…until your body is face down flat on the ground, fists pounding and legs kicking. Your mind has run off over the horizon and your spirit has vacated to hover just below the clouds. Yoga means the union of the body, mind and spirit. When the mind and spirit have vacated the premises and left the body in a heap on the ground, yoga grabs you. These were my thoughts before class, as I lay in the hot room yesterday. There was a newbie out in the lobby talking to the teacher and I heard her say, “I tried other kinds of yoga but none of them grabbed me like Bikram”.
I have been in self-control, stillness and patience training for two and a half years now. My Bikram yoga practice has settled to three days a week and six months ago I added Koko Fit Club for the other three days a week, with one day off. In yoga the mat grounds the body, the instructor engages the mind, and the spirit tenuously hovers on the ceiling above, waiting for just the right moment to enter the body and complete the unity. The standing motionless between postures, the performing of each posture with intention, and lying in complete stillness during each savasana, not only unites the body, mind and spirit, but also teaches extreme self-control. Not raising a towel to wipe the sweat or a finger to scratch an itch, or a hand to sip water – even if you do believe your dying or can’t take this heat for another minute- teaches a certain kind of active self-restraint that can’t be learned elsewhere. It’s taken almost three years, but self-control has become an automatic response and the big three stay together when trouble strikes. If your body, mind and spirit are intact and working together, it’s amazing what you can tolerate and how you react to adversity.
Today in Koko Fit Club the message that greeted me when I put in my flash drive was:
“Welcome Linda! Today I am going to slow the pace of your exercises.”
Uh..oh. That means today I will have to practice extreme self-control to keep that green line in that blue square, especially on the downside of the exercise. No more letting momentum carry the weight back down. That blue square is going to make sure I gently replace that weight. Yet another place I’m getting the message that self-control and extreme patience are being required of me.
And so, as another day goes by, I give gratitude for yoga and fit club and how they work together to keep me connected and sane in a time when I must be extremely still and in control of my total self, and…I have written.
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