Unbalanced AF

The Longing Knows the Way Home

What if the ache you keep trying to fix is not evidence that something is wrong—but a message worth listening to?

Inspired by the opening image of Rumi’s Masnavi, this meditation explores the reed cut from the reed bed: separated from its source, hollowed by the wound, and somehow still capable of making music.

This is not about turning pain into a lesson before you are ready. It is not about transcending your longing, positively reframing it, or pretending everything happens for a reason. It is an invitation to stop wrestling with what feels incomplete and listen for what the ache may be pointing toward.

Because sometimes the wound is the instrument. Sometimes the longing is the song. And sometimes the part of you that feels most unsettled already knows the way home.

In this meditation, you’ll:

• Stop treating longing like a personal failure or problem to solve

• Explore the deeper ache beneath the surface-level want

• Make space for grief, incompleteness, and missing without rushing to fix them

• Consider how separation can shape meaning, expression, and connection

• Listen for what your longing may be trying to lead you back toward

• Practice sitting with discomfort without forcing an answer

• Spend a few quiet minutes being beautifully, honestly, unbalanced AF

Doubt is clever. It doesn't announce itself as an obstacle — it shows up dressed as reasonable questions. Is this working? Am I doing it right? Does any of this even matter? It sounds like discernment. It isn't.

Samshaya — the third antaraya — doesn't lead toward clarity. It circles. It feeds itself. It has ended more practices than laziness ever has, because at least laziness is honest about what it is.

And then there's its cousin: anavasthitatva. The fall after the breakthrough. You had a week of clear practice, a real moment of depth, genuine equanimity — and then it collapsed. You fell back. The progress seemed to disappear.

Patanjali names both of these not to warn you. To normalize you. Falling back isn't failure. It's how the roots go deeper. The gunas shift. Sattva gives way to rajas or tamas — not because you lost something, but because that's how Prakriti moves. The practice was never about staying elevated. It was always about returning faster.

Bring your doubt today. It belongs here. Just don't let it drive.

Unbalanced AF | Yoga Sutras for the practitioners who show up anyway.

#unbalancedaf #balancedplanetyoga #yogasutras #meditate #contemplate

You didn't fall off the path. The obstacle is the path.

Sutra 1.30 is the moment Patanjali gets brutally honest. He's just described the heights of practice — samadhi, pure consciousness, the whole luminous picture — and then he stops and says: here's what's coming for you. Nine obstacles. The antarayas. And they're not detours. They're the terrain.

Illness. Dullness. Doubt. Negligence. Laziness. Craving. Delusion. Hitting a wall. Falling back after progress.

Not exotic. Not signs you're doing it wrong. Not evidence you're not built for this. Just the texture of the path itself — the same path every practitioner before you has walked, stumbled on, sat down in the middle of, and kept walking anyway.

The question was never how to avoid them. It was always how to meet them.

So — which one is in your way right now? Name it. That naming? That's already practice.

Unbalanced AF | Yoga Sutras for the practitioners who show up anyway.

#unbalancedAF #yogasutras #meditate #contemplate

Your brain is a highlight reel you didn't ask for. The cringeworthy thing you said in 2019. The relationship that wrecked you. The version of yourself you keep trying to get back to. This is smriti — the fifth vritti — and it's running your life more than you realize.

In this 7-minute meditation, we get into the grooves. Not the good kind. The kind your mind slides into on autopilot, replaying the same stories, responding to people as who they were instead of who they are, living inside memories instead of learning from them. Turns out nostalgia can be just as much of a trap as trauma.

The Samkhya tradition called it: every experience leaves an impression in the chitta [that's your mind]. Strong ones leave deep grooves. Your mind doesn't run those grooves because they're true — it runs them because they're familiar.

So yeah. We're going there.

7 minutes. One question that might actually stop you in your tracks. And a reminder that this moment — right now — contains no past unless you drag it in yourself.

Unbalanced AF is the alter ego of Balanced Planet Yoga. Less polished, more real.

Maybe you showed up every day this week.
Maybe you didn’t.

Either way—you’re here now. And that counts more than you think.

This meditation is a reset, not a recap. A moment to notice what shifted, what didn’t, and what it felt like to actually pause in the middle of your life. No gold stars. No catching up. Just awareness.

We reflect on the body, the breath, and the quiet relationship you’ve been building with yourself—whether it felt steady or messy or somewhere in between.

Then we move forward… differently.
Not with pressure, but with intention. One word. One feeling. Something you can actually carry into your week without forcing it.

And we close where we’ve been pointing all along:
You don’t need to find your way home.
You just need to remember how to return.

✨ If you’ve been doing the work (or avoiding it), this is your moment to land.

#studentoflife #meditation #balancedplanetyoga #unbalancedAF #yoga

You’re not stealing wallets.
But you are stealing moments.

In this meditation, we explore Asteya—the practice of non-stealing—and flip it on its head. Because the real theft isn’t out there… it’s the constant pull away from right now.

The scrolling. The comparing. The rushing ahead.
The subtle belief that what’s happening next will matter more than what’s happening now.

Yeah… that.

