There are many ways to use a journal in your daily life. One great way is to keep a yoga journal.
Whether you are new to yoga or have been practicing for years, keeping a yoga journal is a great tool to document your journey. Yogis keep journals for many reasons—daily activities, events, goalsetting, documenting thoughts, feelings, dreams.
Why Keep a Yoga Journal?
Having a yoga journal can be helpful particularly if you’re practicing yoga to reach a goal. Maybe you have injuries or other health issues and you want to track the poses that seem to have a positive as well as, your progression through the poses. Just imagine the first time you tried to do a downward facing dog and couldn’t straighten your knees. Then, with practice, you were able to do a full downward facing dog with both heels on the mat. That is awesome progress and worth documenting!
Or maybe you want to keep a yoga journal to note your experience of personal growth. You may need to overcome anxiety, stress, impulsion, depression, a yoga journal can help you to document you changing mindset. Then you go back later and read to see how you’ve progressed over time.
Your journal is an insight into who you are and your yoga accomplishments. Your yoga journal is a private place to write down ideas and goals you want to achieve. It’s a way to express your highs and lows. Write down how you feel after a yoga session. Was it particularly challenging or want to learn more about? Was there a new pose you tried for the first time? Is there anything particularly worth noting from the class?
Try taking your yoga journal with you to class so you can record any quotes while in class that you find inspiring or helpful (good teachers are great with sharing them), then write it down, highlight it, circle it and even share it with your friends. You never know when that quote might help you or others get through a challenging period.
The Do’s and Don’t’s of Yoga Journaling
Do write every day. Writing is a great tool to help you grow both mentally and physically. But you have to put in the work. Writing daily helps you to get out all those questions and emotions that may be bouncing around in your mind. Write it down and forget it.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a fancy journal. Your journal doesn’t have to be fancy. Some people use beautifully bound notebooks, or a spiral notebook. Some people used lined paper while other prefer unlined. And even more people just use the note section in their phones or even blogging their journals. Whichever method you choose, make it your own.
Do use journaling prompts if you get stuck. When I first started out journaling, I felt like I was just “whining” in my journal. I wanted to give up. But them I decided to look up journaling prompts online. They were not yoga specific, but they helped me get over the “writers block” hump. Here are a few yoga journal prompts that I created to help you get started.
Don’t fear the blank page. Journaling doesn’t have to be perfect. Just take your pen to the page and write what you are thinking, feeling, or hoping. When I get writers block with journaling, I think about what I would say about yoga to my friend if she were standing in front of me.
Yoga journal writing can be a simple tool that opens your mind, heart, and soul to new knowledge and experience. So, keep track of your yoga practice with your own yoga journal and watch yourself and your yoga practice expand.
Writing in a journal doesn’t need not be complicated or challenging. Just spend a few minutes everyday to document and track of your yoga practice with a yoga journal. In the future you may read some of your old thoughts, goals, and actions and realize just how far you have come!
