Back to Asana
One of the wonderful things about any yoga practice is that you can start where you are.
I have been on and off my yoga mat for the last decade or more. It may seem that I can only call myself a sometimes (and fledgling) yogini though yoga in general is on my mind every day and I have other daily practices that follow the eight limbs such as breath work, mantra, and so on. As one of my teachers has relayed, "The body does not lie." I have a lot of tight muscles, imbalances, and to be fair, some extra parts that won't cooperate with me so well. All of these things get in the way of meditation, causing discomfort and agitation. Really, it gets in the way of living. I mean, how much easier would my pedestrian life be if my hips and calves were hydrated and limber? I would also have much more energy.
I often give fairly simple yoga exercises to my massage therapy clients as homework. Quite a few clients have begun implementing their homework and asking for more. I have the muscle knowledge now after having completed a yoga teacher training and a course in massage therapy but for some reason, I have been stunted a bit about what next steps to give that are duplicatable and not overwhelming for my clients so that they stay interested in the homework. Not everyone is going to seek out yoga classes. Not everyone is even going to start with a simple yoga pose to increase overall flexibility and circulation in the legs (such as legs up the wall pose, which is the homework assignment I give the most, lately). But to those who are doing homework and are asking for more, I owe something like a simple next step.
Today, in a very good asana class, I could feel how the tightness in my hips and shoulders, prohibited my movement into poses and transitions as simple as lunging to and from down dog and standing forward bend. I could feel the pull of those tightnesses in other parts of my body such as my lower back, my tailbone, my lower legs, the back of my neck, and even my breast plate.
So there's the answer, really. I simply have to get back into my asana practice in a more committed way. It's not just about me anymore, and maybe it never really was, and perhaps that's why I've been on and off again about asana (because self care has always come second to work, which is not something I recommend). Now I have a real reason to stick to it. Helping others, it seems helps me (!).
I have been on and off my yoga mat for the last decade or more. It may seem that I can only call myself a sometimes (and fledgling) yogini though yoga in general is on my mind every day and I have other daily practices that follow the eight limbs such as breath work, mantra, and so on. As one of my teachers has relayed, "The body does not lie." I have a lot of tight muscles, imbalances, and to be fair, some extra parts that won't cooperate with me so well. All of these things get in the way of meditation, causing discomfort and agitation. Really, it gets in the way of living. I mean, how much easier would my pedestrian life be if my hips and calves were hydrated and limber? I would also have much more energy.
I often give fairly simple yoga exercises to my massage therapy clients as homework. Quite a few clients have begun implementing their homework and asking for more. I have the muscle knowledge now after having completed a yoga teacher training and a course in massage therapy but for some reason, I have been stunted a bit about what next steps to give that are duplicatable and not overwhelming for my clients so that they stay interested in the homework. Not everyone is going to seek out yoga classes. Not everyone is even going to start with a simple yoga pose to increase overall flexibility and circulation in the legs (such as legs up the wall pose, which is the homework assignment I give the most, lately). But to those who are doing homework and are asking for more, I owe something like a simple next step.
Today, in a very good asana class, I could feel how the tightness in my hips and shoulders, prohibited my movement into poses and transitions as simple as lunging to and from down dog and standing forward bend. I could feel the pull of those tightnesses in other parts of my body such as my lower back, my tailbone, my lower legs, the back of my neck, and even my breast plate.
So there's the answer, really. I simply have to get back into my asana practice in a more committed way. It's not just about me anymore, and maybe it never really was, and perhaps that's why I've been on and off again about asana (because self care has always come second to work, which is not something I recommend). Now I have a real reason to stick to it. Helping others, it seems helps me (!).
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