Should You Journal Before Or After Yoga?

Like journaling, yoga is known for its profound ability to bring tranquility and peace of mind. Pairing yoga with journaling is ideal for harnessing both activities’ tranquil effects. Whether you journal before or after yoga is based on personal preferences.

You should journal before yoga if you find your mind racing with stressful thoughts that may inhibit you from having a blissful yoga experience. However, if you find yourself at peace before yoga, consider journaling after yoga, as you may discover that new thoughts have surfaced during yoga.

Let’s explore potential reasons why you might want to journal before yoga and contrast them with possible reasons you might want to journal after yoga.

Benefits Of Journaling Before Yoga

Here are potential reasons why you might want to journal before yoga.

Journaling Before Yoga Can Declutter Your Mind

Often, our minds are racing with thoughts ranging from joy, fear, anger, and many others.

It is almost impossible to enjoy and get the most out of your peaceful yoga session when your mind is all over the show.

You will likely find that you are unable to feel your stretches, notice your breathing, take note of your heartbeat, and enjoy your ability to move your body in various unique ways.

Journaling before yoga enables you to declutter your mind so that you can enter your yoga session in a somewhat peaceful state of mind that will enable you to feel every movement, enjoy every opportunity to exhale, and feel grateful for your ability to move in a flexible manner.

Journaling Before Yoga Helps Identify Positive Things

On the days that you have woken up in a groggy mood or have just come home from work, the chances are that you’re not in the best mood and are hardly feeling positive and optimistic about life.

If you’re entering your yoga session in a negative mindset, chances are you might find yourself inundated with negative thoughts that cause you to be unable to have a positive experience during your yoga session.

However, if you journal before your yoga session, you have the opportunity to express your frustrations on paper through a healthy outlet.

Learn about Gratitud Journal 52 Weeks Of Gratitude. 2 Minutes A Day in Amazon

Once you have written down your negative thoughts and feelings, you have the opportunity to sit back and process them.

After you have identified your negative thoughts and feelings, you have the opportunity to look for positive things to focus on. Usually, these positive things may stem from the negative things you have just listed, as there is often a “bright side” to every issue.

Once you have identified various positive things to be grateful for, you will be able to enter your yoga practice with a positive outlook on your current life situation, which will encourage you to reap the benefits of yoga.

Journaling after a rough day and completing a yoga session are two healthy coping mechanisms that will help you clear your mind.

Benefits Of Journaling After Yoga

Here are potential reasons why you might want to journal after yoga.

Journaling After Yoga Helps Process Things Realized

Yoga can often be used as a tool to enable self-realization.

During your yoga practice, you may have reflected on moments in your life that brought you pain and feel the need to express your feelings about those instances through writing.

If you encountered painful memories during your yoga session, it might be helpful to debrief by journaling after your yoga session.

Apart from painful memories, you may have also formed connections in your mind based on various events of behaviors you have become conscious of.

The process of journaling after yoga may enable you to explore the links you have created in your mind and allow you to move forward with clarity, fully understanding any connections your mind linked during your yoga practice.

Journaling After Yoga Helps To Form Gratitude List

Gratitude plays an instrumental role in the journaling process. During your yoga session, you are likely to realize that you have many things to be grateful for.

It may be beneficial to journal after yoga so that you are able to list all the things you became grateful for while you were doing yoga.

Journaling After Yoga To Create A To-Do List

You may have found thatyour mind was inundated with thoughts of outstanding tasks during your yoga practice.

If you identified certain tasks that needed to be done, journaling after yoga might be beneficial in allowing you to write down a to-do list of sorts so that you have peace of mind knowing that you have identified your various responsibilities.

By journaling your various responsibilities, you will be able to go forward into your day knowing that you have identified everything required of you and feel certain you are not missing anything.

Journaling After Yoga To Set Out A List Of Goals

Yoga allows you to calmly explore the inner parts of your mind, body, and soul.

You may have found that you identified a list of goals that you would like to achieve in the future during your yoga practice.

Writing down goals is a crucial part of achieving them. Therefore, journaling after yoga will allow you to identify goals, expand on them calmly during your yoga practice, and then write them down and explore them further once your yoga practice has ended.

Journaling After Yoga To Jot Down Ideas Formed During Yoga

Occasionally during yoga, you may be hit with a bright idea. During your tranquil yoga practice, you may have stumbled on a bright idea that you were able to explore in your mind.

After you have completed your yoga session, you may find it beneficial to journal your new idea and take the opportunity to pen down any further thoughts and ideas.

Read my article about The 20 Best Yoga Books For Home Practice

Conclusion

Journaling before yoga allows you to declutter your mind and find positive things to focus on. However, journaling after yoga may be more helpful as it can enable you to process things realized during yoga, form a gratitude list, create a to-do list, set out a list of goals, and jot down ideas formed during the yoga session.