Sweetness of Practice

 

Today is day 5 of my current visit home to Malaysia. The way things worked out this time (eg: I was on a night flight for the first time ever), I started my trip with a weird jetlag. I would be up by 04.00 & made an early decision to pop into the Mysore ashtanga sessions till my clock sorted itself out. Of course, the practice itself put my clock on track within the 2nd day. However, I have stuck to the practice. 

I stopped (regular) ashtanga practice after discovering vinyasa flow. I was struggling with it so much & when I got into the vinyasa practice, I felt like a whole new happy world was revealed to me. I was a asana yogi at this time. I am pretty sure my teachers then explained that the yoga starts when the crap comes, but I heard nothing. All I felt was my tight body, all I understood were my limitations & my ego played up every day when I was not allowed to continue into the sequence. 

Today has been like one of those 'eureka' days. I started to recall all those things this morning, probably because I started to feel them again! But I have learnt some things since then and saw the opportunity I had missed back then to deal with those things. I guess that is just how the journey of practice flows, except that these days, there are many more teachers out there, many more combined experiences & many more avenues to share and receive these teachings so that we may miss less opportunities. (Awesome stuff!)

Anyway, in this Ashtanga practice, I am not very far off where I left it last! Lol It is not surprising since, in my own practice, I tend to leave the things that I do not enjoy & have been fortunate that they do not come up in class often! (Especially Marichayasana D) Fixed practices are great for me- I know I am not great at making myself work through the difficult stuff. And really, I know better, life is not just about the good stuff. The sweetness of life is made up of the great stuff and the tough stuff. Today, it was clear to me what has been missing from my practice. Don't get me wrong, I do do the tough stuff...but only the ones I like (*laughs*) The thing about fixed sequences is the repetition. Learning to "fail" every day until you succeed is a great practice in itself! 

All the yoga practices begin when the challenges begin. The practice of yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyhara, dharana, samadhi begins. The sweetness begins...

Namaste