You're lying in Savasana, the final relaxation pose at the end of class and off in the distance you hear the instructor ring the bell. Once, twice and finally three times the bell is being struck and resonating its base chords, calling you back from your reverie. You feel at peace and although your body has been challenged physically, your mind is not full of distracting chatter and you
float out the door in a post-yoga state of bliss.
That is, until you're trying to pull out of the parking lot onto a busy street and someone decides to make an illegal turn into an exit only exactly where you're trying to go and expects YOU to move. Arghh! The aggravation!
And poof...it's gone. That euphoric state is deflated and it's back to life, back to reality. The 75-plus minutes you spent shedding agitation, distraction and limiting beliefs has once again shifted to the back burner of your awareness. It's as though someone has thrown a switch moving you into an all too familiar state where relaxation and being centered is no longer present.
So how do we stay with these seemingly fleeting states of bliss? How can we navigate our lives without grabbing onto every possible distraction? We take a yoga or meditation class, we get a massage, we soak in a hot tub and it seems as though that's a treat, not a normal way of being. Yet, being a balanced and
centered person IS a normal way of being...we've simply lost touch with it as our over-scheduled lives have taken control.
My thought of the week is around noticing what steps in our way to staying connected with our peaceful selves. Two things that will support us in this pursuit are awareness and practice.
I often refer to the yoga studio as our laboratory, the place where we experiment with finding our breath, noticing where our thoughts are in particular moments and seeing if we can pay attention to the cues our body is sending. We practice on the mat so when we step off the mat and back into the mainstream we see what sticks. We can practice our yoga standing in line at the
market by noticing our posture. We can practice taking a deep breath when someone in front of us pulls out a check book to pay for their goods. We can practice compassion by looking at people with "soft eyes".
Awareness is about setting an intention, a plan that we make with ourselves to try something different. Practices such as listening to a complaining friend without trying to offer them a solution but rather to simply receive, rather than fix. We can notice our reaction when things don't go our way and do so from a place of curiosity rather than judgment.
Part of holding onto the bliss of our yoga is to find a deep breath in those moments that push our buttons. We might realize we're holding our breath as we problem solve or think about an upcoming situation that will likely challenge us. When we notice, we can alter our current state. It's as easy as slowing down and taking a deep breath.
If we stop to notice we begin to enter the gap, that space between stimulus and reaction. In the gap, we begin to realize we have choices and what we choose can be directly related to what we're trying to practice.
Awareness and practice go hand in hand and have to be repeated continuously. Change takes time but the patience pays off in the form of finding our centered selves more easily...and not losing our bliss when someone turns into the exit and expects us to move. We take a deep breath, realize that this too shall pass
and not being willing to surrender our bliss just yet.
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