Fit for Life

Your yoga practice should make you fit for life, that's all.  It's not complicated. 

It's not elongating your muscles until you can get your foot behind your head; nor is it leaping about in a beautiful studio looking wonderful and striking a pose; it's neither putting yourself on display, nor hiding yourself at the back of the class, but arriving at the station called Yourself and being content to bide there a while.  Meditating is not about assuming an uncomfortable physical position and forcing yourself to stay there; nor is it about submitting your mind to a cruel regime of restraint, followed by the idea that you have failed.

Yoga is all about finding comfort in your body, peace in your mind and love in your soul.  That is all.  So if you think you are failing at yoga, if you think you are unable to meditate, if you find your yoga practice all strain and no ease, then it could be that you have brought the wrong expectation to your mat and that it is the expectation that needs to change, not your body, your mind or your soul.  It could be that you need to find a new approach.

When people tell me that they have no time to do the practices their physiotherapist gave them for their back pain; no time for Pilates, no time for yoga, I wonder what they are making time for in their lives and why they are prepared to settle for a life of pain without enquiring into it.

When people say that they have no time for a ten minute daily yoga practice, I wonder why they don't ask themselves what exactly they mean when they say this.  Who is it who doesn't have time for their own yoga practice if the president of the Unites States has time for tennis?  What do they really mean when they say they don't have time?  Do they mean they don't know how?  Do they mean they don't really want it?  Do they mean they are afraid?

Sometimes people ask me what the point of being able to touch my toes is, or why I do backbends, or what I get out of meditation.  I tell them that in yoga, we move between our individual extremes of movement, so that we can find balance between them.  I tell them that meditation brings insight and understanding and helps me to live kinder.  When your body is strong and lithe and your mind is flexible and open, it is easier to walk lightly on the earth and to act with grace.

That is all.  Be well.  Understand that pain is not something to be endured or killed with drugs, but something to be learnt from.  Come to know what it is to be comfortable in your own skin, able to move with ease through your life, to be healthy and well and full of vitality.  Why would you not wish these things for yourself?

Namaste x

Comments

  1. Maybe...when you think you are not that good at yoga and/or at meditating, it could just be that you are succeeding, however you just don't realise that you are?...V.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts