The largest land animal has a lot to teach us.

I have always had a thing for elephants, yet I have never met one personally. Sadly, I worry I never will, but that’s for another time. I have read many books about elephants, where they are the lead character. One of my favorites is Modoc, by Ralph Hefler. I shall share a list with you at the end of this of all the great many elephant stories I have read for all the elephant fanatics like myself. Once I started practicing yoga, I found it comforting that in the mythology of yoga there is a character named Ganesha. Ganesha is an elephant headed figure considered to be very sacred amongst yoga practitioners. Which, for me, was a good thing because it made picking my  Ishta Devata very easy.

Ganesha Statue.

What is an Ishta Devata, you might ask? It’s something that you resonate with. But by definition it is a “cherished divinity”. It might be an energy that you devote your practice to (Bhakti yoga), or it could be described as a force that makes you calm and steadfastness in your direction. It could be a feeling that you do not doubt. I have never doubted that an elephant head God-like figure wouldn’t be a good match for me. I find elephants to be exquisite in their beauty, impressive in their grace (even though appearing outwardly clumsy). They show great empathy in their family network and they exemplify what a support system should look like. They seem to embody the ability to grieve and they are pregnant for 22 months. So they must be amazingly strong, wouldn’t you say? In the mythological symbolism of the Great Ganesha, he is considered the deity of choosing for removing all obstacles. He is a great archetype to honor at the beginning of all new endeavors to help assure that your path will be obstacle free.

However, I prefer to think of Ganesha as a source of strength that I can go to, to overcome my obstacles. I do not like the notion of removing obstacles because I strongly believe it is the obstacles I have met and overcome that have shaped me into the resilient person I am today. Obstacles require creative thinking. Obstacles make our travels less linear and more meandering. It’s the terrain of life that gives our journey shape, the up’s and down’s, in’s and out’s, and the back and forth. To share with you a truth about linear travel, I can tell you this: I live where it is very flat and many roads tend to be very straight. Nothing feels more exhilarating then when I get into the mountains a few hours away. The curving, climbing, wrapping, and descending shapes of the road and the scenery that goes along with it always takes my breath away. Roads like that seem to bring out my adventurous spirit.

If all my obstacles were removed wouldn’t that make my journey easy and uneventful? If the troubles that lie ahead were taken away for the sake of my comfort, what would I appreciate? It’s usually in the uncomfortable places that I find myself most alive and even willing to be daring. Being comfortable sets up the likelihood that I might become dull (styana). Dullness isn’t exactly a label I’d like to wear. I don’t know about you.

I align myself with Ganesha when standing face to face with an obstacle. I take strength from this Divinity because Elephants embody so much of what I need. What’s one of the first things you might need when facing a obstacle?  Family, friends, right?  Elephants live in great family structures that are very loving, supportive and even adoptive at times of loss. They set up a system of what’s called allomothers, whose job it is to look after the young calf and help it along. I need people around me, that support me, and help me along when I’m facing an obstacle. Don’t you?

What else do Elephants have that might inspire me during times of challenge? They have thick skin, hence the name Pachyderm. This thick skin is why they have no true predators,except for humans.:-[  The only time you will see an elephant down is from illness, age or humans. When I am confronted with difficulties, it is no time to become thin-skinned. It’s time to toughen up.

Of course, one of the most apparent traits of  strength comes from the fact that they are sturdy creatures, not easily knocked down. Matter of fact, they seldom lie down at all. They need almost 22 hours a day to feed themselves to keep up their energy for their 600 mile migration during the dry season. There is no time for the weary. They can travel many miles on their four sturdy legs. Elephants have to constantly stay on the move for food and water, for the sake of survival. When I’m facing a challenge its necessary to keep moving forward. It’s time to keep up my energy with things like yoga, a good diet, and people around me that will encourage me. Staying in one place creates stagnation – movement is the answer.

