Confidence is trust. It can be in yourself as well as in existence. It is a quality of your being. It can depend on material well being like body, money, power, position, relations etc. It can also depend on your mental faculties, emotional quotient, judgement, belief systems etc.

At a more evolved level confidence does not depend on any thing.Confidence is necessary to face uncertainties of life and to live a happy life. Confidence is not a guarantee of ability to perform better. It can be a result of ability to perform better; however, confidence is necessary if you want to perform optimally.

1. Yoga can affect your confidence. Nature of this effect depends on how holistically yoga has influenced you. If your body affects your confidence, yoga can increase your confidence by improving your body. Yoga can optimize your body dimensions and increase it’s vitality. Your body can become better in terms of health, vitality, flexibility, beauty, dexterity etc. Yoga can help release chemicals in brain that gives feeling of wellness. If you have low self esteem because of your body, yoga can help you to overcome it to some extent.

2. Along with body yoga can correspondingly improve your mind for it’s depth, stability, sharpness, dexterity, wisdom etc. Yoga can not only improve but also give you mastery over your mind. If you feel that you are limited in your ability to think, understand, and grasp, or you are not in control of your emotions or lack the higher wisdom, yoga can help you. Yoga can make you confident by improving your mental personality.

3. Yoga can refine your body and mind radically as well as subtly. However yoga has reasonable limits. For example, yoga cannot make you taller or shorter after a certain age but it can help you to loose or gain weight. Yoga cannot make you a great athlete if you are naturally inclined to become an artist. Yoga refines your nature. You simply become better at what you naturally are.

4. This improvement in body and mind is brought about due to opening of uncharted potentials of your body, mind and vital forces. A person who is new to these abilities may be enamored by them and may lose the right perspective unlike a person who has these abilities by birth and does not get overwhelmed by them. So, confidence increased due to yoga should be taken with a pinch of salt.

5. Yoga is a timeless adventure sport. You explore and play with yourself. You not only explore the unknown territories of your body, psyche, and vital force but also accept and overcome the challenge of your physical and psychic limits. Thus yoga adds to your confidence in a way similar to sports where in you constantly improve, master and try to win over yourself.

6. Yoga can not only help you to overcome your problems but it can also enable you to help others with your knowledge and expertise. You can help others to overcome their physical and mental afflictions and make an affirmative improvement. If you can thus make a positive difference to others lives by helping them, it can give immense boost to your own self worth and confidence.

7. Yoga connects you to your innate source of confidence. Yoga raises your level of awareness. Because of this you understand yourself and the world more clearly. You feel more in control of yourself. Your self esteem and feeling of well being is less affected by external feed back or stimuli. You have confidence in yourself and do not look for external affirmations. Your confidence depends less on external factors like money, authority, relations, honor, or disgrace. It depends more on yourself and your attributes.

8. Your body, psyche or external circumstances are not permanent. They are liable to change due to accidents, sickness, old age, and death. Therefore, good body, good psyche, or good external circumstances are not permanent and reliable sources of confidence. Holistic effect of yoga can base your confidence on something that is beyond body, mind, or your external circumstances.

9. Complete flowering (parimukti) of yoga renders you constant and natural. Yoga connects you to your true nature that is eternally and universally constant unlike your body, mind or emotions or even the external circumstances. By being the constant you become more natural. You outgrow the need for confidence.

10. Ultimately yoga dissolves your ego. Ultimately, yoga renders you one with the existence and there remains no one who has or lacks confidence. You become existence and confidence of existence is your confidence. It is too great to be perceptible. Ultimate confidence is as if it is not there.

Written by Chetan More for Parimukti.com