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(773) 463-YOGA | info@bloomyogastudio.com 4663 N. Rockwell, Chicago, IL 60625 |
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The Thinking Yogi by Kerry Maiorca April 2005: Is your yoga the most? When a yoga teacher says, "Advanced students may try this more difficult version," do you always choose that option? Do you often find yourself looking around the room to see how you measure up to others in class? Is your idea of a good yoga practice one that results in your body aching the next day? What would happen if, instead of pushing yourself to do the most and the best pose in class, you worked at only 50% of your maximum exertion? Would you be any less of a yogi if you weren’t doing the deepest, most difficult pose? What message are we sending ourselves when we grunt and groan to get into the most advanced variation, the deepest backbend, the most difficult arm balance? Yoga is about awareness, and usually when we get to that point of most and best, we’ve long since abandoned awareness. We’re too busy thinking how great our pose is compared to our neighbor’s or how we wish we could go just a little deeper so we’d look as good as someone else in the room. At that point, what are we really doing? We might as well be in contortionist class. That said, part of yoga practice involves examining one’s limits and moving beyond them. It’s a difficult balance between challenging yourself and understanding why you’re doing so. Only you can truly know what’s motivating you to do that extra chaturanga or to stay in warrior pose when your legs are shaking like crazy. Building strength, developing flexibility, and challenging yourself are important parts of yoga practice, as long as they are done in the spirit of moderation. Without some of that fire that drives us to go deeper we’d probably end up a lump on the couch, but with too much we end up with tensed muscles and a relentless drive that never lets us pursue the much-needed softness and restoration that is so essential to yoga practice. When most people think of yoga, they picture a person putting themselves into all sorts of pretzel-looking positions, but one of the major aims of yoga is not to be able to put the body into wild contortions, but to learn how keep the mind from getting all bent out of shape. Because it’s difficult to change the patterns of your mind, to stop the parade of thoughts, yoga poses are the place we begin. Yoga postures are wonderful tools for maintenance of the body, crucial first steps that enable us to move beyond stiffness or aches in our bodies so we can be comfortable and learn to be still. So think about it next time you’re in class and you hear those fateful words: the most advanced option. Observe if you’re jumping to get into the most, the best, and think about why you’re inclined to do so. And as an experiment, choose instead the least challenging variation or take a break even if the rest of the room is pushing through an extra long warrior pose hold. Take that opportunity to remember what yoga can be: a practice of awareness of the body, the breath, the mind in this moment. This essential part of the yoga practice often gets lost when we grow attached to being an advanced student doing advanced variations and then suddenly the yoga practice becomes about only the physical, the way we look in a certain pose. There’s a certain beauty to pulling back, pulling out of ego-driven mode. Your yoga practice is an opportunity to explore what it means to step out of the competitive, comparison-driven way of thinking that dominates much of our lives. Take full advantage of that aspect of your practice: you may discover it’s a great first step in learning to change your mind! |
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