A Different Kind of Resilience by Lexie Wolf

My friend Trip gave an excellent talk at the Plant a few months ago about building a resilient household—how to be prepared when the grid goes down, when supply chains fail, when life doesn’t go according to plan.

I don’t like thinking about this stuff, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. I much prefer imagining best-case scenarios, and indulge in them often. But what I do like—and believe in—is empowering myself.

I’ve been thinking since that talk about how yoga does this too. How it builds resilience in the body and the mind. My yoga practice helps me feel less vulnerable in a number of ways.

There’s something deeply reassuring about being tested in small, everyday ways—and meeting those moments with just a little more steadiness. A trigger that passes more quickly. A physical challenge that feels doable. Bouncing back more easily from injury or illness. These are small things, but they add up.

On my recent travels, I had one of those moments.

We arrived at our hotel in Rome after being awake for a lot of the last 24 hours, crossing half a dozen time zones. I saw the bed and hit a wall. All I wanted was to collapse into it. But it was late afternoon, and I knew that if I gave in, I’d pay for it later.

So I unrolled my travel mat.

I moved through a gentle asana practice, unwinding my body from hours in the air and on my feet. Then I practiced a couple of energizing kriyas we’d learned in India—one of which the teacher described as “like morning coffee.”

After fifteen or twenty minutes of this strong breathwork and movement practice, I felt a wonderful shift. Awake, alive, clearheaded. Well—long enough to make it to bedtime, at least. This reset was so satisfying and helpful. What a thing—to have that kind of tool available. Not dependent on anything external. Just something I can access. I’m deeply grateful for my yoga tools.

The mental/emotional resilience I’ve received from yoga feels just as important.

Meditation and mindfulness have given me a kind of buffer from the constant stream of messaging we’re all swimming in. We live in a world where enormous resources are devoted to convincing us that we are not enough, that what we have is not enough, and that we need to make some purchases to fix that. It’s relentless unless you manage to stay completely away from media, which I don’t.

Yoga is often talked about as an antidote to anxiety because many of the practices calm the nervous system. And it can be wonderful in that way. But I’m realizing there’s another way it helps me alleviate anxiety: it makes me feel more resourced and resilient overall.

The awareness that practice builds—the ability to notice what’s happening in the mind—creates a little space. And in that space, I don’t have to take everything in. I don’t have to believe everything I’m fed. That space creates a feeling of internal sovereignty.

And that sovereignty changes how I meet the world. It softens the anxiety not just because I’m calmer, but because I feel more capable.

So. I’m going to continue moving through my day and my life imagining best-case scenarios. They’re way more fun to think about than the alternative.

At the same time, I’ll keep practicing so as to feel more resourced when life does its thing. I’m not going to be able to avoid life’s challenges. But it makes sense to me to try to be as ready as possible, with some good tools.

That’s what yoga has given me. And that’s why I keep returning to it—and sharing it.