Question

When I was four, I began practicing performance Shotokan Karate. I stopped after 10 years, then started gaining weight.

As a teen I began going to the gym, and started another 10 years of pushing and forcing. More recently, I’ve been a running addict, alongside some pretty “violent” working out and healthy eating.

I’ve noticed everything can be violent and self-attacking, even healthy eating.

Now I’m practicing yoga, while trying to eat healthy and recover from pushing against myself. The problem is, I dont see my life without Karate or very hard work. What should I do?

I’ve gained 40 pounds, and I’m not sure yoga can help me here. But, I don’t want to go back to punishing myself, either. Please help!

Answer

Hi Allison, you’re not alone here!

It takes some work to get this “practicing easy” feeling in your body. But your instincts are right. It’s possible to leave the self-attacks behind, work hard, and be radiantly healthy all at the same time.

Practicing easy, you can accomplish tremendous challenges. You won’t tire, and you won’t punish yourself with unwelcome violence and stress that often tags along with forceful effort.

At first, going easy might feel like you’re not working hard. But, practicing easy is far from practicing lazy. You learn to work harder and achieve more difficult feats than can be accomplished by force. You stay easy in your body and mind through easy and challenging things alike. Like everything, it just takes practice.

My second thought is, do what you like! If you like Karate, keep it up. But, see if you can change how you practice over time. See if you can evolve it to feel less like aggressive pushing, and more like an easygoing exploration – even when your muscles are burning!

You can also bring this hard work into your yoga. Easy doesn’t mean just sitting and breathing. It means moving into very physically and mentally challenging situations with less struggle. Still breathing deep, still feeling into your body, still responding to what you feel.

Yoga is most helpful with health not because it burns calories, but because it leads to eating better foods. This is true with any form of exercise. Burning calories on its own doesn’t lead to weight loss. The most important thing is how we eat.

Yoga can help here if it helps you feel your body, believe what you feel, and respond. You’ll get a good sense of which foods help you feel good, and which are not so good. Feeling good can be addictive.

In case helpful, I’ll give you a practice video plus some more reading below:

Video: Total Body Yoga

Reading: Yoga and Weight Loss

Keep moving, keep exploring, and have fun.

-Mike

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