Your body will eventually fail you.
Befriending it now is the only path to graceful aging.
Your body will eventually fail you.
Befriending it now is the only path to graceful aging.
We’ve been working our way through the body in this year’s yoga therapy series – from the back, to the hips, and now to the shoulder girdle and neck. This is an area where so many of us carry tension, stiffness, and the effects of long hours spent sitting, working, driving, scrolling, and generally holding the weight of this world on our shoulders.
I’ve been reflecting on accumulated stress lately. The way life keeps piling things on, one at a time – sometimes small, sometimes not so small – until you’re stooped over, barely able to carry the load. You didn’t even realize it had become so heavy.
Make no mistake: anything done with intention can be yoga.
In the Western world, when we hear the word yoga, we often think about movements and poses performed on a mat. It makes sense that, for many of us, āsana – the physical postures – has been the entry point to the practice. Indeed, this was my own introduction to yoga once upon a time.
Nicole Bratt is a certified yoga therapist and experienced yoga teacher, located in Seattle, WA, offering private yoga sessions, public yoga classes, special yoga events, yoga teacher trainings, and yoga retreats – both in person and virtually online.
Copyright 2026 Nicole C Bratt All Rights Reserved. | Photography by Sterling Ocean
Lately, I’ve been basking in the first yoga sutra, 1.1: atha yoga anuśāsanam, which approximately translates to: “Now we begin the practice – or the study – of yoga.”