June got lost in a whirlwind of activity. Actually, I just lied to you. June got lost, but the whirlwind was in my mind so there was no visible activity to speak of. I spent four days at the beginning of June with
Laura Cornell at her Overflowing Workshops retreat in northern New Jersey. It was fantastic and I enjoyed both the learning and the connections.
But it started the whirlwind.
At the retreat and at other times, I've been asked why someone would want to take yoga with me, and I never know the answer. People do take my classes, so there must be reasons, but I couldn't say what those reasons are. What I can say for certain is people do not come to me to learn how to do the pretty poses of the uber-flexible. I want people to learn how to walk on the earth with awareness, to fully breathe the air, to experience the fire of transformation and to move like a river, flowing through life with ease and wellness.
Yoga to walk on the earth. If you hike, at some point you are going to meet a snake. We're lucky here in the Adirondacks because we only have one kind of venomous snake, the shy eastern timber rattler. I've never encountered a rattlesnake, but I've come across a number of his benign cousins sunning themselves on the trail. Every time it goes like this: I don't see them until I startle them into movement, and then the movement startles me and I jump out of my hiking boots. I used to blame the snakes for laying in wait for me, but I've realized that each time it happens I have failed to walk mindfully, failed to be fully present to the act of hiking. When I'm on my yoga mat I practice being aware of where my feet are, and where they are going, and I share that practice with my yoga students, so they can walk mindfully on the earth, whether on a hiking trail or a city sidewalk.
Yoga to breathe the air. After practicing yoga for eighteen years, I automatically check in with my breath many times a day. As soon as that last sentence formed in my mind I deepened my breath. Breathing fully into my lungs has become so natural that I often have to remind myself that this is not the case for everyone. Pranayama, the practice of breathing exercises, is as important as the asanas as far as I'm concerned. Deep breathing exercises the diaphragm, moderates the stress response and improves focus. Deep breathing also makes me aware of the air itself, and how important it is that we have clean air to breathe. Did you know planting trees was a yoga practice?
Yoga to experience the fire of transformation. If you've been following my blog you know that yoga has created profound change in my life. If you practice yoga, sooner or later you will experience a transformation. You may give up all your possessions and take up residence in an ashram, or, more likely, one day you will notice that you are standing a bit straighter or that the old ache in your hip is gone. I'd like each of my students to experience their own transformation, no matter how subtle, so I make sure each class fuels that fire.
Yoga to move like a river. For a society that seems to be all about getting somewhere, we don't move much. When we go places we go sitting in cars or on airplanes. We send emails to the coworker in the next office and see a good deal of the world on a television screen. When my clients complain that it gets harder to move as they get older, I point out that they are moving much better than many of their peers, because they make a deliberate effort to keep moving. An aspect of the yoga practice I find fascinating is how, by relieving stiffness in the body, other parts of life that were stagnating start moving too.
In some of my yoga classes we work on challenging asanas. Most focus on minutely refining the basic poses until you are aware that your feet are firmly rooted to the floor, you can direct your breath, you notice a small change and, when it's time to move on, whether to the next pose or back into your life, you can flow with ease.
If you really think about it, why do you practice yoga? Please, share in the comments.
