Untying our knots

Yoga, in its essence to me, is simply a means to reduce suffering on a deep level- be it physical, mental, social, or emotional. Yoga is a means for us to disentagle ourselves from our painful and habitual cycles and dis-identify with our perceptions of ourselves as small.

Our yoga practice in its entirety (asana, pranayama, meditation, relationships, devotion, etc.) is a remembering of and relaxing into our Sacred Nature as we are. There is nothing to create or work towards - in fact "working on ourselves" implies that we are not already exquisite and unique expressions of the One. Yoga is an intimate invitation to be with oneself deeply and compassionately - Self to Self. With time and gentleness we bring awareness to the multitude of polarities in our existence (good/bad, right/left, male/female, happy/sad, like/dislike, inhale/exhale, and so on) as well as our own preferences within these polarities. We learn to trust and reside in a space large enough to hold all of these seeming opposites safely and openheartedly.

It is rather easy to bring our neuroses to our Yoga practice by obsessively practicing or pining to achieve a particular shape with our bodies. Clearly, the mastering of complicated asanas or pranayama technique does not offer us a direct ticket on the enlightenment train. Our challenge then is to allow our "Yoga practice to be a little bit more clever than our habit patterns" (L. Kaminoff) thereby teaching us to be resilient and pliant with a greater variety of inner or outer challenges. Embracing life exactly as it is with a joyfulness of inhabiting my body and breath, and an easefulness and skillful/compassionate response to the events around me are the gifts of Yoga.