In the beginning, there were a lot of poses: back bends, forward bends, twists, jumps, inversions.

Everything was new when I first met with yoga. I thought every new pose was something to discover—maybe I took it as a play. I was consuming the poses, as we all do in today’s materialistic consumer world.

Poses become purposes for us to achieve, just as the plans of our daily life. But as we connect and become part of our deep being, quintessence, we jump out from plans, expectations and emotional crises.

When we start to live in the present moment one can be everything for us…Thus, one pose can be our whole practice. As one word can change the world, one pose can change our perception. If you continue to practice this one pose, you understand everything.

You can see the world in a grain of sand.

~ William Blake

 Similarly, you can learn a great deal about all asanas by carefully studying one.

The Study of asana is not about mastering the posture. It’s about using the posture to understand and transform yourself.

~ Gary Kraftsow

This understanding brings the unveiling of maya in front of our eyes. In the daily life we think the more we earn, the more we get success; the more books you read, the more intellectual you are. The more words you use for describe your love for someone in the relationship, the more you love.

But it doesn’t work like that!

We can not count feelings, emotions with quantitative, solid methods and scientific mind! With each maya we unveil, we become closer to our inner self. We see the world through our lenses. Each time we adjust the lenses and take a look at the events in our lives by staying still and without resistance, the transformation starts.

The only new voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.

~ M. Proust

So wherever we go, we carry our mentality with us. Whether we go to a new place and wait for the big change in our life, or we go to a meditation class and expect those sparkling lights to happen to us too. Nothing will paint our lenses with light, but us. With every blockage we release, we unveil new tulle, a new layer from our lenses. We unveil each maya, illusion, with the awareness that we arrive.

Each pose has many layers.

We experience them each day with different feelings. So that’s why one day, after many practices, your practice becomes so simple, so light with unveiling the maya of each pose. You start to stand in mountain pose and you become that mountain. Your feet touch the soil; your body feels the wind passing through your body outside and the breath inside. Briefly, you don’t consume the poses anymore.

The poses are not something to be achieved. They are there, and you unite with them, as yoga means. You become the mountain and the mountain becomes you. You open your shoulders to the trees, to spontaneity, to each coincidence or difficulty in the daily life. You host them as a guest as they are passing by.

The Zen masters say, Standing like the mountain and letting the thoughts pass by like the clouds.

Poses are not the moments that we consume, succeeding or failing, and pass to the next one. Therefore, it is useless to shape the poses. Poses show you the present, your present. They are just moments that crash to your present reality.

You start to believe in your path, you accept everything with their sorrow and happiness because you withdraw your senses. Senses don’t bother you anymore; you accept them to come to your life and pass by. You accept yourself with everything you have. You accept each pose you practice, as it comes and passes by through you every day.

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Assistant Editor: Kerrie Shebiel / Editor: Catherine Monkman

{Photo: Flickr.}