Living Yoga

Living Yoga

Yoga was not designed for only practice at the studio for an hour and then no yoga until your next class. It is about what we do everyday. When we look back at our lives, we see what we are conditioned to see. When we look forward, we are looking at what we anticipate seeing. We see everything through the narrow viewpoint of our experience. The yoga philosophy asks us to expand that view. But in order to do that, we need a clear and calm mind. The great sage Patanjali said that our minds are like mirrors. When we look in the mirror and see a bunch of spots on the mirror, we think those spots are us. But if we wipe the mirror (of the mind) clear every day, then when we look, maybe we can see our true nature and not just through the culmination of past experience. If our house is dirty and we don’t clean it, it gets dirtier and dirtier. Pretty soon, there is caked on dirt everywhere and we have to move out! So it makes sense to clean the mind everyday. Clear thinking helps us make good decisions.

Our physical yoga practice helps us clean the mirror and calm down. It helps us to see our own egos and how past experiences cloud our judgment. When we practice a pose in yoga, we must focus. First, we learn to focus on alignment and breath. Then we learn to shift the awareness inward. If we are trying too hard then we focus too much on what the body is doing. If we do not try enough, then the mind wanders off to what we are going to eat next or how someone else in the room is doing. So we use the body to help us clean, by focusing and going deeper in to the inner layers of prana, or energy. This is the key to taming the mind. It’s not easy. But we get there a little bit at a time. If we practice a little bit everyday, in-between trips to the studio, we can see a little more of our true selves all the time.

Happy Cleaning!
Namasté,
René

Owner, Yoga Madre

www.yogamadre.com