I’ve finally returned to the discipline of an hour-long, everyday yoga practice. I fell into the rut of scattered, micro-practices that didn’t bring me to the place that yoga once did. Yoga is not easy. It demands attention, concentration, vulnerability, awareness… a willingness to face yourself… and the list goes on; but it gives so much in return for showing up on the mat. Yoga connects me to my higher self, strengthens my ability to focus, and expands my receptivity for blessings and insights. I am so happy to be back.
Ram Dass talked about the nature of falling asleep and waking up again. He didn’t criticize or judge, and definitely didn’t pretend he had reached enlightenment and would remain awake for eternity. He said it was a cycle. We fall asleep so that we can be reborn. I definitely experience this within my life, and can see it most within the mirror of my yoga practice. I lose my discipline and dedication and become occupied with other things. I’d like to think that these cycles of consumption and distraction are like the Winter season, when so much is happening beneath the soil just waiting for the first signs of Spring to sprout-up!
When the spring awakening within me starts to stir again, I feel this pull to my practice. I know for days, and sometimes even weeks, that I need to come back to a daily sadhana, but the excuses continue to take shape and keep me inaction. I’ve found that the first step is the desire and the second step is inspiration. So, if you’re reading this and thinking that you’d like to return to a daily sadhana, then I suggest getting a book written by a wise teacher that you find interesting and motivating. For me, this time around it was Elena Brower’s Art of Attention. I’ve had this book sitting on my book shelf, pretty-as-can-be, for months now! I finally opened it up and felt instant connection to yoga. I started by waking up each morning to practice the sequences she offers, and soon enough found my own rhythm again.
Back to Ram Dass, so he mentions that we fall asleep only to be reborn. Well, I have returned to my sadhana and am experiencing yoga in a way that I never have before. These have been isolating times due to the pandemic and state of the world. I feel encouraged by my spirit to live in solitude in order to integrate all the changes, digest the input, and connect with my own truth. So I haven’t been taking classes by other teachers and I haven’t been tuning into others’ practices, which has been a catalyst for me to find my own way within yoga. I have even been refraining from playing music while I practice, which was something that I was taught and now realize does not make that much sense.
I love music! I was raised by a musician and I love to blast tunes and move my body, and that may be within the shapes of yoga and some random dance moves; but my morning dedication to the eight limbs of yoga wouldn’t be as beneficial to my psyche if I have music tugging at my emotions and thought patterns. Yoga is a way to clear and cleanse the chaos that stirs within. It’s about being focused on the subtler aspects of your being that affect your moods and behavior, like currents along the ocean floor. I just feel that for me, if I approach my mat with music blasting and cameras recording, then I’m escaping the reason why I show up on my mat: to connect with myself.
See, I practice in the morning so that I can be free through out my day to play and experiment. My morning sadhana lays down the framework for my day and grants me the space to listen. There are voices within us calling for our attention, but the stimulations and distractions of daily life keep us from receiving. Then, in the afternoon I can be freer with myself. I can move through the poses to music, strengthen my body for a specific pose, and record fun videos to share; but the discipline for me has become that I am not allowed to go there until I’ve experience an authentic practice.
B.K.S Iyengar, along with many others, were used in India as children to showcase yoga to the aristocracy. I believe this was so that they could get funding for their school. So in the early 1900’s, yoga was already being tainted and manipulated as entertainment instead of its true purpose, which is to bring peace to the world. Yoga literally translates as unity. It means to yoke or to come together. The practice was intended for us to integrate all the moving parts of ourselves in one moment of wholeness. This happens at the end of the practice, as we lay in savasana. The sequence of postures is supposed to mirror our daily lives as we move from one thing to the next, but to remain anchored in the breath or the thread that binds all of the experiences together.
My overall point is that yoga is sacred. It is so much more than perfection within a pose. We as human beings, myself included, have not been doing it of service, and it’s not just the western culture that has manipulated it into a trend to sell and entertain because the corruption of yoga started back in the 1900’s, as I mentioned earlier, in India. If you’re a yogi, I encourage you to refrain from teaching if you have lost connection to your daily, focused sadhana. Ask yourself… why am I practicing yoga? why am I teaching yoga? what inspires me to be a yogi?
I too have gotten caught up in the likes and views on social media of my practice, and have also steered my students wrong by teaching them an oversaturated flow of poses and challenges to distracting music. Yoga is not only an exercise for the body, but primarily an exercise for the mind. It’s been two weeks of daily, morning sadhana and I have been exploring the most beautiful savasanas and connections to inner and outer worlds. I’m remembering the intention of the practice from my deepest, inner-wisdom.
I invite you to reevaluate your relationship with yoga and whether or not you show up on your mat to take from it instead of give. Give in the form of sweat, undivided attention, sacred intentions, dedication and bravery to face yourself in this moment. I know things may feel heightened right now, but don’t fall asleep. Please join us and stay awake. Do whatever you need to to increase your presence in order to be of valuable participation and service during this time on Earth. I love you. I appreciate you. Namaste.