Now their most charming physical attribute is of course their trunk. How could I possibly see inspiration from their trunks? Their trunk is a great representation of strength and flexibility. Their trunks are sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass or strong enough to break the branches off a tree. Like sutra 46 chapter 2 says “Sthira sukham asanam” You should be at ease and steady in your asanas. Learning to be strong and flexible is about becoming balanced between opposites (dwandwa)? Their trunks can be very delicate because it has over 150,000 separate muscles fascicles, it is also highly innervated making it extremely sensitive. It is said, in the yoga tradition, that the human body has over 72,000 nadi’s (or little rivers, energy pathways) that act as our information highway. In order to keep our nadi’s functioning well we need to become aware of bad energy in our body which would create an energetic traffic jam of sorts. We need to stay sensitive when facing obstacles and yoga is great way to do that.

Then of course there is their form of communication. They communicate mostly at a pitch that we humans can not hear. Even they aren’t really hearing it. They are FEELing it. Their feet are designed in such a way that they are able to feel vibrations traveling miles to them through the ground. The sensitivity that they have in their feet and trunk allows them to communicate miles apart and at times reunite a family group that had gotten separated. This communication allows them to survive some pretty challenging conditions. But the most amazing thing about this type of communication is that it requires great sensitivity. It requires that they feel information instead of seeing it, or hearing it. The human species is far to dependent on sight and sound. So much so, that we love to hear the sound of ourselves speaking and to see ourselves in a mirror. Instead we should  trust what we feel. Our gut instinct can be a great resource in time of difficulty. It’s this sensitivity that will allow our decision-making through difficult times to be less reactive and more responsive. Sensitivity can be refined when practicing an OM. Try to feel it, instead of hear it.

Sutra 30 Chapter 1 describes everything that an elephant is not. “Vyadhi styana samsaya pramada alasya avirati bhrantidarsana alabdhabhumikatva anavasthitatvani citta viksepah te antarayah.” Translated – The obstacles that distract the mind are illness, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, overindulgence, illusions about one’s self, lack of perseverance and instability. Sri Swami Satchidananda interpreted this sutra as such ” Remember, yoga practice is like an obstacle race; many obstructions are purposely put on the way for us to pass through. They are there to make us understand and express our own capacities. We all have the strength but we don’t seem to know it. We seem to need to be challenged and tested in order to understand our own capacities. In fact, that is the natural law. If a river flows easily, the water in the river does not express its power. But once you put an obstacle to the flow by constructing a dam, then you can see its strength in the form of tremendous power.

I look to elephants, all shapes and sizes, fact and fiction to guide me through my obstacles and to overcome difficulties. I go to Ganesha for strength and wisdom. I am reminded by the great elephants that we are here to help each other along, like  elephants do in their herds. Horton from Dr. Seuss said “A person is a person, no matter how small.” We are all trying to get over different obstacles, at different times, and of course from different places. Let’s just remember “I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant is faithful 100%.”  – Dr. Seuss. We could all use a trunk to hold on to, sturdy legs to stand on, thick skin to cope, sensitivity we trust, and a family to count on. Let’s be inspired by Elephants and remember to pay homage to Ganesha.

Om Gum Ganapati Namaha! 

Great Elephant Reads:

