There are things every woman should know about long-term relationships—especially romantic ones.

Women have been conditioned for centuries to sacrifice their wants to please someone else. 

For women in relationships, that someone else is often their partner.

We’ve explored some of the best new relationship advice for ladies to help you build a connection that’s a loving partnership.

We hope you find something that will change your life and your relationship for the better.

What a Woman Should Want in a Relationship 

A prerequisite for following our relationship tips for women is the firm belief that you don’t need a long-term romantic relationship to make you a complete person. You’re already complete, though you may not be fully aware of that. 

This advice for women is about laying the right foundation for relationships — starting with the one you have with yourself—by addressing the following mutual must-haves:

• Respect and Appreciation
• Interest and Attraction
• Trust and Support
• Affection and Intimacy
• Compassion and Generosity
• Consideration
• Commitment

We’re not here to burden you with “shoulds” based on unhelpful assumptions. We want you to know what you have a right to expect from a long-term romantic relationship. 

31 Pieces of Relationship Advice for Women 

Look through the following relationship tips and make a note of each point that resonates with you. Depending on your background, some will speak louder to you than others. 

1. Love yourself. 

If you don’t know what it means to love yourself, you’re unlikely to recognize counterfeit love from a partner who is using you—or halfhearted love from a partner who’s settling for you to avoid being alone. 

2. Make real connection a priority. 

It’s not enough just to get along with someone you’re attracted to. Make sure there’s a real connection there–not just physical but mental, emotional, and even spiritual. You don’t have to agree on everything to feel connected. 

3. Maintain a life of your own. 

Don’t expect your partner to be your everything. It’s not fair to either one of you. If you’ve never had a life that didn’t revolve around your partner (or having a partner), now is the time to build one. 

4. Don’t base your mood on your partner’s.

Your mood should not depend on someone else’s — even if that someone is your partner. You’re allowed to maintain equanimity. You can empathize without internalizing his mood. Don’t compound it by making it your own.

5. Don’t stalk him. 

This should go without saying. If a guy you like doesn’t seem that into you, let him go. You’ve got better things to do than chase after a guy who shows zero inclination to get to know you better. 

6. Take good care of yourself. 

Make it a priority to practice self-love every day. Check-in with yourself, accept and honor what you’re feeling, and take an inventory of any needs that aren’t being met. Your needs matter as much as anyone else’s.

7. Learn to say “No.”

Don’t be your partner’s doormat. Let go of the idea that he has an innate right to decide how you spend your time and energy. He doesn’t. If you want an equal partnership, get comfortable with the word “No.”.

8. Share your authentic self.  

You’re more likely to hide parts of yourself from someone if you intend to become what they want.

Your authentic self won’t please everyone, but it doesn’t have to. Anyone who doesn’t love you as you are shouldn’t be your partner.

9. Stretch yourself. 

Challenge yourself daily. Make it a priority to do something that scares you at least once a week, if not every day. A life spent in your comfort zone isn’t much of a life. You need—and you deserve—more. 

10. Treat your partner with respect. 

This is basic golden rule stuff: treat others as you want to be treated. If you love your partner, showing them respect shouldn’t take much effort. Mutual respect is essential to any successful relationship. 

11. Trust your intuition. 

If your intuition is on high alert whenever you’re with your partner, something is wrong. If you’re unsure whether that sense of foreboding comes from your gut or paranoia, talk to someone you trust. 

12. Teach your partner how to treat you. 

If your partner is mistreating you, don’t let him get away with it. Let him know you won’t tolerate disrespect from him. If he blames you or brushes you off, take that as your cue to leave him. 

13. Give your relationship the attention it needs. 

Relationships take work — from both of you. Make time to spend with your partner, and commit to prioritizing your time together, whether you’re talking, playing games, or doing something else that draws you closer.

14. Discuss gender roles. 

You want to be on the same page with this. If your partner believes the woman should let her man make all the important decisions and spend her time making babies and keeping house, that’s a problem.

15. Talk about household chores. 

Even if your partner works full-time outside the home you share, and you work from home (with or without kids), he shouldn’t expect you to do all the housework. See if you can agree on who will do what and how often. 

