Self-Trust as the Heart of Yoga: Listening to the Feeling-Tone of You

I was 19 — riding on the hunter jumper circuit — when they told me I’d never ride without chronic pain again.

It was the kind of sentence that rearranges your life.

I had found yoga a few years earlier, but it hadn’t yet taken root in my bones. Not the way it would after that day. When the thing I loved most — the thing I thought was mine forever — was suddenly placed behind a wall of pain.

A friend took me to a yoga class, maybe out of kindness, maybe out of hope. The teacher was quiet, grounded. He didn’t push, didn’t fix — just noticed. After class, he placed his hand on my upper back — a place I hadn’t been able to breathe into in over five years. It was numb or on fire. There was no in-between.

He gently jostled my spine and said, “Just a little bit of breath.”

And something moved. Just a whisper. Just a flicker of breath in a place that had been closed.

When he slowly removed his hand, I couldn’t breathe into it anymore. We laughed. He said I was like a marionette — breath held up by strings.

But something had shifted. And that moment opened a portal.

His approach to yoga was unlike anything I had ever known — not mechanical or performative, but energetic, intuitive, alive. And it changed everything. I began to understand that nothing is permanent. That pain is not fixed. That healing is not linear — but it is possible.

That if I listened — deeply, consistently — my body would tell me how to come home.

And that became my practice: listening. Trusting. Honoring the subtle invitations of the body.
Not pushing. Not forcing. But remembering.

The Word Yoga as a Living Invitation

The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj, meaning to join, to unite. But this union isn’t limited to body and breath or posture and presence — though those are part of the story.

Yoga is a sacred invitation back to yourself. To the place beneath your name, your pain, your performance. It’s a call to remember what has always been true beneath what’s been taught.

We don’t come to yoga just to stretch or strengthen — we come to remember.
To reawaken a connection that was never lost, only covered.

Yoga as a Remembrance

For me, yoga has never been about perfection or achievement. It has always been about reverence.

It’s not about how far you can fold, but how deeply you can listen.
Not about the pose, but the presence it asks of you.

It’s a returning — over and over — to the parts of ourselves that were once silenced or ignored.
To the subtle, sacred whispers that guide us home.

Yoga reminds us that we are not broken.
We are becoming.

The Feeling-Tone: Trusting Your Inner Compass

There’s a sensation I call the feeling-tone. A frequency, soft and quiet, that lives in your body. It’s not always loud. It rarely shouts. But it is always honest.

It’s the deep, cellular knowing that rises when we finally get still enough to hear.

This feeling-tone is not about logic.
It’s not a strategy.
It’s a remembering.

It speaks in pulses and pauses. In tingles and temperature changes. In the way your breath slows or your spine softens when you land somewhere true.

Yoga invites us to trust that inner compass — even when it defies what we’ve been told.

Presence Over Performance

The gift of yoga is not in how long we can hold a posture.
It’s in how present we can be within it.

When I practice, I remember:
I am not here to perform.
I am here to be.

To feel the quiet hum beneath my ribs.
To notice the breath as it softens the space behind my heart.
To follow the wisdom of sensation, not expectation.

This is where transformation lives: not in the mirror, but in the moment.

The Breath as the Bridge

Breath is the bridge that carries us between worlds — between the mind and the body, the wound and the wisdom, the ache and the awakening.

With each inhale, we invite life in.
With each exhale, we let go of what no longer fits.

Breath is medicine.
It softens. It clears. It connects.

When we breathe with presence, we create space — not just in the body, but in the field around us. Space to feel. Space to trust. Space to heal.

Yoga as a Living Practice

When we begin to listen to the feeling-tone within, yoga stops being something we do and becomes something we are.

It moves off the mat and into the way we move through the world.

It becomes how we speak to ourselves.
How we rest. How we rise. How we reenter hard conversations with softness still intact.

It becomes the rhythm of how we meet life — with reverence, with curiosity, with choice.

Yoga isn’t about mastering poses.
It’s about becoming intimate with your own aliveness.

The Stillness That Moves

The heart of yoga is this:
Stillness isn’t the absence of movement. It is the presence within it.

There is a stillness that breathes.
That feels.
That guides.

And when we tune into that frequency — the one that whispers instead of shouts — we begin to move not from habit, but from soul.

That’s the shift.

From striving to sensing.
From controlling to communing.
From performing to trusting.

Tuning Into Your Inner Compass — A Guided Practice for Self-Trust

This practice is an invitation to connect with your own feeling-tone — the quiet inner resonance that holds the wisdom of your body, heart, and spirit. Through this practice, you’ll be guided to slow down, tune in, and listen to the subtle guidance that lives within you.

✧ Simple Guided Practice for Self-Trust ✧

Create Space
Find a quiet, comfortable place where you can sit or lie down without distractions. Let your body settle. Let the day soften. Take a few breaths to arrive.

Connect with Your Breath
Notice your breath without trying to change it.
Feel the inhale meet you.
Feel the exhale leave.
Let the breath remind you: you are here.

Tune Into the Feeling-Tone
Place one hand over your heart, the other on your belly.
Begin to notice the sensations. The flutter, the hum, the warmth, the ache.
This is your feeling-tone.
It is the frequency of you.

Notice What Arises
Where in your body do you feel most alive right now?
Let that place speak.
Listen not with your mind, but with your presence.

Ask a Gentle Question
What do I need in this moment?
Let whatever comes be enough.
Don’t chase clarity.
Let it arrive in its own way.

Close With Intention
When you’re ready, gently open your eyes.
Take a breath into the space you’ve just tended.
Carry this felt sense with you. Let it guide your choices. Let it reshape your days.

To trust your feeling-tone is to trust the deepest part of you.

The part that knows what alignment feels like.
The part that remembers what you forgot.
The part that never left, even when you did.

And when you move from that place —
when you live your yoga, not just practice it —
you become the stillness that moves.

In stillness and reverence,

Louise Botterill
Temple Keeper • Energetic Alchemist • Founder of Free Range Life