Modoc by Ralph Helfer

To the Elephant Graveyard by Tarquin Hall

The Astonishing Elephant by Shana Alexander

The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson

The Cowboy and his Elephant by Malcolm Mac Pherson

The Inconvenient Elephant by Judy Reene Singer

Still Life with Elephant by Judy Reene Singer

Hannah’s Dream by Daine Hammond

If Old McDonald had a yoga practice…

I recently read an interesting book called The Dirty Life, by Kristen Kimball. It’s about farming the natural way – no engine based machinery, no herbicides, or pesticides just good old fashion hard work. I’ve always loved the idea of owning a farm but I just don’t enjoy playing in the dirt. I enjoy hard work. I love the simple task of cutting grass with our electric lawn mower. But I just wouldn’t be very good at natural farming because you have to pull the bugs that are eating your plants off by hand and squish them. When it comes down to it, I’m too girly for farming. But I’m not to girly for the work that’s required for a good yoga practice, thank goodness! In this book, the author was writing about her love of farming and I realized her words perfectly described my love of yoga. No surprise, really, because farming and yoga share some similarities. She writes ” I was in love with the work, too, despite its overabundance. The world had always seemed disturbingly chaotic to me, my choices to bewildering. I was fundamentally happier, I found, with my focus on the ground. For the first time, I could clearly see the connection between my actions and their consequences. I knew why I was doing what I was doing, and I believed in it.  I felt the gap between who I thought I was and how I behaved begin to close, growing slowly closer to authentic. I felt my body changing to accommodate what I was asking of it… I had always been attracted to the empty, sparkly grab bag of instant gratification and was beginning to learn something about the peace you can find inside an infinite challenge.”

Even if I just took that last line to describe my love of yoga it would suffice, ” I was beginning to learn something about the peace you can find inside an infinite challenge.”  Yoga is infinite, there are still poses and breathing techniques my body is still not ready for, nor is my mind for that matter, even after having my practice established as a 6 day a week Ashtanga practice, for the past 12 years. But every word in that farming description fits how I feel about yoga.

Downward facing dog, Adho mukha svanasana
Sullivans Island sunrise!

The author says, “I was fundamentally happier, I found, with my focus on the ground. ” Downward facing dog is just that, connecting to the ground, drawing my attention downward and inward. I have always found yoga to be very primal. For starters, you are barefoot the whole class and you’re mostly on the ground with all four’s, or more. How your body is interacting with the ground determines the success or failure of your yoga practice. Headstand is a great yoga pose that can easily help you understand the line that says ” For the first time, I could clearly see the connection between my actions and their consequences.” And because students are usually forced to slow down and deal with what some of the consequences are in yoga, such as injury, or embarrassment from falling down, they are forced to grow and to feel their body changing to accommodate what they are asking of it.

There is also no short cut. A dedicated yogi, one that has stuck with it consistently, knows that the only way you achieve some of the bizarre postures we do, is good old fashioned hard work. The author also says of farming, ” Question: Why is farming like a relationship? Answer: Because you do not reap what you sow. That’s a lie. You reap what you sow, hill, cultivate, fertilize, harvest and store.”  In yoga, you reap what you face, repeat, lift, tuck,sweat through, and breathe into.

But brute strength can only get you so far. There has to be a degree of finesse and a nice increase of knowledge (vidya) with each practice. Yoga is cumulative in effort. The more effort you put forth the more return on your investment. And what are you investing in anyway? Only the greatest gift you have ever received…your health. I recently saw an infomercial for a Pastor selling a book about taking care of your body with exercise, I think they called it “Bod for God”. It’s premise was, the best way you can thank God, and show your appreciation, and devotion to God is to take care of the beautiful body he/she gave you….DUH! I’ve known this for years. The greatest show of thanks I can give to the divine everyday is treating my body well. Just as a farmer has to treat the earth well.

The really good farmer knows what hard work is. A good farmer knows that to produce a crop, a healthy crop, it takes attention to detail. From the grounds composition, to the weather patterns, to the hours of daylight and to the critters/invaders that try and eat his crop, he knows and does it all. A day off means a day that a bug or disease can get a jump on him and destroy his whole crop.  Farmers know their land, they know how to see the smallest change in environment and how that might effect his/her outcome. We all need to become more like farmers. We need to pay attention to the details. We need to know our environment and how it’s effecting our mental and physical well being. If we want to live a productive life, as much as a farmer wants to have a productive crop, then we need to tend to matters.

It starts with the soil. In the case of the human body, your soil is your mind. It’s where all thoughts begin. It is the point of creation. Your mind needs to be open in order for creative thoughts to flow through. Just like the ground that a farmer wants to plant, it must be loose and fertile, with out rocks, weeds, and bugs. Ground that is compact and dense will suffocate the life right out of any seed. So it starts with the soil, it needs air, nutrients and moisture. Which is why farmers till the soil, over and over until its ready for the seeds. Your mind also needs air and movement, it needs to be fertile for the right things to grow. A yoga practice can do just that. Sutra 1.2 says “Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah”; yoga can make the mind less fickle, that’s my personal translation. Yoga is a moving meditation. The movement, opens things and the meditation part is like the sun, shining light onto things that need to grow. Meditation is simply the process of observation, which will expose the things that would pull you away from a productive and fruitful life. A yoga practice is equivalent to the farmer walking his acres every morning and seeing what has transpired over night, knowing his land and keeping a handle on the things that can get out of hand quickly.

