I remember reaching such a low place in my life that I did not know how I could continue to live.

I lost everything in a very short period of time. My guy walked away, my heart bled with emotional pain, my friends went in new directions, I lost my dream job, my cat died, and everything I had worked for fell away.

I felt stuck, lost, heavy, and trapped in despair. Inside me was a yearning to be happier, feel healthier, and understand how to have a better quality of life.

As my old life died, yoga drew me in. I shed another layer and made a conscious choice to no longer be the old person I was. I took new actions to reform myself and everything I had believed in.

I had been taught that real success was in money, power, and working hard for a title to get ahead. After achieving that, I realized none of it would ever grant me the personal freedom and happiness I sought.

Moksha is the release from the cycle of rebirth impelled by the law of karma.

The goal of yoga is to attain this force—thus liberating ourselves from suffering. It is through the yoga practice and philosophy that anyone can attain moksha and reach absolute freedom, peace, and bliss. With self-realization, we can attain our true nature and live in an eternal state of ananda, or bliss, which is the union of the “self.”

According to yogic philosophy, it is only through ourselves that we can end our suffering and free our minds and bodies from karma, worry, fear, attachments, and obstacles that keep us limited.

It is through transformation that we can live more open-mindedly and realize that our true power resides within us.

Yoga granted me freedom and taught me that liberty comes from living with integrity and dismantling the false aspects of ourselves that keep us separated, feeling powerless, insecure, and bound to our material reality.

Real freedom is knowing we are all connected, living for the purpose and pursuit of happiness, and feeling loved.

It is our individual journey to discover what real happiness is and how to find it for ourselves. No one else can grant us this.

Our ego will try to keep us stuck in samskaras—addictions, patterns, limiting beliefs, and habits—that control us and reinforce our conditioning. However, with yoga, meditation, and helpful coaches, we can learn how to break through this suffering and eliminate the fears and filters that keep us enslaved.

Our power is really in living more authentically and understanding how to cultivate love within ourselves. Yoga says that love is our true power.

Letting go of the selfish ego and embodying love helps take us from a victim to an empowered state. We discover our natural, joyful, and blissful human states through dissolving our ego attitudes, false ideas of power, and need for material gains.

We all have the power to free ourself from pain, suffering, emotions, negativity, and problems, but only if we are willing to look within and create changes for our own health, well-being, and happiness.

To truly live happy and free, we must confront ourselves and be willing to transform our demons and our own issues to create peace. Otherwise, we hold onto limiting beliefs, genetic dispositions, family conditioning, internal wounds, and past stories that keep us living unconsciously and out of alignment with our true happiness.

Often, life experiences cause us to forget who we are and how fabulous and happy we can feel. “Unyoking,” or finding union with yoga, can free us from whatever is keeping us stuck, sad, and disconnected.

We all have carried internal fears and lived with the shadows that shield us from stepping into our true human potential. Though it can be scary to confront fear, changing negative aspects of ourselves and reforming the relationship we have with our minds, bodies, and hearts is how we learn how to live life with a more enlightened perspective.

We create freedom, happiness, and live peacefully when we reach that place within ourselves and are willing to share it with others.

Yoga teaches us that freedom comes from radical transformation and living in unity. Spiritual, emotional, mental, and psychological shifts move us into living a life with more passion and purpose.

We stay stuck in the cycle of suffering when we live with our demons and never confront our darkness. We also pass blame and hurt others and fall out of integrity when we fail to become better in ourselves.

When we realize our true nature is a happy, joyful human being. We understand that the true purpose of life is in learning how to live with liberty and attain that peaceful and happy place within.

Yoga helps us all transform so we can free ourselves of karma, problems, and the illusion that we are separate from each other. We are all connected and can feel more united and live with harmony as we teach ourselves how to live happier together. It is with unity and expanding our own awareness that we can live happy and free.

The real pursuit of happiness is in finding freedom within. Happiness is our birth right, however it is our own individual responsibility to create peace and harmony within ourselves to truly live it.
~
~
~

Author: Kali Bliss 
Image: Christopher Campbell/Unsplash
Editor: Danielle Beutell
Copy Editor: Nicole Cameron
Social Editor: Catherine Monkman