Yoga La Vida Lanka Part 3

This last installment of the Yoga La Vida Lanka series deals with Yoga and Life in General.  These are basically the lessons that I consistently need to learn.  Let me share them with you and Claire Dederer’s words and experience may speak to you too.

“Being still can be the hardest thing you’ll do in yoga.  If you find your mind raising, just return to the breath.  You don’t have to breathe any special way, but just observe the breath.  Don’t try to control it.  Don’t try to deepen it.  Just watch it go in and out, and with that helps your mind to quiet.”

What simple words and simple things to do!  I find my mind racing – especially now that I have all of these things to do and prepare for the coming of our baby.  It’s like there’s no time to waste – even sitting in the car for the long drive to work and back home I have something to do (catching up on my baby book reading).  When I get home all my time is spent doing things.  Thank God for my twice weekly pre-natal yoga classes that I just get to breathe.  But even then sometimes mind will race to many different things – my to-do’s after class, etc.  I just need time to quiet down…

“Those of you who are really bad at yoga, you’re in the right place.  I hope everyone will allow themselves to be really crappy today, to walk away from being perfect.  The real yoga isn’t in the perfect pose; it’s in the crappy pose that you are really feeling.  You want to feel it from the inside out, rather than make it perfect from the outside in.”

When I was doing my poses last Sunday, I was reflecting how different yoga is from ballet as the focus on perfection is really key in ballet.  However yoga serves another purpose and it is not in being perfect.  It is what it is, for you where you are at, at that moment.

“What if the whole point of yoga wasn’t getting ready for the future, but was instead finding whatever pleasure we could in the present?”

Isn’t the present what matters?  Somehow I find myself overly obsessed about what’s going to happen next.  But life happens now.  And it is fleeting.  So be in the moment or…

“If you’re busy being good, you’re probably going to miss this.  You’re going to miss the real stuff that’s going on all around you.”