Lotus

Lotus

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Going with the Flow.

I did 45 hot, sweaty minutes of Vinyasa this morning.

Damn. It felt gooooooooooood.

To sweat through a balance posture and breath through the trembling of my muscles, to lose my balance, land lightly on my hand and flow right back up into balance, there is so very much to be learned here.

So many of us find ourselves fighting through hard moments in our lives... arguing with a child, or a lover, or a sales associate and becoming so deeply frustrated and unbalanced that we have difficulty flowing back into balance and listening to the subtle cues of our breath. For myself, when I am on the mat and deep into a posture that challenges me I find myself more aware of my tendency towards anger, towards frustration, and towards the perception of failure. In life, I can admit that I have fallen and not gotten back up. I have cursed the ground for hurting me when I fell and then myself for falling, and then finally I look around for someone to blame. This could be the bank, or my yoga teacher, or my employer or even my husband or my children.

Trouble is, what I am learning is this kind of behavior only causes more suffering. To push responsibility for my own balance, my own contentment off onto someone else is to deny my own need to grow. It is to deny my own lack of perception and my own ability to pay attention to the subtle cues of my breath and my heart. To blame solves nothing. It causes resentment and hurt and nothing but more suffering.

Instead, yoga teaches us to go with the flow. To stop when we feel something that is larger than we are and observe it. To breath into the feeling, and really feel it. Watch how it moves through our body. Most importantly, it teaches us to allow it to happen and to not grasp at it or push it away. Allow it to arise, peak and subside. This is the truth of my yoga practice, and something that it teaches me every time I come to my mat.

How did you go with the flow today?

Class this am - 9:15 All Levels Flow with Dianne @ Eastside Yoga in Windsor :)

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