16. Practice active listening. 

Listen to your partner with the same level of attention you look for in him when you’re the one talking. If you can’t both communicate and give each other your undivided attention, your relationship will suffer. 

17. Empathize with your partner. 

By all means, try to empathize with your partner when he shares what he’s thinking or feeling. You don’t have to plunge into the same feelings, but you should at least try to discern what they are and respond appropriately. 

18. Don’t settle to avoid being alone. 

There are worse things than remaining single into your 40s and beyond, and one of them is realizing the lack of connection between you and your partner—because you settled for him to avoid ending up alone.

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19. Learn to love your own company. 

Before you even think of saying “Yes” to a proposal (of marriage or partnership), make sure you can enjoy your own company at least as much as you enjoy theirs. Otherwise, you’re more likely to settle for someone you’re not in love with. 

20. Accept differences that don’t amount to red flags. 

If you’re in a committed relationship with someone, you will have differences in opinion, behavior, and beliefs. Learn to accept the ones that don’t spell the doom of your relationship. 

21. Discuss differences that do (or that might). 

If you have differences that do amount to red flags, make time to discuss those differences and decide whether a compromise is necessary or helpful. It’s possible you both have separate paths to take—at least for now.

22. Become the kind of person you want to attract. 

If you’re single, focus on becoming the kind of person you’d want to spend time with. For example, if you’re looking for the kind of guy who makes time for volunteer work, make time for it yourself.  

23. Don’t try to change your partner. 

If you’re in a relationship, don’t make it your mission to reshape your partner into the man you want him to be. No one wants to feel that they’re not enough for their partner. 

24. Show appreciation for your partner. 

Make a point of telling your partner what you appreciate about him — qualities that you admire or actions he’s taken that you’ve noticed. It makes a difference when both partners notice what they love in each other. 

25. Never tolerate abuse. 

Everyone has their off days, but neither of you should tolerate any kind of abuse from the other. And emotional abuse is just as serious as the physical kind, even if it doesn’t leave a visible mark. 

26. Don’t be jealous. 

Your partner should feel free to be friendly toward other people without raising your hackles.

There’s a difference between being sociable and flirting, If you’re feeling insecure in your relationship, address that with him. 

27. But don’t allow your partner to gaslight you, either. 

If your partner is flirting with someone else, and you confront him about it, he shouldn’t call you “paranoid,” justify his flirting, or blame you for it. If he does, take it seriously. 

28. Don’t take your mood out on your partner. 

Maybe you get in a funk sometimes, but that doesn’t justify your taking it out on your partner. A bad mood isn’t a free pass to act like a jerk. And that goes both ways.

29. Don’t ignore the red flags.

You have instincts for a reason. The more you learn about human behavior, the more likely your gut is to help you recognize danger signs in your relationship. Ignoring them only guarantees more challenging times down the road.

30. Don’t ignore conflict, either (Deal with it.)

Even the best relationships involve conflict. You won’t always agree on things. And handling those conflicts with love and empathy is worth more than total agreement. 

31. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. 

You don’t have to be a relationship expert, and neither does your partner. Every couple can benefit from couples counseling or having separate therapists. An outside perspective can help you both see what you’re missing. 

Now that you’ve looked through all 31 relationship tips for women, which ones stood out for you? And what will you do differently today?

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Although proper nutrition plays a key role in weight loss, burning calories through exercise can also move you toward your goal.

If you love hitting the road and think cycling for weight loss is for you, here’s some helpful info to help you get started.

Can Cycling Help With Weight Loss?

The short answer is a resounding yes, especially when you’re just starting out and your body is racing to adapt to the new activity — and burning tons of calories in the process.

“As you become stronger on the bike, you’ll start to burn fewer calories (and fat) during your workouts if you keep pedaling at the same pace for the same distance,” says Trevor Thieme, C.S.C.S., Beachbody’s senior director of fitness and nutrition content.

“As a result, it will become increasingly important to dial up the intensity and/or time of your workouts — and pursue a wider variety of workouts, such as intervals and tempo rides as you become fitter,” he adds.

Of course, the most important variable for achieving any goal is consistency. That’s true whether you’re cycling indoors or outside.

For example, a study on the health benefits of indoor cycling found that those who regularly ride are more likely to see weight loss and experience improved health markers.

Those researchers added that the results are even more significant with a healthy diet.

Here are a few tips to make cycling for weight loss more effective.

1. Vary Your Routine

When cycling for weight loss, both interval and steady-state cardio training can yield significant results, and according to Thieme, the best training programs combine the two modalities.

You can burn as many calories during an interval workout as you can during a longer steady-state session.

But, Thieme adds, don’t do intervals every day as you may risk over-training. Alternating between “speed work” and steady-state rides each week will help you avoid burnout and stay on the fast track toward your goals.

2. Be Smart About Your Calorie Deficit

Creating a calorie deficit (i.e., burning more calories than you consume each day) through diet and exercise is essential for losing weight.

But the key is to do that while still fueling your body sufficiently to perform at your peak during your workouts, says Garret Seacat, C.S.C.S., and USA Cycling certified coach.

“Especially if you’re doing longer rides, you need enough fuel, and you’ll use that during the ride,” he says. “Trying to cut way back [on calories, and especially carbs] will sabotage you because you won’t have the fuel to do as much as you want.”

3. Add Cycling to Your Daily Routine

Even if you see some significant results through your cycling workouts, you can ramp up your cycling for weight loss by finding more ways to spend time on your bike.

For example, a study on bike commuting showed that those who maintained the activity over time were more likely to prevent weight gain and facilitate weight loss.

“Getting outdoors can also inspire you to ride for longer, especially if you’re doing new routes and enjoying the scenery,” says Seacat. “Remember that having fun during an activity that’s helping you lose weight will motivate you to keep doing it and keep challenging yourself.”

Looking for a live indoor cycling class? Try BODi on the MYX bike! Learn more about Beachbody On Demand Interactive (BODi) and the hundreds of live and on-demand studio classes designed for every fitness level — cycling workouts, cardio/HIIT, strength training, barre, Pilates, yoga, and more.

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What’s the best life advice you’ve received up until now?

If it changed your life for the better, you probably remember it — and who gave it to you. 

Not all advice has that kind of power.

Even funny advice can turn your life around and get you moving in a better direction. 

We want you to have all the advantages good life advice can bring you.

So, we curated this list of the best life-changing ideas.

Look through it and save the ones that hit you right where you live. 

Someday, you’ll be the one sharing it with someone else. 

What Is Good Advice for Life? 

By now, you’ve probably heard plenty of advice that did you little if any good.

So, before we dive into some of the best advice about life, let’s break down the qualities that make it so.

• It’s proven to work or to have positive results. 
• It’s timely — and timeless. 
• It’s doable (and cost-effective). 

Good advice is advice you can afford to follow and others have used to get the results you want. And as you’re about to see, the best advice takes it a step further. 

What Is the Best Piece of Advice Ever? 

What’s the best life advice you can get? That depends on what you need to hear to let go of your past and take control of your own life.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that the advice you receive when you need help the most is going to be good.

According to Guy Kawasaki, the best, most helpful advice has the following in common: 

• It’s true — i.e., not based on assumptions, wishful thinking, or fads. 
• It’s concrete — i.e., it has steps you can follow. 

The best advice for you, then, fits those two criteria and meets you right where you are.

29 Top Pieces of Random Advice to Improve Your Life 

When someone gives you a random piece of advice, chances are they’ve heard it from someone else (or several someones).

The 29 pieces of advice here have been around longer than you have. Which ones mean the most to you?

1. Forgive and let go. 

You’re not telling the offender what they did or said was okay. You’re releasing yourself from the pain of dwelling on it. You’re setting yourself free.

Whether or not the other person ever feels regret is not your business — or your problem.

2. “Do the best you can until you know better.” — Maya Angelou

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. If you learned at an early age to fear the consequences of making visible mistakes, challenge that fear now.

