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My version of happily ever after is not just about romantic love. It’s bigger, grander, and includes all of life’s experiences.

Yoga was — and continues to be — the main avenue that has guided me from heartbroken to happy — deeply happy.

After my long-term relationship ended, I was an emotional mess, as is to be expected. In the vast landscape of my worrisome mind, I was overwhelmed by feelings of fear and confusion. I was going through the biggest change and challenge I had ever experienced. In the chaos of this change, I was completely falling apart.

At 43, I was in a place of change that felt necessary but completely gut-wrenchingly hard. The daily suffering of not knowing how to handle it all was overwhelming. I was lost, sick and vulnerable, but I knew that I had to come up with a plan that would see me through to better days.

I chose to go to my Yoga mat every day with the clear intention of working through my emotional pain. I moved my body, listened to and wrote down the messages my intuition was sending, and spent time diving deep into contemplation and exploration of the heart.

I focused daily on moving towards living an authentic life, only making choices that aligned with my true values and desires.

Yoga is the slow unfolding of layers and layers of fear, conditioning and self-judgment. At first, Yoga is a focus on our bodies. Then, as breath and body align, we travel to a place of ease and fun that allows solutions to bubble up from within. It transitions to feelings of genuine love for self. It finally opens us up to deep joy and enthusiasm for our life, our dreams, our future.

We find ourselves standing in our own power, knowing the path ahead and holding joy in our hearts to start walking it.

Yoga shows us how to forgive, how to love again, and how to heal our relationships with ourselves. This is extraordinarily beautiful work — scary at times, but tender and loving at the same time. Self-love is cultivated during every single breath ever taken on our mats. A love that flows on and off the mat and out into the world around us.

Our time on our mats is our space created to work through our emotions, not hide. It’s time to focus solely on our body and breathing, which is a welcome relief from the heaviness we might be feeling. It is our slow release each day of all the past that must fall away — past limiting beliefs, past hurts and wounds, past negative self-judgment.

This beautiful and pure work of Yoga is not an overnight fix, but all we need do is turn up consistently on our mats and see what direction our hearts are leading us in. We must remember to be kind to ourselves throughout this process of healing work. Thankfully, Yoga will help facilitate this.

Trusting the process is also vital to our well-being. We must trust that we can face our darker emotions when they emerge, and love ourselves through the healing process. That we can sit with, cry with, and move with our darker emotions, to heal them within ourselves.

If we are genuinely seeking positive change in our lives, then we just get started. We choose the powerful practice of Yoga to facilitate our growth. We don’t hold expectations on how fast or slow this change should take place. We don’t berate ourselves when we have setbacks. We just start! We just love and embrace our powerful choice to create positive change.

Yoga guides us to our authentic self, and opens us up to a world of love that is felt internally and expressed externally. It gives us a bold tenacity to embrace a life of adventure and living out of our dreams. It sets our troubled hearts free!

What I wish is for all of us to know this love and enthusiasm for life that Yoga generates. It nurtures us through the good times and the bad, by creating expansiveness. Yoga guides us to our own version of happily ever after.

Namaste!

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Rachel Fry is a writer, illustrator, mother, yogi, and climber. She is currently embarking on a new career in writing, both non-fiction and children’s picture books. Rachel is passionate about sharing stories, writing, travel, children’s education, cultural diversity, art, sustainability, music, and contributing in any way she can to add more love and beauty to our world. She gives a shit about a lot of stuff! You could contact her via her website or Instagram.

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