Beyond the Mat: Bringing Mindful Connection Out of the Yoga Studio
Yoga teaches us the power of presence. We understand the peace that comes from connecting to our breath, tuning into our bodies, and stilling our racing minds in meditation. Perhaps you have already started embodying some of these qualities in your daily life.
Yet, when faced with misunderstanding at home or conflict at work, it can be so easy to forget the yogic principles we cultivate on our mats. We tend to react instead of responding, and we often hide behind masks rather than opening our hearts to connection.
What if you could bring the consciousness cultivated in yoga to all your relationships and interactions? What if you approached every conversation, from casual to challenging, as an opportunity to see and be seen at the deepest level?
This is the promise of Authentic Relating – a set of tools and practices that empower you to navigate the world with courageous self-expression, compassionate relating, vulnerable sharing, and an ability to transform conflict into intimacy.
Yoga shows us one path to spiritual freedom. The yamas and niyamas, yoga’s ethical guidelines, provide a roadmap to mindfulness, truth, and connection with ourselves. What if we could take these wise concepts off our mats and apply them to how we communicate—not only in special spiritual contexts but in all our conversations and connections?
Ahimsa: Honoring Self and Other
Ahimsa calls us to do no harm. Authentic Relating brings this non-harming consciousness to communication by encouraging us to honor our own experiences while also dignifying others.
This starts with welcoming everything within ourselves and others—opinions, judgments, emotions. By noticing internal reactions without identifying with them, we can then check assumptions about ourselves and others. This clears space for curiosity rather than condemnation.
Satya: Uncovering Deeper Truth
Beyond simply avoiding lies, Satya asks us to reveal reality as we experience it. Authentic Relating guides us in living this vow of truthfulness.
The practice of making the implicit explicit brings underlying assumptions, expectations, and intentions to light. Skilfully expressing what we really feel and want makes relationships clearer and oriented around reality rather than hopes or fears.
Owning our perspectives as subjective experiences rather than universal facts is also essential. We acknowledge that truth has many faces before seeking to uncover where different truths intersect and complement, not compete.
By daring vulnerability, we uncover richer truths about our needs and longings that intimacy requires.
Santosha: Entering Presence
Santosha, the practice of contentment, arises naturally when we feel truly seen and heard. By slowing down and genuinely listening without an agenda, Authentic Relating allows the peace and contentment of the present moment to emerge.
Presence is required – letting the conversation unfold rather than forcing outcomes because there is nowhere to get to, other than more here. We must tune into the needs beneath the words. This moves us into faith that by extending compassion first, connection will follow.
The more we reveal of ourselves while also dignifying others’ truths, the more easily contentment comes. Judgment falls away, and appreciation of our shared humanity emerges in its place.
Svadhyaya: Knowing Ourselves Through Relationship
Beyond the common translation of “self-study”, svadhyaya invites us to better know our own nature through intimate connections. Authentic Relating fuels this self-understanding by holding space for us to see projections, disowned parts of self, and our shadows reflected in relationships.
What we criticize in others often points to disowned flaws or traits within our own psyche. Yet when we react to these reflections with anger or avoidance, we remain unconscious of our inner terrain. Practicing authenticity instead helps integrate these projections, reclaiming the full spectrum of our humanity.
Likewise, the qualities we admire in friends and partners often reside latently within us as well – hints of latent potentials or dormant virtues waiting to unfold through self-cultivation. When positively reflecting on others, we remember to nurture these “golden shadows” in ourselves.
Beyond merely revealing our experience, authentic relating calls us to bravely and compassionately inquire why we feel as we do. True self-knowledge emerges from this courageous questioning at the edge of comfort and intimacy.
The Fruit of Practice
While Authentic Relating offers tangible tools for transforming communication, living with an open, patient, curious spirit is the destination. We relax into being rather than doing – fully accepting ourselves and others while trusting in the process of spiritual growth. Authentic Relating provides another embodied practice to complement our asana practice so that we might truly live the yogic path on and off the mat.
Interested in learning more about authentic relating? Join us here at Radiantly Alive Ubud for the Art of Being Human: Foundations of Authentic Relating - a two-day training with Vix Anderton, a somatic coach, yoga teacher, and embodied facilitator, to learn practical techniques for immediate life improvement. Transform conflict into ease, embrace communication as a path to presence, enhance relationships with yourself and others, and develop tools to authentically express your true self. Learn more about this profound training [here] or join Vix at one of her weekly Authentic Relating classes on Fridays at 2 pm at Radiantly Alive Ubud.
ABOUT VIX
Vix Anderton is a certified somatic coach and authentic relating facilitator. Her work is grounded in nervous system resourcing and regulation to help people connect to the medicine of their rhythms and cycles. She is committed to helping people to embody their innate wisdom and power, reconnecting them with their natural flow, intelligence and creativity. She is an advocate for using the principles of embodiment, cyclical living and authentic relating to help rebel perfectionists manage their energy and emotions to bravely build more sustainable and authentic ways of being. She is the author of Enough: An Imperfect Antidote to Perfectionism.