The Yoga

After my prenatal yoga training in Asheville, NC a week or so ago, I feel like I have come full circle spiritually and in my path of becoming whole.  Not only did I get some girly time to myself, I got to immerse myself in yoga, birth, and teaching, three of my most favorite things.  I am back to the Hatha style of yoga.  I’m following my heart.  It led me there, and currently I’m into Baron Baptiste and Vinyasa.

In the video I’m doing, Baron at one point says, “struggle less, breathe more.”  Friday of last week it just clicked.  He also says “breath is free.  breathing is free.”  Struggling is not free.  Efforting can feel so much like forcing.  Efforting feels like impatience.  Why not breathe?  Why not let go of the struggle, and allow the Creator to work?  Living now is all we have.  Doing our best in the moment.  Living in the moment, instead of rehashing the past or pushing for the future.  The time is now.  If we don’t live now, we are missing life.

I quit trying to push myself into asanas (poses), and instead I grounded myself through my feet and hands, and I used the breath.  I felt peace rush over me.  There was nothing I had to do.  I felt my muscles release in the work.  I was connected to earth through my body and the life force through my breath.  I felt free.

I think of all I try to do with my life.  All the time tables I give myself, and the preconceptions of how I think things should go.  I analyze little things – glitches – and read into them much more than is there.  I don’t trust that the Creator will lead me through.  I don’t trust that where I am is exactly where I should be.  I don’t wait for the Creator’s time.  I don’t live in the time I’m given.  I keep struggling, thinking that I must push myself, or try this or that to see if it brings me forward.  I keep doing this despite the fact that I see it mostly resulting in wasted time.  I keep doing this even though most of my moving forward happens through the Creator bringing connections to me, and none through my efforts.  It’s like an addiction almost.  A need to have my hand in the mix, as if somehow I can influence anything through effort.

No, we make changes, progress, and find ourselves by letting go.  By breathing and doing only the work that is ours to do in that moment.  By being mindful.  Listening for that still small voice.  By not judging success by numbers, but by quality, and giving the glory where the glory belongs.  Snatam Kaur sings in “By Thy Grace” – “one day the day shall come when all the glory shall be Thine.  People will say it is yours and I will deny not mine.”  What a happy and amazing day – the day we can acknowledge that.  Know it with our hearts and live in that peace.  Living not to in and of ourselves make changes, or influence events, but to let it pass through us in the moments we are given and the connections brought to us.

It is – “Be still and know that I am God.”  That is what it is.