Prioritize learning and growing over getting it right the first time. And when you know better, do better. 

3. Life is about managing expectations. 

No one wants to spend their life trying to live up to someone else’s expectations of them.

It’s also self-defeating to set unrealistic expectations (too high or too low) for yourself or the world and try to ensure those expectations are met. 

4.. Let go of the idea that things could’ve been any other way. 

There’s no point in wondering, “What if…?” Don’t waste time dwelling on what might have been.

Before you made a particular choice or before something happened, the potential for other choices and outcomes existed. Now, all you have is the present. Be there for it.

5. Just keep going. No matter what. 

You may lack specific resources, but if you’re willing to accept discomfort and push through it, you can still get closer to your goals, even if you have to deal with rejection and painful lessons along the way.

Keep taking one step forward at a time, even when it’s hard.

6. Listen more than you speak. 

Listen intently, and listen to learn. Let go of the need to gather ammo for your reply. If you’re not listening to understand, you’re wasting your time and the speaker’s, too.

Check your ego at the door, and be fully present when your attention is needed. 

7. “Do what you’re afraid to do.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Most people avoid what scares them, but, as you’ve no doubt heard before, nothing grows in your comfort zone.

So, step out of it. Do something every day that scares you, even if just a little. Look for ways to stretch yourself. 

8. Be kind. Always. 

Treat others as you would like to be treated. This is a basic rule for getting along with the rest of your species — and other species, too. If you can be cruel to one, you can be cruel to all.

And what you condone, you can also exceed. 

9. Change your thinking, change your life. 

Your thoughts determine your actions as well as your attitude. Take a closer look at the thoughts that come into your head and be honest about where they came from and where they tend to lead you.

From there, you can consciously choose better ones. 

10. Learn to pause. 

When you’re stressed, angry, or nervous, take a moment to stop what you’re doing, close your eyes, and take at least one deep breath. Take note of where you physically feel the energy of those emotions. 

The brief separation allows you to accept the feelings without giving them control. 

11. Be patient with all (including yourself). 

Remember that everyone is fighting a battle, and the only battle you’re witness to is your own. Don’t assume your stuff is worse than someone else’s.

Don’t assume your faults are, either. Trust that everyone has a learning curve, and root for them as you root for yourself.

12. If you never learn another thing in life, learn to meditate. 

Learn as many kinds as you like. Meditation gives you time to care for your deepest self.

The more you practice, the more aware you become of who you are, what you want, and what you need to do. A daily habit will change your life in every way. 

13. Always show your appreciation. 

If you didn’t grow up writing “Thank you” cards, it’s never too late to start. Or, if you know you’re more likely to put that off, send a quick email or text to express your gratitude.

It’s a lot better than nothing.  Don’t end the day without thanking someone. 

14. Never waste an opportunity to make someone smile. 

Put aside, for the moment, how you’ll feel when you’ve done or said something that lights up someone else’s face.

Put yourself in their place and be the friend you’d want to have in that moment. This is kindness plus going the extra mile. And it’s worth it. 

15. The greatest gift you can give your children is your own emotional well-being. 

Take this to heart, especially if you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship. Too many couples stay together “for the sake of the kids” when staying together can cost them their emotional health and vitality.

You and your kids deserve better. 

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16. If there were one right way to raise a child, everyone would do it the same way. 

There are always going to be people out there who are sure they know the right way to parent, and some won’t hesitate to point out what you’re doing “wrong.”

But what they think of your parenting has more to do with their insecurities than with you. 

17. Take time to know yourself. 

Self-knowledge is essential to growth. Make it a priority to get to know your true self, and don’t overlook the benefits of talking to a therapist.

Journaling is another excellent way to get better acquainted with your interests, values, and core beliefs. 

18. Be impeccable with your word. 

This advice is one of the Four Agreements explained by Don Miguel Ruiz. At its essence, this first one means be watchful of the words you use and do as much good — and as little harm — with them as possible. 

