A few months ago, I've written about my journey with my yoga classes in Yoga Demystified. Now, it's been a year since I started, and my passion for yoga has deepened even further.
I love the Ashram for many reasons. First of all, it's run and managed by a very synergized team of dedicated, hands on, and innovative individuals coming from different backgrounds sporting a variety of skills, experiences and intentions. They are everyday people like us who are passionate about yoga and they treat the Ashram as their homes rather than a place of business, and us as their friends and family. The studio itself is simple and refreshing, adopts a minimalist style in a very familiar and modern urban atmosphere, but remaining warm, cozy and comfortable. Despite having to teach yoga to a group, the instructors treat each practitioner as a unique individual, having different capabilities and needs. And thus, one never feels pressure to do what you can't do. And lastly, the most significant reason is that each day, I get to learn something new about myself, and about my life in a very practical manner, not through the meditations and chants but through the everyday yoga instructions and reminders.
You'd probably wonder what can be different from one yoga class to the next, especially in a short span of a day or two. But through a combination of passionate instructors, creative teaching styles, and a practitioner's openness to learn and gain new perspectives, each session yields something different. Who would expect that those daily simple yoga instructions and reminders have taught me some valuable life lessons!
We start each practice with shavasana. This is where you would lie on your backs to relax all parts of your body, including the parts that you don't even realize are tensing up. Easy you'd think, but it's the most difficult to practice. The biggest challenge is actually keeping still and focusing inward, clearing your mind of everything, being able to drown out any noise or distractions around, setting aside the events of the day just past, and all within 5 minutes. Lying down initially with my eyes closed, I'd find myself surveying everything around me, the whirring sounds around, the whimpers of my neighbors, or even the soft brushing sound of a leg moving on the mat. My mind starts to fill up with all sorts of throughts as if they were rushing all in. The word relax becomes so inefficient and general especially when you here instructions like release any tension and let your cheeks and jaws melt down towards the back of your head, let your eyeballs rest down on their sockets, allow the crease of your neck to extend, rest the back of your hands and finger knuckles on the floor, and let your tongue fall back away from your teeth and jaws. What the heck! Do I have a crease at the back of my neck? Haha! At first, it sounded really weird, but after I get over the weirdness of it all, I realize that that a lot of times, we aren't even aware of the things our parts of the body do, especially the small and oftentimes neglected parts. We fidget, we clench our fingers and toes, we tighten up our buns even when we're lying down. We all get so busy in life, but even when we're not busy, we're not totally relaxed. We forget to quiet down, and just "BE"
As we go through the different poses, we are often reminded that there is no competition, and that we are all different in where we are in the practice. It is ok not to reach your toes, but be sure to bend from your pelvis and not your back. Use a strap if you can't reach your arms from the back. Do this as an alternative and you gain the same benefit. As human beings in this other-focused society, we can't help but compare ourselves to others, either to follow the majority, or just gauge ourselves or worse case, to feed our egos because we find ourselves better than others. In our work, in school, or in any organization, we are asked to follow a standard procedure. We sometimes get penalized for being creative and taking a different route, even if it yields the same outcome. We worry ourselves when we do not do what others do, do not have what others have. We find it weird or strange when we see people doing something different. We tend to forget that we are all unique human beings, and that we should actually be proud of our uniqueness.
There is a long road ahead, as you take on the journey of yoga, or any journey for that matter. And patience is something that we practice everyday. Like in any journey, we do not focus on the end, but rather focus on the journey itself. We take steps, big steps, baby steps, depending on what we can do that day. Yesterday, I could do my tree pose with my right leg on my upper thigh. Today, my balance is somehow off and all I could do was support my tree pose with my right leg on my lower shin. And the important thing to realize is that is is ok and a normal human condition, and not a weakness nor a failure. We practice again and again, to build our strength. A year ago, I could barely reach my toes when I bend forward. After a few weeks, I could reach the floor with my fingertips. Every month, it was an inch further. Today, I could lay the palms of my hand flat on the floor and still bend my arms. And I celebrate every inch I can stretch myself further. But we also fall back, and we learn to let go, reset and move forward. One time I missed yoga for a few weeks, and honestly when I got back, it was frustrating because it was like starting from scratch. But with an open mind, I found myself back. And with every few days I stopped in between, there is that stepping back and moving forward that is essential. I've learned to embrace it, as it is part of the journey.
Speaking of embracing the journey and the avoidance of focus on the end result, we try to devoid ourselves of the idea of perfection. In a society where perfection is highly encouraged, we find ourselves striving for it, but also falling into the trap of disappointments when we don't achieve it. I have short arms compared to others, and I've proven that, LOL. At first, I was shocked at how bad I was when I could not even reach my other elbow from the back when even other first timers could. Eventually, I learned to open up my shoulders and that helped. But my arms are still short, haha! And I was given an alternative to hold on to a strap that also yields the same results. It's all about the effort and now how far you can stretch your arms around yourself. When we go through the process, we learn to accept what we can and cannot do, and we focus on what we can. There is nothing wrong with challenging one's self. After all, yoga is about stretching our minds, our body and our soul and building strength. The key word is "our" where we focus on our capabilities, on our bodies, on our limits, not with others. One big common mistake we all do is that we treat perfection as our one absolute end goal. Is perfection really absolute in the context of human beings? We forget that as human beings, we are designed to be imperfect and unique and that's what makes us amazing! So instead of focusing on that one absolute end goal, we should focus on the journey itself, stretching ourselves to move forward with goals created relative to our progress, one step at a time, and irregardless of where and what the end is.
And as I continue to embrace my yoga journey, I also learn to enjoy my life journey in new and interesting perspectives. The instructions and reminders could seem repetitious, but each day, they actually resonate differently depending on where you are in your yoga practice, in your day, in your week, or even in your life.Namaste!
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