Dance to the Rhythm of Your Heart: How Yoga Girl® Embodies the Magical Experience of Life

I feel so blessed to have found my calling in life at such a young age. I feel so blessed to be able to live from the heart. Teaching yoga and creating space for healing is what I'm here to do.

I started out in a tiny space, teaching classes of 2-3 people on the beach. We didn't even have yoga mats, just towels in the sand, and I was so nervous before each class that my hands were shaking. Now I teach classes of hundreds of people in the same room and lead retreats that sell out in seconds.

The experience of teaching? It's the same. There is no difference. I am still teaching what I love and doing my best every single day. None of this defines me. Being a yoga teacher doesn't define me. The amount of people attending my classes doesn’t define me. Two people or two thousand, it doesn't make me any better or worse at what I do. The only thing that defines me is the love I hold within my heart and my ability to stay vulnerable enough to give it away.

For as long as my heart beats to the rhythm of this magical experience... I will stay on this path.

I will be here, with you, for it all. All you have is right here in front of you. Stop waiting for better days. Don’t hold back. Walk this earth with bare feet and eyes wide open – beauty is all around. Don’t blink… It might pass you by. Love wildly, passionately, without caution. Let the joy of being alive fill you to the tips of your fingers and your toes. Dance to the rhythm of your heart.

Live each day as if tomorrow is uncertain—because it is.

You will never be able to live a life untethered to your fears if you don’t acknowledge and work through them. You will never be able to live a life from your heart if you don’t remove what is holding you back. This is the time to look our fears square in the eye without running away.

This is a moment of no escape. It's time you step into the fire. Sit with your fears. Feel the pain. Let it pin you to the wall but not paralyze you. Let it break you open but not into pieces. Let it shake your ground but not your core.

If you're finding yourself face to face with death and pain and fucked up, nothing-will-ever-be-the-same, gut wrenching, earth shattering loss? Congratulations. You're ready. You’re ready to move on. You’re ready to grow. You’re ready to move to the beat of your own beautiful heart.

However painful it may be, in order to live from the heart, we need awful situations to surface from time to time. This, right here? It's how we remember what it feels to be alive. It's how we're pulled from the drowsiness of regular, human, "is this really all there is?" type of living and it's how we grow.

It's how we reach our full potential. We won't know how to love until we've had everything fall apart. It's time you stop wishing for a life where comfort and happiness and butterflies and rainbows is a permanent state because it's a grand illusion.

There is no permanent state.

It is how you react in these moments, that is the practice of yoga. Are you able to take what life hands you and make the best of it? Or are you allowing yourself to be shaken to the core. Sometimes we need to be shaken to the ground to really, truly understand the meaning of what it means to be alive, to live fully from the heart. Sometimes things need to be shaken up in order to set us free.

The ground beneath us will always shake.

Sometimes there is happiness and peace and sometimes there is sadness and despair. Clinging to one side is what pains us the most because it's the biggest deceit of all. We use hope to avoid looking at our scars and through that, we trick ourselves out of the present moment.

We miss out on the feeling of being broken open by life every time we choose to numb our pain. And we'll spend the rest of our days trying to hide it, fade it or fix it. We write and drink and stay busy and talk and work and do yoga and read books and we tell ourselves we're healing when all we've done is run away.

Everything can be an escape if you try hard enough. You need this. One day, you'll even be grateful. So, remember that nothing is permanent. Let yourself fall apart and you'll see that there is more beauty in the in between than you could have ever imagined. Yes, there is death and loss and Yes, it's exhausting to live with this pain but NO, you will NOT give up. It's time to stop running. It's time to step into the fire.

It’s time to step into your potential. It’s time to take up space. It’s time to live your truth. It’s time to live from the heart.

Grateful for you, in this moment, always. Keep working for what you believe in. You deserve a life that makes your soul shine.

With Love and Gratitude,

Rachel