19. Don’t take things personally. 

The second agreement is a reminder that how someone treats others reflects how they feel about themselves. If they feel the need to cut with their words, it’s to forget, for a moment, the pain they feel on the inside. It’s not about you. 

20. Don’t make assumptions. 

The third agreement is a tough one to follow, as we are always making assumptions — about ourselves, about other people, about unexpected changes, etc.

It saves time but costs us in other ways. Instead, ask yourself, “Is that really true?” and be prepared to learn.

21. Always do your best. 

The third agreement guards against perfectionism. The point is to do the best you can with what you know and what you have.

You do no one any favors by condemning your efforts when they fall short of the ideal. Just do your best, and keep learning. 

22. Be skeptical. But learn to listen.

The fifth agreement (from a separate book) reminds you to use — and develop — critical thinking skills and get in the habit of questioning things. When you approach things as a questioner (rather than a knower), you’re more open to new ways of looking at things. 

23. No job is beneath you. 

Take every job as an opportunity to do your best and to learn what you can from it. If it’s not a learning experience, it’s at least an opportunity to serve in some way — to do some good.

The humblest jobs and those who hold them are often the most necessary.  

24. Life is good, but it’s not fair. 

Life is beautiful, and every new day is a gift. But that doesn’t mean everything that happens to you (or someone else) will be fair or will cooperate with your plans.

Get used to the idea that what’s set in motion has little respect for one person’s plans. Learn to pivot. 

25. Trust your instincts. 

Or, to put it another way, trust your gut or your intuition, which knows things before your brain has had a chance to process the information around you.

Practice listening to that inner voice, so when it has something important to tell you, you’ll hear it. 

26. Dreams are just dreams until you take action. 

Dreams are great, but they’re trapped in your head until you give them life by taking action.

You don’t have to start with dramatic action, either (though you can). Just do something every day that gets you closer to making it real. 

27. Do what is right — not what is easy. 

Doing the right thing is often difficult (or, at least, inconvenient), but choosing the right thing over the easy thing is essential to becoming the person you want to be — someone who rises to every challenge and cares about how their actions impact others. 

28. Make every day meaningful. 

Every day is an opportunity to do good and to make a difference in someone’s life — or your own.

Take time every morning to feel gratitude for the new day and think about how you’ll make it count. Don’t wait for someone else to give it meaning for you. 

29. Be you. Don’t worry about what other people think. 

Always be your authentic self. That doesn’t mean you’ll always act the same or even that you’ll think the same way throughout your life.

But to grow, you need to know who you are and what you really think. Worrying about what other people think just gets in the way.

How will you use this random advice?

Now that you’ve looked through these 29 pieces of advice and found your favorites, do what you can to keep them in mind: 

• Use them (one at a time) as journaling prompts. 
• Write one on a whiteboard you see every day. 
• Have a mug or other item custom-made with it. 

The goal here is to help you remember the advice that benefits you most. Even better if it also inspires other people in your life. 

What advice will you act on this week? And what advice are you likely to share?

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By Melissa Bryan

Lead With Love

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.

May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and freedom for all.

Valentine’s Day 2021 recently passed, and as I sit on the opposite side of that holiday having just taught my high school students to create heart maps to identify the parts of their lives that fill their hearts, and having just finished Romeo & Juliet with some and Great Expectations with others, I find myself reflecting a lot on love and how it works in the universe. Literature helps us question the larger, and perhaps fated, direction of our future existence; story syntax offers us that predictive power.

What, however, helps us live those universal governing concepts? How do we practice transcendent and deep love in our present? Yoga teaches us that.

These words, “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” remind us that love radiates out from us; it is the hope for everyone to have happiness and be free, and the best way to receive love ourselves is through contributing to the happiness and freedom of others.

In preparing for my class on Elie Wiesel’s Night this week, I read an excerpt from another Holocaust survival memoir, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning . The imprisoned Frankl says of love while wondering if his wife is still alive, “I knew only one thing- which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self.” Frankl’s expression of love is one that, I think, yogis are after when they chant the line, “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.” For him, love is something rooted within oneself, but that simultaneously emits outward, too. It is not another person, it is not formed by the external environment, it is not performative nor dependent, and it is not possible for another to dismantle it; love goes very far from oneself and very far within oneself.

