Do you ever find yourself with a great thought but it’s incomplete? I find this happens to me a lot, so I write it down. I figure the writing down process is equivalent to planting a seed. The thought is contained on a piece of paper just like the seed is contained in the dirt. But just as the seed needs some light and water for it to do its thing, my ideas need my time and attention before they will flourish into something eloquently written. I have been collecting these incomplete thoughts for a while. They are mostly about yoga. Each one of these incomplete thoughts, I figure is a masterpiece similar to the Bhagavad Gita just waiting to come out. As if, I, Cathy a 41 year old yoga teacher has the wisdom of Krishna inside me. Well, I have been doing yoga for over 13 years and I have read many great books. I have also researched the heck out of my limitations and I have definitely embraced my own Dharma, so I figure it is possible. I do believe that this blogging adventure is my way of holding my feet to the fire, forcing me to open up this vault of incomplete thoughts and complete them once and for all. But what if they are only destined to be a thought bubble, like in cartoons? Maybe I should start to incorporate some art into the great novel in my head, even if it is only stick figures. What’s so wrong with a thought bubble anyways? Snoopy and Woodstock have been entertaining us for years with their thoughts, packaged in cute little bubbles above their heads. So did I just compare the things in my head to Krishna and Snoopy at the same time? Yikes! I did.
We live in a society of instant gratification. Everything comes at us fast, except yoga poses. You know what I mean if you do yoga. We can google anything. Aren’t we forcing ourselves into this sort of thought bubble society? Twitter is a great example of a thought bubble, 200 characters or less. Some people’s thoughts that they are sharing seem to just be action statements like “I just ate an avocado”. I’m pretty sure my thought bubbles are more insightful than that. I think I’d like to die knowing that people are still quoting me. Isn’t the best way to do that is keep it short and sweet? I mean really…how many of us read Homers’ – The Odyssey? Or for that matter, the Mahabharata? I know what your thinking, I should have at least read that one, being a yoga teacher and all. Seeing that the Bhagavad Gita is just a small portion of the Mahabharata, I better get on it. One day, when a yogi steps into his/her first yoga class and wonders just like I did “What the heck is this?”, maybe they will run off to the closest book store just like I did and pick up a book on yoga. Maybe it will be my book that they buy. But for today, I’m just going to share my thought bubbles with you.
My thought bubbles…
Yoga is like shooting pool, first you have to line things up.
Your breath in yoga is like the big, bad wolf trying to blow the door of resistance down to get to the three little pigs. They represent mind, body and Self.
Breath is like a threaded needle stitching together the mind and the body.
When you practice yoga you need to be the witness, participant and the referee. Sometimes you need to cheer yourself on, other times you need to check yourself into the penalty box for bad behavior.
Distractions can be dangerous and harmful. If you are distracted while driving by a child, phone, or bad weather, it could lead to you missing your turn, or worse, an accident. If you are distracted while cooking you might forget an ingredient or put one in twice and ruin the whole recipe. Distractions are all around us; loud sounds, annoying sounds, bright lights, smells, etc. These distractions take your awareness away for a moment and it’s what happens in that moment. Every moment matters. Seconds are small, almost seeming insignificant. But what happens in those few seconds can last a lifetime. Yoga is an opportunity to practice staying in the moment, each and every one.
Find the space and room in your body, expand the joints, open your frame. Yoga is also about opening space in your mind, for more room, more love & acceptance, more patience, or for nothing at all. Your mind doesn’t need to be full and overflowing with thoughts all the time. Emptiness is good. We empty the trash, we empty our bladders, we empty our shoes, mailboxes, we empty a lot of things. The body also doesn’t always need to be full all the time, we can fast. We can go without. We can experience emptiness for a while & survive. We can let go of things.
Yoga is like a science lab. You are going to put things together and see what happens – it’s research, analyze, evaluate, assess and conclude and then repeat. No study is conclusive on one try.
Practice makes perfect. There is no “when” in that sentence. Just, practice makes perfect.
If you want to tip your yoga teacher then show him/her 20% gratuitous smile the whole class.
Thoughts are like the sheep that a cowboy is trying to corral. Just keep cutting off their movements, get them in the corral and then close the gate.
If you do not look BOTH ways before crossing the street, it could be very dangerous. Look in your yoga practice both ways. Contraction/relaxation, length/width, inhale/exhale, lightness/heaviness. Duality is always there. Look both ways.
Happiness is like chasing your own tail. It is always a part of you. It goes where you go. You don’t have to run in circles. You just have to be willing to look in the right direction to see it. Sometimes you just forget where to look to see that it is there.
Home is where the heart is. Take away the “h” at the beginning and the “e” at the end and just look at the middle, what are you left with? OM! There is no place like Om. There is no place like om. There is no place like Om. Maybe our real home is right there in the middle of our body, where the heart is.
Stand and face the sun 