Weeds can quickly take hold and suffocate a plant. How many weeds are there growing in your head. A great example of a weed in your mind is a repetitive, negative thought where you are putting yourself down. That will suffocate anything good that’s trying to grow in your mind. Where a narrow mind is like dense soil, the density will not allow anything new to come into your perspective, leaving you stuck in repetitive patterns, that are producing the same results (this is the hala hala, poison). The bugs are like other peoples thoughts and opinions that have come in and tainted your view point, especially if you haven’t formed your own well thought out opinion first. Too much rain will drown the crop, because too much of anything is bad…moderation! Too little light, rain or nutrients is also bad. Just remember this, in yoga it is the terrible two’s that will get you in trouble; too much, too soon, too fast, and too little rest. It’s all about balancing opposing forces (dwandwa, twoness – duality).

Be the best farmer of the crop you are trying to produce in your life. I know and believe Old McDonald would have been a great yogi, had he had the time. Who’s to say he wasn’t a yogi, just without the asana’s? Keep this last thought in mind from The Dirty Life ” Of course we have a chance, he’d say, and anyway, it didn’t matter if this venture failed. In his view, we were already a success, because we were doing something hard and it was something that mattered to us. You don’t measure things like that with words like success or failure, he said. Satisfaction comes from trying hard things and then going on to the next hard thing, regardless of the outcome. What mattered was whether or not you thought you were moving in a direction that was right.” Just like sutra 1.12 says “Abhyasa vairagyabhyam tannirodhah.” ; steady practice with non-attachment, steady practice with non-attachment,  steady practice with non-attachment, worth repeating because that one is tricky.

And one last thing to keep you steering the plough in the right direction is this line from a documentary I recently watched called Enlighten Up,” It doesn’t matter what you are doing, but why you are doing it.” We can so easily forget the why because we are so focused on the what.  For me, when I’m on my mat it goes back to what the Author, Kristen said which is “I knew why I was doing, what I was doing, and I BELIEVED IN IT.” Well said.

Old McDonald had a yoga practice E  – I – E  – I  Ommmmmmmmm!

I believe in yoga, enough said.

Inhabiting Your Space.

Proprioception should be a less intimidating word, but when I say it to people, they give me that furrowed brow look that says “huh?”. Proprioception is the ability to know where your body is in space in relation to other objects. It’s what allows you to walk around a dark room at night and not bump into things. But I find so many people are in the dark about where their bodies are in space. I want to bring some light to this problem, and if I do you will have fewer stubbed toes, less bumped knees, knocked heads, bruises, and overall mishaps. And if you are one of those infamous close talkers, you might find you’ll have better conversations. I can’t tell you how many times I have backed away from a close talker because I felt my personal space is being compromised, possibly not allowing me to be as attentive as I would like.

We are all pretty aware of movement. Our arm just doesn’t move randomly and without our noticing, thank goodness, or we’d all be a bull in a China shop. For the most part, most of us have refined our movements to be able to look and move like everyone else. Until you put people in yoga poses, then the truth comes out. Most people are just touching the tip of the iceberg in their understanding of muscle movement.

I am choosing to link coordination and proprioception together. But let me be clear – I am not a scientist, at least not by degree. By personal interest, I am a scientist in behavior. I am constantly testing, experimenting, researching, analyzing and interpreting my abilities. I’ve read enough to be well informed of the limits of the human body, but I like to test what I have heard and read it through my own body. Figuring that as I go, I might find some contradictions, as well as some very clear affirmations. But at least I will have developed new skill sets along the way. With every new movement, I am gaining sensitivity. It is this sensitivity that is informing me towards more graceful and coordinated actions. This sensitivity allows me to know the difference between 1 inch and 1 foot of space between me and anything else I might come in contact with.

