rest instead of practicing discipline. When it needed softness instead of productivity. I learnt to give myself more space. More patience. More compassion. More permission to be imperfect. More permission to prioritise myself. To release the habit of self-abandonment that up until now, was the constricted borders I lived within.
Yoga taught me how to remain in the healthy balance of feeling deeply without becoming consumed by every emotion that moved through me. To express myself honestly without unconsciously drawing others into cycles that drained instead of empowered.
Most of all, yoga reminded me of something I had always known. That I have always loved movement. Rhythm, soul, percussion, expression. Life was never meant to be lived only sitting behind desks and screens. It was meant to be embodied. It reminded me that I am creative: fluid and expressive, and that is the life I want for myself.
When life feels heavy, whether within me or around me, it is my art that keeps me alive: writing, movement, guiding, creating and sharing. These have become the ways I remain both soft and resilient. Resistant and deeply human. So perhaps yoga was never just about movement. Perhaps it was always about remembering who I was before the world taught me to forget. And that is why, even on the hardest mornings, I return to the mat.
Every single time.
For your own journal
What practice helps you return home to yourself?
When was the last time your body whispered something your mind was too busy to hear?
What have you accepted as permanent that may be asking for a different approach in order to achieve healing and liberation? (internal and external)
Where in your life are you choosing productivity over presence?
What helps you remember who you are beneath survival?
