‘Practice yoga …all is coming’
September 2021
What happens when we practice yoga? We start to notice how we are – not just physically, but also energetically, mentally and emotionally. Because we’re all unique, we each engage differently with a physical sensation or an instruction/suggestion. We all experience life through the lens of our own conditioning. Our habits affect the way we move, the way we think, how we interpret how we feel. But despite our differences, when we practice yoga we all drop into a shared experience of letting go. There is nothing to fix. The goal is not to somehow craft a ‘new you’, but to strip away – layer by layer – our habits, the weight of our identity, our sense of being separate from the world around us. In the words of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, we ‘still the fluctuations of the heart-mind’ and ‘rest in our essence nature’. These moments of connection can be fleeting. Other outcomes of our practice are more constant – maintaining a functional range of movement, calming the nervous system, releasing feel-good endorphins, improving circulation and releasing toxins. Yoga is best approached with ‘a beginner’s mind’…empty of expectation, as if we were coming to the mat for the first time. As we surrender to the experience our inner landscape begins to open up. “Practice yoga…all is coming.” Pattabhi Jois |