Yoga – what to expect

If you are new to what is possible in yoga, and you have no idea what to expect, here is a little window into a whole new world.

Yoga meets you where you are at – it highlights where you are at, and that for most people is highly uncomfortable. The tendency in the face of this truth is to push through this phase of yoga and approach it with force – extreme strength training or avoidance – extreme yin training. Most teachers fall into this trap of allowing you to continue in your habitual comfort zone, whether your comfort is gained through strength and pushing your boundaries or through staying miles away from any resistance in the body. But once you show that you are brave to face your own particular brand of discomfort, your experience changes entirely.

I have noticed that sometimes when we make a choice physically, in an attempt to respect a boundary or because we are avoiding resistance, if that choice is repeated often enough, it becomes a rule in our minds – a new kind of boundary. Then when we try to act differently physically, our mind will caution against the unfamiliar movement because it is ‘unsafe’.

It is incredibly challenging to take yourself to a place that you have no idea about, the journey into the unknown is the path of yoga. Yoga teaches that through this system, we are invited to move from our finite experience (the one we know and love or love to hate, the dense and tangible ‘proven’ life existence) into the infinite life experience where everything is energy, constantly in movement and an adventure that we oughtn’t control but through an attitude of awe.

This proven life experience is curated from a series of repeated experiences that we formulate into behaviours and that become our rules for living. Yoga is the process of undoing this limiting process – if you show up with that intention and invite yourself to walk through your rules and limitations to explore what is on the other side. Hence, yoga meets you where you are at. If you don’t want to allow yoga to reach into the hidden, controlled, managed places of yourself, then, yoga can be a project for the ego where you get to play out your rules and feel great about it. This is your choice.

How you do anything is how you do everything and so we use yoga – through the body – to figure out how we are doing everything and to decide if we are available to make the change. This courage born of curiosity and playfulness will open an adventure of the body, mind and soul for you.

But you have to be prepared to break your own rules and

perhaps break the rules of engagement with your ‘old’ life!

We can see how we use our body for movement – the relationship with our body and the poses – whether we are stuck in our own mental jail fueled by psychology that is shackling us to repeat life experiences again and again. This is the invitation to notice repeated life experiences and decide, do we keep repeating these experiences in different ways until the end of our days or do we change the source of them.

If you want to change, would you even know where to start? The start is with your decision, realizing you are the source and reason for the things you are experiencing, and to start making different choices.

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