When you practice 90 minutes of hot yoga, you learn to challenge yourself, feel good about your accomplishments, then allow yourself the luxury to fully relax.

But what about the other 1200+ daily minutes of real life outside of hot yoga?

How can you carry that stresslessness from the hot yoga room out into your real life?

Hot yoga nj

How can you maintain your steady balance, your feelings self worth, and your calm self acceptance when you’re NOT in hot yoga – but instead, you’re in the midst of yet another argument with your husband about the toilet seat, or your kids just won’t take no for an answer, or your boss decides to move the department meeting to the week you’re on vacation?

My friend Suzanne Jones has a wonderfully simple way to carry the emotional calm of hot yoga, out into your real life where it will do you some real good; she calls it Anchoring.

Suzanne explains how to create “anchors” during your next hot yoga class, to keep you feeling wonderful throughout the many challenges you’re about to face in your real life.

Using Anchors to Enhance Your Hot Yoga

By Suzanne Jones
Hypnotherapist/Mind Interrupted Hypnotherapy

What do we mean by “anchoring your emotions?” What purpose does emotional anchoring serve?

How can you “anchor” your hot yoga practice so it stays with you beyond the 90 minutes in the hot yoga room?

Anchoring is a technique whereby a personal state of mind becomes associated with a unique stimulus. These emotional anchors come in many forms such as sights, sounds, power words, memories, verbal phrases and more.

We all have anchors whether we intended them or not. Some anchors we have consciously created, but most have been created for us.

Anchors that you intentionally create can be as simple as gestures you make repeatedly during a strong emotional or mental state. These gestures actually anchor the emotion in your subconscious mind, where you can call on them again and again.

Anchors that have been created “for us” happen this way: during a peak emotional state, something else is happening consistently and simultaneously and thus, the emotion and the event become linked.

Say, for example, your mother or father yelled a lot when you were a child. The tone of their voices stuck with you. Now as an adult, anytime you hear that same tone, from anyone, your mind links back to being scolded as a child and you will immediately return to those old, negative emotions.

Perhaps you failed a very important exam. You felt horrible about it. You went to your family and friends for support and each one of them patted your hand as you told of your failure. Your mind and body have now made a permanent connection between that gesture and the emotion of failure. Now, anytime someone pats your hand you experience that negative, disappointed feeling.

If an anchor is done so easily wouldn’t it make perfect sense to consciously incorporate anchors into our everyday life? For the positive?

Hot Yoga works best with Anchors

Hot Yoga can be challenging.

If you struggle with a hot yoga pose and then ‘get’ it, the feeling that goes along with this has been described as ‘joyful achievement’.

Now you can have this same feeling anytime you want through anchoring.
Perhaps you want to carry with you the relaxed and comforted feeling you have during Savasana. By anchoring your feeling during your hot yoga moments of total rest, you are allowing yourself a way to return to that calm at times when your life seems out of control.

How do you anchor your hot yoga? Here’s are simple ways to start right away:

During a ‘peak state’, like, the complete letting go you experience in hot yoga Savasana, try tapping your first two fingers together. Be in the moment , completely relaxed Savasana, while tapping your fingers. This is how you anchor your feeling of calm. Try repeating this anchor in your Savasana for each hot yoga class.  The more often you anchor the stronger it becomes.

Now, each time you want to experience total relaxation and can’t get to hot yoga, tap your fingers together. It’s a little like Dorothy tapping her ruby-slippers together: the action alone instantly transports you to the feeling-place you want to experience.
You can create an anchor any way you choose,  but simple and accessible gestures are best. Depending on your lifestyle, it is ideal to create an anchor that remains somewhat hidden from view.  I don’t know if you want to be pulling on your earlobe in the middle of an intense board meeting!

Make an anchor for each significant feeling you experience in hot yoga. The feeling of Savasana is much different than ‘joyful achievement’  in your full extension of Standing Bow Pulling.  They are two such different states, that you need two completely different anchors.

So perhaps you can rub your fingers together for “joyful achievement,” on your left hand this time. Remember to repeat that anchor in each hot yoga class where you achieve the pose you wanted.

Once you create your anchors, use them at anytime, to get back into the chosen state. If you are having a stressful day, the anchor used for Savasana would be a lifesaver. If you are experiencing feelings of inadequacy, your anchor for ‘joyful achievement’ is the  perfect pick-me-up.

Get to hot yoga often so you can get those wonderful feelings of a hot yoga practice. In each hot yoga class, create and repeat anchors to reinforce those feeling within yourself.  Your anchors encapsulate those feelings so you can recall them easily  outside your hot yoga practice, allowing you to instantly transform any situation, anytime, anywhere.

Hot yoga and cool anchors: another way to get the life you really want, at your fingertips.

Have you created anchors that work? COMMENT HERE!