Interestingly, I was a long jumper in high school and I think that helped me refine my skill of proprioception. If your foot stepped over the launch line it was a scratched jump. Just like if a high jumper knocks the bar with their body when jumping, it’s no good. These spacial relationship’s are a great way to learn muscle movement and just how much it can be refined. So how is it that so many people show up on yoga mats across the country, year after year, and they don’t seem to be inhabiting their body. Some people wear their body like an over size suit, just flopping it around with out any life in their limbs, almost with a sense of bagginess. As if, if it weren’t for their bones they’d fall to the floor. Then there are those people that wear their body like a suit of armor, rigid and unpenatrable. Their movements have no fluidity and they seem expressionless and motionless.

Triangle pose, Trikonasana. Photo by Zsolt Haraszti

The one pose, as a yoga teacher, I endlessly become a bit saddened by is Triangle, or trikonasana. It is one of the trickiest poses for people to execute properly. As many times as I will physically place students in the best example of the pose, week after week, they still execute bad alignment. One of the easiest ways to fix this problem is to give people a reference point, something for their bodies to work with or against, that will help them  perceive their body position. What I do is put them up against a wall, and try and have them make themselves as flat as possible against that wall. (There is more to it then that, but for now I’ll leave the description of triangle brief as this isn’t about triangle). This always seems to work, but the moment you bring them off the wall back on their yoga mat the pose seems to just disintegrate.

It is that word that I want to focus on: disintegrate. Or better yet it’s direct opposite, integrate. Yoga is the practice of integrating muscle movements into our perception. Yoga is a great way to work on your body feedback system. The more feedback you become aware of, the more refined your movements will become. But how to make people listen to the feedback is the question? No matter how much information and physical support I provide some students still do not execute the pose well. Maybe it’s a laziness issue or a poor health issue. But whatever the case, I can’t teach people to want what I want for them, they must want it.

The yoga sutra’s talk about a list of obstacles that will effect your development in life, your ability to integrate your perception of yourself in space as well as in behavior. Sutra 1.30 Vyadhi styana samsaya pramada alasya avirati bhrantidarsana alabdhabhumikatva anavasthitavani citta viksepah te antarayah. Translated – The obstacles that distract the mind are illness, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, overindulgence, illusions about one’e self, lack of perseverance, and instability.  I have found you can’t really teach people to be less lazy or less careless. I have found that you can inspire caring and inspire effort, mostly by example.

This is why with my teaching style ,I will demonstrate yoga poses in a two pronged approach: I will first show them a bad example, and then start to integrate from that form right into a good example so they can see how I move my body onto different planes with different energies. I have found this to be a very useful teaching method, as more and more, I feel we are becoming a society that learns more through our eyes then we do through our ears. There are three available approaches to yoga teachers in informing their students. First is words, second should be example and third should be touch. I don’t start out with touch first, because all that sometimes happens is, I am moving them into the correct position. I’m the one doing the work, not them. When students constantly want to be adjusted it can be a sign of laziness, they want you to do the work. I will intervene only after they have tried. After they try and perceive where their body is, and what might be holding them back, then I can assist them with touch. This is where, if the student is interested, yoga will expose patterns of movement that are not always working. In this exposure, the student becomes enlightened. This enlightenment will give them greater perception, greater understanding of their body in space. which is ultimately going to lead to gracefulness, coordination, sensitivity, and integration.

This will happen on your yoga mat if you come to your practice with all the necessary tools available to you: health, alertness, confidence, concern, energy, moderation, truthfulness, perseverance, and stability. Now, if you do not have all these things at the start, then yoga’s journey should help you get all of these things. Your teacher should be inspiring and provide you with the best possible guidance. But remember, it doesn’t lie on the teachers shoulders. You must care. You must want more knowledge, more health, more energy, etc.. As my teacher says, “experience removes doubt”. The best way to get started is to get on your mat and experience inhabiting your body. Work to become more perceptive of the details, the things that aren’t always “in your face” obvious. Shine some light on what has become dull. The trade off will be fewer stubbed toes in the middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom, or fewer bumped elbows on the corners of things, and better posture,  greater health, or overall a generally good feeling about your body and how you are inhabiting it.