Through a yogic lens, love is happiness and freedom, but it is actually more the quiet , persistent way in which we contribute to those experiences for all beings everywhere.

If yoga is a state of mind after all, and not an action alone, then one way we might define a yogic transcendence and its necessary counterpart, drawing-inward, is as a practice of love. In fact, the practice of love is so tethered to the yogic state of mind that we are often reminded by our teachers to “lead with love” or “shine our hearts out” as in a great physical effort to manifest that which we chant on the mat and hope to contribute to the world beyond our mats.

Much like love, a wildly complicated and muddy emotion, yoga also embraces ambiguity. It is only after many years that one can understand that giving love (happiness and freedom to others) begets love in return, right? Experienced lovers know that love does not rest on another person, nor rely on what others think or feel for them. It doesn’t exist or cease to exist with the comings and goings of people or places, and I think the same is true of yoga. Now, rounding out 20 years of yoga practice, I can finally “sense how all the parts…are involved with each other,” to recall the MoMA’s definition of painting.

I might not be sure of love’s every stroke or be able to articulate in words how yoga interweaves body and mind or know how a painting is birthed, but I “sense the parts” and can see the image clearly. Fortunately, over time, we accrue proprietorship over what we see (art), how we practice (yoga), and the way we live (in love).

Last night, as I lay in my bed, head under my pillow, blocking out remnants of stray light, I uncovered what seems so special about yoga. It’s the way yoga practically instructs all actions – those actions that are very far from the mat, are duty-bound to the mat. And as I endeavor to “lead with love” on the mat, I find I am able to “shine my heart” toward others at home, at work, on the street, and in every meandering quotidian moment of my day. In darkness, I did indeed sense how the parts of my existence are all “involved” with each other, and then I knew I live a yogic life.

A beautiful thought about one’s own selfhood and interrelatedness to the universe to be sure, but what pragmatic tasks allow for an unquestioning acceptance of the cloudy connections between body and mind, love and yoga, mat and street relationships?

I might say that the yoga within me, the practice I purposefully cultivate in the studio, has helped me to recognize the thoughts and feelings I want to explore (and let go of the ones I don’t want to caress or nurture any longer) in my mind, in my heart, and certainly on the page. To paraphrase a yogi scholar whose class I weekly frequent: those ideas that come to you on the mat will come back to you; if they are in you, they will be there when you leave. In other words, those unconsciously spawned insights that spontaneously emerge from the diaphragmatic breathing and the kinesthetic asanas on the mat do not desert you when you sit listlessly on your couch at home. The tender, supple intuitions that gather and calm you on the mat begin to permeate every interaction off of the mat.

I’m quiet at yoga, and I am quiet at home. You are focused in the studio, you are focused at work.

We listen to the teachers while on the mat, we listen to loved ones off of the mat. Continuity is never severed.

In essence, then, the physical practice of asana (as well as the focus on spiritual aspects of the practice and attention to ascending chakras) spurs and affords us a mantra-esque framework on which to attach our habitual lives and through which to evaluate and assess those unpracticed and unmindful words, actions, and thoughts. With a little routine and as an earnest pupil, you can train yourself into “yogic thinking” when away from the practice in order to assess how loving your actions, words, and thoughts really are. But, with ample practice and attendance to the discipline, you can miraculously generate a loving automaticity when engaging with yourself on the mat and with others off of the mat.

While I have come to the mat time and time again over twenty years to hone my physical practice, it is the words and guidance of my teachers that reverberate throughout my days, throughout many months, and throughout the years. Those words and lessons effortlessly follow and flow from me everywhere and everyday, but that isn’t necessarily true of the asana.

