“Go easy, go slow.”

These are the words I hear both in and out of my yoga class.

As I move from downward dog into pigeon pose.

“Go easy, go slow,” my yoga teacher says.

But then again days later as I am in the woods skiing up a steep hill I hear them again.

“Go easy, go slow.”

When I’m trying to madly clean the house while the kids are temporarily out on a Sunday afternoon, I hear the words begging me to take care of myself and tame the whirling dervish cleaning lady I can become.

“Go easy, go slow.”

When I hear that nagging, internal chastising voice saying I haven’t accomplished enough this past week or made the right amount of progress on my new business plans, these guiding words are there again.

“Go easy, go slow.”

Now I know there are as many opinions about yoga teachers and yoga classes as there are yogis out there.

But I have to say the yoga class I go to is the best.

For me that is.

And I have to wonder if everyone feels that way.

That their yoga class is just right for them.

I love a yoga class where I can surrender, where I feel like I am being held in the experienced, responsible, compassionate hands of the teacher and all I need to do is follow their words and I will be safe. I will be more than safe.

I will be transformed through Asana.

“Gorgeous,” I hear my yoga teacher say to a man across the room. “Incredible, you guys are so beautiful.”

She walks around the room eyeing us as if we are her precious children. She is proud and caring as she stops to praise and assist us one at a time, to send some love wherever it is needed.

“Now come out of the pose as if moving through mud,” she tells us. “You have done deep, awesome work. Move slowly so it can integrate.”

This is yin yoga, a restorative yoga style where we go in deeply to the poses and stay for three to five minutes, letting the stretch open us with no strain and no pain.

“If there is any pinching at all, any strain, then make a shift until it is gone,” she tells us. “You should be able to completely relax.”

And this does not mean there is no stretching. How can there not be? In pigeon or dolphin or some complicated twist I can’t even imagine a name for?

No, in this yoga class we are stretching ourselves, we are healing ourselves, but from a place of complete comfort and relaxation.

That doesn’t mean we don’t feel our hips as they realign into the sockets, of course we do. Or notice our vulnerable hearts opening and our calves releasing. We feel it. Oh yes, we do.

We feel it all—but from a place of ease. A place of comfortable surrender.

And what I know for sure is that when I am at my yoga class, I am being transformed.

I am opening and I am shifting. I know this because when I walk out of the yoga studio the air is brighter and shapes are clearer and my mind is stiller.

But it didn’t take any effort to make this so.

All I had to do was, “Go easy, go slow.”

 

 

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Author: Ruth Lera

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Wikimedia Commons