A Challenge, But in a Good Way in Everyday Ramblings

We are going through the last gasp of fall here with most of the trees either bare or much denuded of leaves but every once in a while there is a pocket of colorful beauty. It has been a wet mess too, which is a more normal pattern for this time of year. The cats have their full winter coats and the heat is on pretty much all the time.

Wanting to work on my own yoga practice now that I have a little more time I signed up for a 30-Day Yoga and Gratitude Challenge from Yoga International where they send you a link to a different online class each day. As I have been focusing on not doing the same movement over and over I thought this would be a good idea.

I got the first four classes and managed to fit them into my day in 10-minute increments and could do pretty much everything so far. (We haven’t gotten any arm balances yet.) But it was frustrating because I was doing that and there were two days in there that I did not hit my step goal on my Fitbit. So I gained a little over a pound.

Then the classes stopped arriving for no reason that I could ascertain.

So I amped up my steps and did a couple of one-day challenges with Kes. She is ahead of me on steps by almost a half day but my excuse is that she is retired and I am not and I needed to make up the time I took off to teach last week and had enough work on top of that to put in a little overtime chained to my workstation.

In the meantime the Colorado and New York Shambhala Buddhist centers collaborated on a 5 day online conference that just wrapped up with twenty hours of teachings and commentary by scientists and psychologists and scholars called Awake in the World II. It was great fun but quite time consuming.

Kes and I split the resource package so we can refer back to the teachings. There is a lot in there and I had some useful insights and maybe just maybe am holding on a little less tightly to this idea that I am special and my suffering is unique.

It turns out that I am actually reactive in quite ordinary ways for a person who grew up when and how I did.

One of the things I like in general about these teachers is how genuinely happy they are and how serious. You get the feeling some powerful gods have their backs. There is this wild unruly kindness sitting on top of a great deal of practice that I would like ever so much to emulate.

Also, I was very happy to hear repeatedly that, umm, basically, a spiritual practice needs to be embodied so the instruction is… do yoga. Two of the teachers (of the ones I have seen so far) just said it flat out. “Do Yoga”.

They also say it in the book oh how to age in a healthy way that I have been reading in little bits in pieces for the last few weeks.

“…Many wisdom traditions have found that the most fundamental path to changing one’s outlook on life begins not with the mind, but with careful attention to the body. The goal is not to perfect the body but to learn to attend to its needs for nourishment, for stimulation, for pleasure, for rest and relaxation, for activity, for growth and for love. Yoga, for example can be a lifelong journey to the core of what matters most in our lives. Our body supports our most central mental, emotional and spiritual needs…”

Okay then.

Then this morning class #5 appeared in my email box.
It is a mystery.

There are lots of misconceptions about yoga. One is that all yoga is therapeutic. Some of it is, but much of it is crazy bendy young people stuff. Having said that though to say one can’t have a helpful practice if one is inflexible, or thinks one is too big, or too old, or for many people in chronic pain, is also a misconception. With so much material available online coupled with basic common sense, so oh say if it hurts (there is a reason) so don’t do it… yoga is a big umbrella and there is room for practically everyone under it.

Anyway, this is where I have been lately.

Out in this extraordinary world being ordinary.

Last updated November 09, 2015