Opening Chant

When we open class, very often we chant. One opening chant is “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.” The chants may change, alter, and repeat, but the class will chant together, and that guidance sets us all up for connection. A first act of love. It is not merely a connection with the people in the class, though, because often one’s eyes are closed and your energy is really drawn inward, but the collective voices do what I remember my children’s yoga teacher training said about the purpose of “Om;” namely, Om, like chanting a phrase, is about seeking a universal vibration. While we are within, we are also without. While we seek the depth of our souls or psyches, we are also hoping to channel, I think, somewhat simultaneously, a union with all things in the universe. We are asking together that all beings are happy and free, and we hope our practice will “contribute” love to them. As they say, “That which we manifest….” It is a pretty powerful moment.

As with most openings, the Om or the chant are paired with the setting of one’s intention or dedication. Teachers direct us to practice for another, not for oneself. In my case, while I am on the mat, I tend to have a pretty consistent intention or person to whom I dedicate the practice, but what I realize about intentions, like the practice we have in the physical expressions of asanas, is that they aren’t resolutions nor must they be achieved or won.

There are many days when I am not at my best and when I do not have a “steady gaze and steady breath,” and therefore, I move through the flow without a “steady mind.” Some days, I am just a weak, sluggish blob, but I continue to go, set an intention, sing out with my fellow yogis, and I am secure in the notion that my mat intentions, whether I practice mindfully or not that day, are going far without and within nonetheless. How do I know? I know because, as my teachers have said, “everything is connected;” when we leave yoga we feel better, and we act better, and we simply “sense” that connectedness.

The opening aspects of a class, the chants and dedications, Oms and intentions, I think are like the heart maps I assigned my students this past February. They encompass all of the pieces of our being – the blissful and the broken. I can put them on a page to read or consider them as I move in class; I may not really know how the pieces are involved with one another, but I sense the picture. I know they make up my heart.

All that designs the heart, therefore, is the reason we practice life, just as the intentions we set are why we practice yoga. If we have a bad day or feel blue, we experienced practitioners know that there is no self-damnation, negative narcissism, nor paralytic self-consciousness because our focus was all set for the love of others. There is “no drama, just a lot of rama .” (virtue or chivalry)

To quote my same most sagacious – if at times hilariously cantankerous – yoga master:

Who you are on the mat, is who you are in life.

Practicing Love: Mat Applicability

In top-ten, listicle fashion, below is a smattering of some accrued teacherly “isms” that have a useful impact on the mat and off of the mat. These axiomatic expressions constitute the ways in which we can look at and examine our lives as much as our yoga practice. They reposition us in class, but in life as well. They are, hopefully, the gleaned framework that girds our unattended and unloving thoughts.

1. “Set your drishti”
2. “Make any movements you need to, then settle in”
3. “One breath, one movement”
4. “If you fall out, get back in”
5. “Inhale to lengthen, exhale to deepen”
6. “Your thoughts are not yourself”
7. “If it’s hard to get out of, you are doing it right”
8. “Remove all props”
9. “Without disturbing others, come to sit up”
10. “Shanti, shanti, shanti” – peace, peace, peace

When you think about these lines in the context of a yoga class, all of us practicing yogis understand the power of pranayama, the difficulty of balancing poses, the essentiality of managing your thoughts and distancing yourself healthfully from the obsessive eddies of the mind, the uncomfortable and painful dismounts or exits from splits or backbends, and the time to ready yourself for the unsupported and flaccid corpse-like end of class. The whole practice though, and indeed each line shared here, is an exercise in love (being happy and free). Think about applying some of those very same words to your life outside of the studio and off of the mat.

Take a moment and really think about those very phrases in the context of your relationships. I hope you will sense the same picture that I have; namely, everything is connected and through yoga, it is pretty simple to practice a more loving life.

“Namaste, have a good day.”

Extra Reading
Ode To Psyche

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ditor’s note: This is a guest post by Melissa Bryan, a Karma Kids-trained children’s yoga teacher, a twenty-year practicing yogi, and a high school English and ESL teacher in New Jersey. She holds an MA in Teaching English, an ESL certification, and she is earning an MA in Creative Writing and Literature. She is also an adjunct professor in Writing and Assessment in ESL, and she is a teacher consultant with the National Writing Project at the Drew Writing Project/Digital Literacies Collaborative in Madison, NJ.

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