Yoga is, above all, a path of personal transformation and the way to that place in each of us is different. I regularly come across women who are depressed, suffering from anxiety or just lost – not sure who they are or aware of their power or beauty: their age or background doesn’t seem to matter. 

We are often looking externally for something to make us happy these days and we don’t realise that that something is already within us. We cannot be happy until we have an unshakeable relationship with ourselves and through our practice of yoga we can achieve this.

In our modern society, we are living very much in our heads and not in our hearts; we give little awareness to the health of our bodies and we do not give ourselves time to really explore how we are truly feeling. For hundreds of years, women have been subject to controls because of their sexuality and beauty, and this power has been so misunderstood that men’s fear of being inadequate has meant governance has been put in place to manage the power of women.

Obviously, this is far from the truth and, all being well, we should live in a world of balance: of male and female, of night and day, of Yin and Yang, but sadly our approach to society has been misguided. This fear has resulted in the removal of women’s power and authority. Until relatively recently (1880s), women where not legally permitted to own property, attend medical school or university, vote and, in many countries to this date, are still not allowed to drive or learn to read or write.

How can it be possible that we live in a world where it is still socially acceptable to mutilate female genitals in order to maintain control over women? Whilst the world is slowly getting up to speed and recognising the equality of women, this need to control and have power has deeply impacted the very essence of being a woman and how we feel about ourselves.

I meet so many women who believe they are not good enough, are not beautiful or are just not happy with themselves. The need for constant comparison to other women, the social pressures to look a certain way and the modern requirement to be everything to everyone, and do it all perfectly - mother, partner, lover, friend, daughter, colleague - mean that we are constantly under pressure. We very often forget to take the time to truly understand who we are, to recognise our beauty and, most importantly, to own our power.

We live in a world where it is socially acceptable and even normal to change the shape of our bodies through plastic surgery. Breast enlargements are now the most common form of plastic surgery, and young girls commonly change the shape of their vagina to look more ‘socially acceptable’ – often impacting sexual pleasure. Why do we live in a culture where this is not questioned?

The use of the contraceptive pill and implant means we are not in tune with our body’s natural cycle. The constant feed of social media, advertising and pornography means that we now believe you have to look a certain way to be happy.

"To be a sexual woman in our culture now is to be a woman who looks a certain way in order to elicit sexual desire in others. It has nothing to do with the inner arising of our own feelings and experiences. With all this focus on cosmetics and depilation, on surgical remodelling, on primping and preening, and on the consumption of synthetic hormones to render us easily available without the need to recognise our own cycle of sexual responsiveness, the true source of the inner power of female sexuality has been utterly neglected. It is as though we have re-painted the front door of the house whilst inside the whole place is falling apart, derelict, neglected and cold, with no fire in the grate" - Dinsmore Tuli (2014, p286).

In Part 2, we will discover how yoga can help overcome all of this and allow us to return to our true selves.

_{This article was first published on cherylmacdonaldyoga blog and has been reposted on Executive Lifestyle with the permission of the author.}

_{Written by Anna Lewis CYT} 

_{Edited by Nedda Chaplin
Image credit: Girl doing yoga on the hill. Ocean in background from Shutterstock}

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