You know that feeling when someone has put their yoga mat down too close to yours, when you feel like your space has been invaded. Well, what I want for you is to invade your body, to become more in it, and not of it, to be more connected, instead of disconnected. Proprioception is space invading instead of space evading. Avoidence is not the answer. As sutra 2.3 says Avidya asmita raga dvesa abhinivesah klesah. Translated – the causes of suffering are ignorance, egotism, excessive attachments, unreasonable aversions and fear. Being in the dark can be scary and dangerous. Use yoga to become enlightened, to reduce your suffering and to make you very perceptive. This inward perception that you will strengthen will also deepen your outward perception of the world around you. This is illuminating, it’s like turning the lights on inside your body.

Each room in your home has a light for you to navigate it, so do your muscles. Treat each muscle like a room. You have approximately 640 muscles in your body so it’s like living in a mansion. Take care of this body that is your home. Turn on the lights, open the windows and doors so that energy can flow through. Yoga is feng shui for your body. It’s time to create good Qi. The life force is within you, go find it.

The elusive perfect yoga practice.

Poolside yoga in Roatan, Honduras.

What makes a good yoga practice? If you are still practicing yoga, that means you have experienced at least one sublime practice. As it is human nature to be pleasure seekers and masters at avoiding pain, it makes sense to seek that which we have enjoyed. It’s that one practice that hooked you. It’s what keeps bringing you back onto your mat time and time again. But among the good practices lie a few awful one’s too. Why is that? What is making your practices so different from one another?  It even happens when it is a set sequence of postures like Ashtanga yoga. You would think that if you are doing the same poses day in and day out that you would be having a ground hog day like experience. But it’s not so.

All life has an ebb and flow. The proof is all around us. Yet we become so accustom to the changes that we don’t acknowledge their impact like we should. We are very sensitive beings. Even though its seems as if we pretty much do the same thing day in and day out, we don’t. And it’s the little things that are changing our experience on our mats. I think that’s the fun of yoga. It’s like chasing down the elusive big foot – that notion that you have seen something once, but can’t prove it. I have done some amazing things on my mat. And as much as I try to recreate all the elements that were in play the day my practice was easy, smooth and effortless, it can seem like I’m chasing something that’s a myth.

Have you ever found yourself recreating all the environmental elements that were in play that day? But yet still no luck at recreating the elusive perfect practice. You know what I mean right? You put your yoga mat in the exact same place, you practice at the exact same time of day, wear the same clothes, make it the same temperature and you try and do the poses exactly as you did that day. Hoping that when you lie down in savasana it was everything that it was the epic time before.

If we were all to describe what a perfect practice is, we would find it’s not the same between us. You might consider a perfect practice to be where you finally held crane pose with out falling on your metaphorical beak. Or it’s when you never once looked at the clock. Or there was no presence of struggle. Or you finally felt like you engaged your bandhas the whole practice. The way that I have experienced it is there was a quietness in my practice and a nice heaviness and ease in my savasana. Where it felt like I wasn’t thinking at all, I was just doing yoga for the joy of it. There is a yoga sutra that tells us out right, that if we want to have a great experience with yoga, then take this simple advice… Sutra 1.12 ” Abhyasa vairagyabhyam tannirodhah” Practice yoga with dispassion. Or more commonly said : practice without attachment to a particular outcome.

Recently, I took a vacation with my husband to the lovely island of Nevis. It was my kind of vacation, lots of relaxing by the ocean and plenty of time to roll out my mat and practice. Where ever I go, my yoga mat goes. So after we settle in, I went down by the swimming pool and rolled out my mat and proceeded to practice. I didn’t follow the ashtanga sequence. I ad-libbed some researching postures into the mix. So as I was moving along, I popped right up to a hand stand on my first try, with both legs at the same time and stuck it, then came down and carried on. I did that twice more in the practice and comfortably got into Marichyasana D, and came up out of backbends fluidly. When I finished, I was purely delighted with my practice.

