A Beautiful Mindset
The other day a teacher suggested that we repeat over and over during the class, “I have a beautiful practice.” She promised an interesting experience.
My first reaction was, this is the flakiest advice ever. My second was to scoff at the idea that saying something in my head would affect my body.
But some part of me was intrigued. Praising my practice, no matter what it looks like? Or how it’s going? Love of yoga, I have. Love of myself, not so much. Love of my practice, so fundamental I hardly think of it. Admiring my practice? Alien.
So I started my 90 minutes determined to do it. And unlike the resolutions I often make at the beginning of class—I won’t sit down, I will switch my grip, I’ll be still as a statue between postures, I managed to say it as I started each posture. A miracle.
I must have wanted to hear it. “I have a beautiful practice.” Of course a compliment from a teacher or fellow yogini is lovely. But saying it to myself was affirming, pure. It was about my relationship with myself, my work, not about how graceful my exit from balancing stick is in comparison to ….
“I have a beautiful practice” was a way of saying, “I love my yoga.” Not “I love yoga” and not “I’m fabulous. But, “I love being here, I love doing this, and I love my love of being here and doing this,” and going down a hall of loving mirrors. It reminded me of, “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do,” as Rumi, an ancient Persian poet, wrote.
So the practice became a celebration of my love of my yoga. And that hifalutin feeling had the very visceral consequence of making me work harder at a beautiful practice, more stillness, less fidgeting, careful attention to the words and details.
“I have a beautiful practice.” Saying made it so.
Namaste,
Yoga Lily
Me, the Butterfly in Brazil
The Bikram experience is standardized. Chicago or Casablanca, Budapest or Brooklyn, Montclair or Moscow, you walk into a Bikram studio and do the same 26 postures, sweat in the same 105 degree heat, and see people with the same glowing skin and straight toes. It gives a sense of worldwide community, I’ve been told.
Bikram Yoga bloggers are also a worldwide community. We read each others’ posts, comment on them, launch them into the Twittersphere. Some readers have been sending me comments for years. They write from India, London, Australia, Tennessee. Once, I got a note from a drag queen (as he described himself on his webpage) in England. His Twitter stream was hilarious.
I love this camaraderie. Reading about others’ adventures on their mats. I read teacher training blogs for an evening’s entertainment, feeling awe, envy, joy, and misery. Just like reading a novel.
The best part of blogging though is not getting but giving. I am most thrilled when someone writes to say I’ve inspired her, or given her insight into the practice. The other day, a reader in Seattle said my tip on having the toes kiss passionately gave him much more control over his full locust.
That one comment for some reason brought home to me the weirdness of blogging on the Internet. I put pen to paper in Manhattan, and on the other side of the continent, a man’s spine-strengthening series improves. It’s truly like the butterfly in Brazil flapping up, up, and away and causing a tornado in Texas. Or maybe it’s more like the physics phenomenon known as spooky action at a distance, when an atom over here influences an atom way over there. Whatev.
A family friend read my blog the other day and said I should “publish” it. Hard to know what that word means these days. An obscure collection of pages with random thoughts on a niche yoga practice sitting on a shelf in a bookstore? Doesn’t seem like a shot heard ‘round the world.
I prefer my blog and my now and my global community. Flap, flap.
Namaste,
Yoga Lily
Discipline
Some people see discipline as a virtue—as self-restraint and a submission of will that is paradoxically empowering. Some people see discipline as a jail, depriving them of freedom.
Discipline is a huge part of a Bikram practice, and it is touted, lauded, praised, and pushed as beneficial to mind, body, and spirit. Teachers constantly tell us that the self-control they ask us to practice on our bodies in the studio will—voila!— magically transform into a mental self-control that we can muster as needed in life.
Recent research confirms this. As psychologist Roy Baumeister, who published a book on willpower last year , was quoted in the April issue of Allure magazine, “Willpower and discipline in one area … will turn into willpower and discipine in other areas. … There’s a reason for this. Your capacity for self-control in general increases.”
Teachers ask us to follow many rules during the 90 minutes. Don’t stop to drink water when other people are moving. Don’t wipe your sweat. Don’t talk to your neighbor. I’ve seen many a person leave in a huff with a gripe—don’t tell me when I can and can’t drink, when I can and can’t talk. That trickle of sweat is irritating, don’t tell me I can’t wipe it.
Don’t tell me what to do. That’s what the American, the New Yorker says. We don’t like to obey authority.
And yet.
If you do wait for that sip of water for just one minute, you endure discomfort, and learn that you can endure discomfort. If you don’t wipe away that irritating trickle of sweat, you learn to ignore irritation. A useful skill to have when you’ve got an annoying neighbor or coworker or relative. Conquering the physical builds up the strength to conquer the complicated.
Self-restraint, self-control starts with forgetting the self, letting the rules control you. And letting the rules control you teaches you to control yourself.
Namaste,
Yoga Lily
Peace, Quiet, Simplicity, Seriously
Life is unreliable. Accidents happen. Disasters strike. People change. Bodies sicken. Money vanishes. Uncertainty rules.
Then again.
Daughters smile. Dogs romp. Songs lilt. Coffee soothes. Friends joke. Breezes caress. Joy is free.
My life feels like a spinning kaleidoscope—dizzying, with one reality in front of me, and then another—job, dog, children, widowed father, suffering friend—each having needs I strive to meet. Each bearing gifts that can make my heart soar.
But I never know what is coming next. And in the coursing of it all, I have no way to stand still, feel real, know who I am.
Until I get to my mat.
Lately I find myself in the middle of one situation or another, and I suddenly think, I can’t wait for class. Being on my mat these days is like being on a miniature vacation. It’s kind of like a television commercial about chocolate or yoghurt, transporting the imbiber to nirvana, for one brief shining moment.
I know. Seems crazy. Bikram yoga is like chocolate? Tranquility? The heat is oppressive. The lights are bright. The teacher talks incessantly. Your every move is timed, dictated.
But that is precisely the point.
On the mat, I have no choices. I don’t have to exercise judgment. I have no decisions to make. I don’t have to think. I know exactly what is coming next. I don’t have to brace myself.
My mat is free of other people’s needs, of life’s demands. My mat is mine. It’s mine, all mine, and only mine.
My mat is the place where I can see myself. Oh, you’re the one trying to get stronger. Remember that.
Oh, you’re the one with ten extra pounds. Remember that.
Oh, you’re the one who loves holding still in eagle and arcing back in a long camel. You’re the one who feels that every last second of practice is beautiful. Remember that.
My mat is where I can meet my eyes in peace and quiet and have only my own eyes to meet. My mat is an island of certainty in the unreliable ocean of life.
Namaste,
Yoga Lily
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