Feeling, sensing, embracing are essential skills for living creatures to survive in this world. Dancers, actors, musicians, race car drivers, surfers and athletes usually have incredible kinesthetic awareness.

This body awareness is something that most of us had as kids.

Back when we were busy outside playing in the grass, as it would caress against our calves. Climbing in the trees and suddenly running fast for no reason at all - but for the mere pleasure of feeling the wind against our skin and the earth beneath our feet.

Feeling free, strong, alive. In this skin.

This is the very feeling that most of us long for as we grow into rigid adults. We try to find it in chasing, what we are told that we should want.

Yet it never satisfies.

Because everything that is forced upon externally will never reconnect with our internal calling for mind-body-soul connection.

Every self-destructive habit is driven from a place of disconnection.

When we re-connect, we can not keep going in our destructive old ways, because we become aware of our true needs, desires - and our actions insult our soul. No one likes to feel insulted - and that is the crossroad where change happens.

We wake up when we stop agreeing to things that insult our soul.

When we are fed up with our old self, lies and compromise.

What does this have to do with yoga you might ask? Well yoga is not just movement.

Yoga means union.

Union with body, mind and soul - union with God. Yoga helps to reconnect us with what truly matters. It bypasses our mind clutter of body image issues and slowly enables us to realize, that we are souls with bodies.

That we are NOT our body.

We have a body, but that is not a reflection of our worth.

Our worth as beings never changes; irrelevant of external factors.

This is important to realize because otherwise we will feel as if we lose value with age, when in fact the beauty of our soul never ages. If we think that we are our shell, we will accept things that insult our soul - gimmick diets, plastic surgery and appetite suppressant drugs.

Things that destroy is from the inside out, disconnecting us.

Yoga stimulates acupressure points in our body that opens our different energy chakras and allows us to reconnect with our true being. Yoga invites us to pay attention to a thousand ways of holding - hold a pose, hold your breath, hold the sound of a mantra, hold the image of visualization.

This constant paying attention to our breath, every little muscle, alignment, thought, helps us to reconnect with the intimacy of the energies of life.

When we are connected to the energies of life, we can hear what it is we truly need.

We understand how our choices affect ourselves and others.

We can let go of self-destructive and numbing behaviors, because we can HEAR what it is our soul is telling us that we NEED.

Even if none of this makes sense to you - just do it. Find a yoga that you resonate with - keep in mind that there are several different styles. So try a new one til you find something that resonates with your current stage of being. The key here is to master the art of microsteps - meaning you take the next step based on where you are at; not some external recommendation or lofty goal. Ideally you want your goals to be se easy to achieve daily that there is no way you can take yourself out of doing it. You want to be nudged but not pushed. And keeping in mind, that each one of us have different personality traits that responds to different intervention strategies.

I.e. I personally am not a fan of hot yoga, because I have a lot of "fire" (= PItta dosha in Ayurveda) in me already. Rather, I need something that cools me, and thus I intuitively gravitate towards more playful chanting types of yoga, because this helps me reconnect with the essence of being a kid. Along with the fact, that there is hardcore science as to how sound therapy works on our central nervous system, so nothing wish-washy about it.

Getting comfortable with yourself begins by being comfortable being in different energies.

Gaining body awareness through conscious movement will help you do just that. The wisdom ever-present in our bodies will always exceed our primitive minds.