My Yogi Lifestyle: The Search for the Authentic Self

Yoga can bring a lot of clarity to our lives; showing us what is truly important, offering us a new perspective, teaching us acceptance and respect towards ourselves and those around us. Yoga encourages us to get in touch with our authentic selves and to live in a way that expresses our best possible self.  And while I stand by all of these things, I do find one part a bit confusing. Or maybe not confusing, but more challenging to put into every day practice and worth addressing. How does one live their authentic self?
It raises the question, "Who am I?" When we try to answer this question, we tend to place labels on ourselves: writer, parent, athlete, nurse, stay-at-home mom or dad, etc. But these labels are no more than an activity that we do. We can be many of these things at once and we can become an entirely new thing at any given time. Our authentic self has nothing to do with the labels we attach to ourselves, although what we do from day to day does help to shape our beliefs, behaviors, energy levels, and so forth, and so they do, in some respects, shape who we are. But what we do on the outside can never define who we are on the inside.
Throughout our life we go through different stages, making transitions from one exterior self to another. For the past 15 years or so I've given myself the label of "runner." I ran marathons, half marathons, and put in 30-40 miles a week. When I was expecting my second baby, life changed and I barely ran for almost two years. I focused intensely on my yoga practice and considered myself a yogi, setting aside the runner label. One week ago today I told a friend that I wanted to start running more again, but maybe just 3 or 4 miles. "I'm not interested in training for another half marathon or trying to put in 5 miles with the jogging stroller!" I had said. Today I ran 5 miles with the jogging stroller and over the weekend I put "run half marathon" on my calendar for Labor Day weekend. So life changes, our energy shifts, we float back and forth between one exterior self and another, now and then adding a new self to the mix. But even with all of these shifts and changes, we don't become a fundamentally different person, we are just one (or two or three) version of ourselves in that particular moment. Today I might call myself a runner, a yogi, a stay-at-home mom, and a teacher, but deep down, I'm the same on the inside, at the very center of my heart, as I have always been. And there is no label for that.