Raise your hand if before you started practicing yoga* you thought it was going to make you stronger or more flexible.
Raise your hand if before you started practicing yoga you thought it was going to make you a more kind, calm, or patient person.
Raise your hand if before you started practicing yoga you thought it was going to fix something about you, physically or otherwise.
Raise your hand if after practicing yoga for a while you felt frustrated with yoga and/or yourself because it wasn’t working like you expected it would and you wondered if maybe there was something wrong with you. Or maybe you thought it was just that you weren’t doing enough yoga, that you needed to dose up and add another class or two a week, and then, theeeeen it would all really start happening for you.
Okay, my arm is getting tired. How about yours? 😉
“The nature of yoga is to shine the light of awareness into the darkest corners of the body.” — Jason Crandell
In other words, you are doing yoga perfectly. And yoga is doing it’s job perfectly, too. Yoga is the vehicle for exploring, illuminating, and getting to better know the landscape of yourself.
Yoga is not a magic pill, but instead a toolbox. And it’s tools are not used for fixing us (as we’re neither broken nor in need of fixing), but rather for disassembling and dissecting. Yoga is not the cure, but it can be the litmus paper. Yoga is not the solution; you’re already whole.
Yoga does not make you stronger. What it does is offers the exercises which provide you an opportunity to reveal and tap into your ever-present strength. If you happen to experience a sense of calm, peace, or love after you practice yoga, it is only because you already house that within you. Yoga did not give you sense of calm, peace, patience, or love, it only gave you the tools with which to excavate these from within yourself.
So, the next time you step onto your mat I invite you to approach your practice with the confidence that you already know the answers and you already are the person you want to be. The structure/container of yoga provides us the time and space in which we can remember these truths. When we enter our practice in this way we step in exactly as we are. We explore with a healthy dose of kind and gentle curiosity and the intention to allow our hearts to open to what is.
“This is a work in progress, a process of uncovering our natural openness, uncovering our natural intelligence and warmth. I have discovered, just as my teachers always told me, that we already have what we need. The wisdom, the strength, the confidence, the awakened heart and mind are always accessible, here, now, always. We are just uncovering them. We are rediscovering them. We’re not inventing them or importing them from somewhere else. They’re here. That’s why when we feel caught in darkness, suddenly the clouds can part. Out of nowhere we cheer up or relax or experience the vastness of our minds. No one else gives this to you. People will support you and help you with teachings and practices, as they have supported and helped me, but you yourself experience your unlimited potential.”
— Pema Chödrön, Taking the Leap
*While I understand yoga to be a way of being and practice it as a comprehensive, integrated lifestyle, when I use the word “yoga” in this particular post I am primarily referring to yoga asanas.
Krystal Barschig 