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7 Things Yoga has Taught Me About Life
1. Resistance only makes things harder.
If you strain your body or over-compensate while attempting a yoga pose, the move inevitably becomes more difficult. You’re trying too hard. Your fear of “doing it wrong” creates resistance. If you impose your will to try to make the pose look a certain way, you will instead be more rigid where you should be flexible.
Instead of resisting the sensation of imbalance, submit to the acknowledgment that you may fall over or look imperfect for a brief moment in time. Accepting the potential for imperfection is at the beginning of the path to achieving grace.
2. You can’t rush into balance.
If you more too quickly into a balancing posture such as vrikshasana (tree pose) or bakasana (crow pose), you will probably sway and may fall over. Only from a place of stability can you find balance in times of instability.
Rather than rushing into a balancing pose, take a breath before getting into the posture, set yourself up correctly, then move slowly into it until the movement becomes fluid. Continue to breathe throughout the pose. This is how you find balance.
3. Grace isn’t a goal; it’s a side effect.
You can’t aim to be graceful. Grace happens as a result of your actions. It is honed over time from a mix of practice, presence, and a certain indescribable awe-inspiring quality.
In yoga, the poses that evoke the most awe are typically those that are most physically demanding. Similarly, difficult life experiences offer us opportunities to exhibit grace-based on how we react to them. The greater the pressure, the greater our potential to show grace.
Grace can never be intentional because that type of intention would be driven by ego. Rather, grace is a product of perseverance through opposition. In yoga, we see this through…
