One of the many gifts of practice is the ability to bring compassion into our lives.

By sticking to a practice, be it yoga or another form of mindfulness, we learn to soften into our experience. We watch our minds display their unwieldiness, their confusion, their neurotic nature.

We become aware of our own story. How we have bought into it, or ignored it, or been ruled by it.

And hopefully this leads us to recognizing that we are bigger than our story. The essence of who we are is bigger than anything we can imagine. And once we recognize this in ourselves, we start to see it in others. We start to awaken our compassion for the human experience.

As a health care practitioner and yoga teacher, I have become aware of how everyone I treat or teach has some crazy story: perhaps it is of trauma, or of overcoming dire circumstances. But, time and time again, I find myself in awe of everyone I meet. I see their stories in myself as well; and after a years of teaching and practice, I’ve realized that we all have been though (or are going through) adversity.

It is so much easier to have compassion, then, for our own experience (and that of others) when we hold this truth in our hearts. Our practice can then be about expansion, about reaching beyond our story. It can be about being soft with ourselves, with others.

Our practice can ripen into one which nourishes our sense of love and abundance, and ultimately frees us from the restraints of story. We then get to live and love from a place of freedom, of connection.

How to Awaken Compassion (hint: it starts with you) #emilyperryyoga #firekeepers Click To Tweet