Then the next day, I came out by the pool to practice. Again, I tried doing many of the same things I did the day before and it just wasn’t working. There’s a simple answer why. I’m hoping you have already figured it out. The first day that I practiced, I had no expectations. I just wanted to do yoga. But the second day, my expectation was that I wanted it to be as easy and joyful, as the day before. In a sense, I wanted to control the outcome one day and the other day I did not. I would accept the outcome. Which to me means, I was open. Open to things that I can not control and open to whatever the universe had in store for me.

There will always a percentage of the practice that you do not control. That’s the time where it is appropriate to surrender and accept. Without acceptance there is conflict. You are pitting yourself up against something, and you will usually apply force to achieve the result you are trying to control. This is usually the best teaching opportunity. What will happen is you will fail. You will be humbled, you will learn and grow by defeat. I like to say to my students when I’m teaching, that surrendering is not giving up, it’s giving in. There is a big difference between those two things. One, you walk away, the other you walk towards but peacefully, and without struggle.

Now, I’m sure being on a tropical island, under a beautiful blue sky that was filled with the intoxicating rays of the sun at the equator, and with the ocean as my backdrop, did assist my overall experience. But the real reason, that practice, was one of those knock your socks off kind, was because I wanted nothing. That doesn’t mean I was without desire. Because desire is what gets you to your mat. But once I stepped into Samastitihi, I gave into God, grace, time, whatever you want to call it . I didn’t want to stick handstand, I didn’t want to bind Marichyasana D, I just wanted to move my body as freely as it would, or could that day. It happens with running, too. On the days I head out the door for a run and I’m predicting that it has all the makings of a perfect 6 mile run, it usually turns out to be a heavy leg, slow stepping, long agonizing run. But on the days I head out the door to run and nothing else, it turns into a light, easy 8 miler. Because I had no expectation for the outcome.

There’s a great quote out of the book Born to Run. ” Think easy, light, smooth and fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless. Like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you have practiced that so long that you forget you’re practicing, you work on making it smooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one – you get those three, and you’ll be fast.” This great quote can be applied to yoga up till the fast part, as speed will not help our cause. But you can change the word fast to meditative or blissful, and this bit of advice will work just the same.

Having expectations is like predicting your outcome. There is a general societal skepticism about predictions. Right? We don’t believe someone can predict the end of the world, or when Jesus is coming back or lottery numbers. We tend to think these people that make such declarations are kooks. Yet when you step on your mat, believing that you know exactly how things are going to go, then you might as well set up shop as a fortune teller. Our past experiences do give us knowledge to how something might turn out. But to make assumptions or generalizations, will ultimately get you into trouble.

There is one other element missing for the make-up of the perfect practice, and that is belief. To believe in something means you have no doubts. That you know and trust that what you are doing is right and that it will work out. When there is still doubt, you will still be doing your practice as a study in removing your doubts. Have you ever met someone who believes in something that you think is far fetched – let’s say like big foot? What divides you, is he/she has no doubt it exists, and you do doubt that big foot exists.  If your doubting the practice of yoga, then you haven’t done enough yoga yet. Tim Miller, my teacher says “Experience removes doubt.” This is true. When you have done enough yoga, you will believe in it. You will stand in that belief with conviction

I always know that the day I utter these words, “I have to do yoga today.” I have already laid the ground work for a struggle. Instead of saying “I want to do yoga today.” You need to have the desire to get there, but you need to have the grace to embrace all possible outcomes. If you step on your mat as a form of punishment or control, then you are using your body as an object instead of a vehicle. Going into your yoga practice with doubts is like driving your car with your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time, not trusting the vehicle and your ability to maneuver it. Take your foot off the brake, practice with abandon. Abandon your expectations, your control and your doubt and you will probably have more experiences with that elusive perfect practice.

Now, Samastitihi!