Have you ever gotten an adjustment on a posture in yoga class that opened your eyes to an important life lesson?

This happened to me just the other day. The teacher told me, “Keep moving your muscles throughout the entire posture, otherwise you are just putting your body into a shape.”

My attention immediately snapped back to class. I have to admit that my mind was wandering at that particular moment, but her correction got me thinking. Had she simply caught me in a lazy moment or was my practice becoming routine?

Was I just putting my body into shapes or was I practicing yoga?

After class I was reminded of what one of my favorite yoga teachers often warned her more seasoned students, “Regular students should try not to become robotic. They know the practice, so they stop listening to the dialogue. The dialogue is the key to the practice. If you listen to the words and do what you hear, you will go further into your postures.”

Was this happening to me? Was I becoming robotic?

Upon further reflection, I was relieved to conclude that it is not as bad as all that. I am still pushing myself in the postures, and working to maintain my focus and energy throughout my practice. I continue to find challenge and new details to explore in the various asanas. I do think of the postures as a journey rather than as an end result. But, it was a good wake up call and an important reminder about how easy it is to lose focus and intensity about something that is a regular part of our daily life.

I could see how easy it would be to fall into the trap of thinking of asanas like static shapes that we need to mimic, rather than like living and breathing postures that we actively experience and explore.

For me, this concept applies not only to yoga, but also to life more generally. We all know how easy it is to take the things that matter to us most for granted. In fact, it is often our most important relationships and activities that we forget to nurture, because we believe we will have numerous opportunities to do so.

It is also very easy to become more concerned with how our life events look in a status update than to experience them in the moment. We need to remember that even if we take on the shape of a happy family or the form of a loving relationship, there is always more to experience and explore. And the more we give, the more we will receive in return.

Life, like yoga, is a constantly unfolding posture, not a static shape.

 

 

 

 

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4 Practical ways for Women to Recover from Everyday Life Exhaustion.

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Author: Shari Eberts

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Ann Harkness/Flickr