When you least expect it
More reason to stay balanced between times
Sun was shining, then dark clouds dropped rain, and thunder boomed. You thrived through a healthy winter, then a virus took you out in May. You were single, then an exceptional relationship prospect appeared right before you. You weren't pregnant, then you were. You were awake, then you fell asleep. Your job was stable, now you're laid off. Our days, nights, lives, minds, bodies, emotions and moments are full of extremes, and they're taxing, if we swing with them. We don't have to.
Prāṇāyāma and Dhyānam, breath regulation and meditation, mediate our stress response during these extremes. And nurture the practice of calmness when all is well. Each month begins a new opportunity to join our four week sessions, with the goal of you incorporating these practices into your daily life. With them, you are building stress resilience. The time to practice is when circumstances are relatively stable. There, you redefine yourself, your capacities, your abilities. From there, you carry new patterns with you into the balancing act, less scathed by the extremes.
Before I started practicing, I was a 21 year old university student, making-it-up-as-I-went-along. It dawned on me that life was complicated, and I was completely at the mercy of my emotional reactions to those complications. Foreseeing a life experience that was out of my control and hinged on changing circumstances, I began to seek out what exactly didn’t change. That would be my anchor. And I found Yoga shortly after.
My practice changed forms until I entered a deep relationship with Ashtanga Yoga, during the years it’s meant to be practiced, the youthful ones. I mastered it. But I ceased to master myself. My India studies brought me to South India, where I studied with the Jois family and Desikachar family from trip number one. A knowing that Ashtanga is limited due to its one dimensional approach, I sought the entirety of what Krishnamacharya practiced and taught, and I found it. At first glance, simplistic, yet within minutes, my soul came to light.
My soul found its Yoga home through the practice experiences. Slow, intentional breathing and meditation practices. Permission and space. Prāṇa and calm guidance. Parampara and trust. With continued daily practice, the same stimuli don’t pull me in the same way, as long as I remain aware. Yoga is awareness, a place where we can access our tools, a state where we can use them, real time.