This practice calls it out gently—but clearly. And then offers something better:
→ staying for the moment you’re actually in
→ noticing what you already have access to
→ realizing you’re not behind (even if your brain insists you are)

Because when you stop stealing from the present… you finally get to receive it.

✨ If your mind is always somewhere else, this one brings you back—without forcing it.

This one isn’t about doing less. It’s about wasting less.

In today’s meditation, we’re working with brahmacharya—not the outdated, panic-inducing version, but the real one: the right use of your energy. Where it goes. Who gets it. What quietly drains it… and what actually gives it back.

Because here’s the truth—your energy is getting spent whether you’re paying attention or not. And most of us are leaking it in places that don’t deserve it.

This practice brings you back to something simpler and more honest:
→ noticing what depletes you
→ recognizing what restores you
→ making one small, real choice to protect your energy today

No perfection. No overthinking. Just awareness and direction.

✨ If you’ve been feeling scattered, drained, or pulled in ten directions… this is your reset.

#unbalancedAF #balancedplanetyoga #meditate #yoga

Life is loud. Your brain has a group chat. And somehow you’re expected to be calm, productive, emotionally mature, and hydrated.

Nope. Not today.

In this 7-minute guided meditation, it’s just Jenna helping you do the simplest thing that changes everything: breathe without trying to “get it right.” You’ll notice the urge to control your breath (because… of course you will), and then you’ll ease into watching instead. One side of the breath at a time. No performance. No fixing.

Jenna guides your awareness through the body—chest rising and falling, feet and legs grounding, spine lifting—and into a bigger sense of presence: like you’re breathing not only through your lungs, but through your whole being… even the space around you.

Then we soften into a quick reflection—what did I learn about myself this week? what can I carry forward?—and finish with a hand-to-heart moment and a grounded gratitude phrase:

“I am grateful for this practice and for the person I am becoming.”

Tiny practice. Real impact. Press play when you’re spiraling, buffering, or just need to remember you’re still in there.

This week on Unbalanced AF, we’re offering you something a little softer, a little steadier, and honestly… a little necessary.

Because Thanksgiving isn’t just about gratitude —
it’s about family dynamics, travel chaos, emotional booby traps, old stories resurfacing, and someone inevitably bringing up something you did in 1998.

So we made you a grounding meditation you can actually use.
No performative gratitude lists.
No “love and light, everything is perfect.”
Just a real moment to come down from the thinking mind, get into your body, remember compassion, and move through this week with actual grace — not the fake kind you put on when relatives are watching.

In this episode, Cheryl guides you through a Thanksgiving practice that helps you:

• stop spiraling in your head

• return to your body (aka the place where sanity lives)

• remember a moment of real compassion that shaped you

• use that memory as fuel for the next few days

• navigate family, emotions, and chaos without losing yourself

It’s grounding, it’s human, and it’s got just enough Unbalanced AF energy to remind you that none of us have our stuff together — we’re just doing our best while trying not to burn the pies or snap at the siblings.

Listen to this before you travel, before dinner, or anytime you need to get back to yourself.
Happy Thanksgiving, fam. We’re grateful for you — unbalanced, honest, and exactly as you are. 🧡

We didn’t go to yoga school to learn how to teach.
We went because nothing else was working.

In this episode, we get honest about what really happens inside a 200-hour yoga teacher training — the kind that shifts how you live, not just how you move. We share what pulled us there in the first place, how it cracked something open in both of us, and why this work reached places that therapy, to-do lists, and self-help books never could.

The truth is, the world feels heavy right now. Most of us are running on empty, holding it together for everyone else, and forgetting what it feels like to be present in our own lives. Yoga training — when it’s done right — gives you a place to stop fighting yourself long enough to start healing.

This isn’t about memorizing Sanskrit or perfecting a pose. It’s about learning to stay when things get uncomfortable. To breathe when you want to shut down. To show up with compassion when everything in you wants to retreat. It’s about remembering that your healing matters — not just for you, but for everyone your life touches.

We talk about what it means to become a helper, a connector, a healer — not because it sounds good on paper, but because it’s the only thing that feels real anymore. When you do your own work, it ripples outward. You get steadier. Kinder. More awake.

Yoga school isn’t about becoming perfect. It’s about becoming present. It’s the kind of education most of us never got — how to be human with a little more grace, a little more truth, and a lot more courage.

Early Bird pricing for Balanced Planet Yoga’s 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training ends December 15.
Payment plans are available - visit www.balancedplanetyoga.com and click on Train With Us to learn more. And when you enroll — whether paid in full or on an approved plan — your unlimited studio pass starts immediately. You can begin practicing now, before the training even starts. A $250 deposit holds your spot and gets the momentum going.

Maybe you’ll go on to teach. Maybe you’ll just show up differently in your own life.
Either way, this might be the beginning of something that actually works.

Join us on our new Balanced Planet Yoga WhatsApp Community - follow this link https://chat.whatsapp.com/ENuwjLrSbDS7dRQZCsKwB9?mode=wwt

BPY is hosting a virtual food drive through the Food Bank of South Jersey. Even $1 helps families in our area put food on the table. Here’s the link to donate: https://give.foodbanksj.org/-/NJFGZMHM