Patience, Grasshopper

I took an interesting yoga class on Saturday. It was about beginning with no end in mind. As a goal-oriented person, this is not something I accept easily. I always want to know: What is this for? To what end? To what end? To what end?

I have never been particularly good at yoga. No matter. I have always loved it and endeavoured to become the perfect, enlightened yogi. I’ve always found it graceful and beautiful. Not me, of course. I look like a hippo. But everyone else sure looks good. But no matter. I do it anyway. What I love most about it is that relaxation and reward is worked into the practice. shivasana, or corpse pose, is reward for all the hard work. And it is the most glorious thing in the world.

But yoga has never been anything to me but a form of exercise. Something I can DO to FEEL better. Or to make myself look good. Not surprisingly, I have never gotten more out of it than some sore muscles and an over-inflated sense of accomplishment.

But the practice is about learning to set aside my ego and be in my own experience. It is good for me because I have to actively seek a heart-body connection and turn off my brain. I quit worrying about how the pose is supposed to look or how everyone else looks and what they must be thinking of me and just BE. Just be.

Yoga is comprised as a series of poses. There are standing poses, warrior poses, seated poses, balance poses. I have done Hatha yoga, Vikram yoga, Iyengar yoga, power yoga. I have always struggled the most with balance, which I have always thought was a pretty healthy metaphor for my life.

I have been practicing yoga on and off for about eight years now and I have always pushed and contorted my body into all kinds of impossible and crazy positions. I have done head stands and shoulder stands, upside down, inside out, sideways and right-ways, I have done it all. But never quite gotten it. I can understand something intellectually YEARS before I understand it emotionally. And understanding something emotionally is the key to me really getting it.

I realized something for the first time in my yoga class on Saturday: I have never started at step one. I have always tried to speed through the process to finish at the final pose, and then been frustrated when I have struggled with it.

So, instead of starting with the end in mind, start at the beginning. Start in level one and hang out there until you understand the pose completely. And then move on. Don’t start at the end and then move backwards. Stay where you are comfortable and don’t go anywhere until you are ready.