“Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.”
-John Harrigan
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of teachers talk students through a moment of stillness, focusing on the breath, and letting go of the ‘story’ of their day, or of their current drama, or life in general. Who are you, what are you all about, what makes you feel important? Or what makes you sometimes feel small and insignificant? Do you go to yoga because you’re ‘good at it’ (whatever that means) or because you are a disaster without it? Do you practice yoga because you want something from it (like a firmer butt, flexibility, or core strength), or just because you think you should?
What is yoga to you, aside from the story that you tell yourself about it?
For a while, my story was the tale of a teenager who decided to teach yoga at the age of 18 and was ‘good’ at it right off the bat. And now my story is the ongoing drama of a mother who usually feels like she flails at yoga. What happened? My life changed when my daughter was born; as she grew from a sleepy infant to a rambunctious toddler, my attitude towards my daily routine and yoga practice was not as fluid. I was struggling to follow the poet, William Blake’s advice:
“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
When my daughter was still too small to crawl, I kept waiting to get to a yoga class to practice, instead of just doing short sessions in my living room awhile she napped or played. As she became more mobile, I did a little more of my own practice at home while she played, but not regularly. Lately, as I practice at home, she sometimes joins in or crawls all over and around and under me, but the regularity of my practice is still lacking. I keep struggling to put it in my schedule and devote myself to practicing no matter what.
I had to let go of my old conception of what it means to practice yoga.
There will always be something to let go of. The seed becomes the plant which becomes the flower, which falls back into the earth and so on. I was who I was before my daughter was born, and I am who I am now, forever changed and forever changing.
I finally accepted that I needed to practice no matter what, even if it meant getting up a little earlier, leaving the dishes in the sink, or committing myself to a daily 2-5 minute practice. I began meditating every morning and evening for 2 minutes each time, because I knew that I always had at least 2 minutes and that meant the excuse that I don’t have time is no longer viable.
The past two weeks I offered some ideas for opening up and connecting to the moment through small, subtle movements. Above is a little video that integrates those small movements and connects them to bigger motions and a more focused exhale. Let that exhale be like a forceful sigh and let go of your ‘story’ for the time that you spend practicing, so that you can be the most essential You, aside from all your mundane roles and responsibilities. Shake off tension, shake off the grip of the past and future and become pure breath and movement on your yoga mat, even if just for a minute or two.
Plant the seed of calm awareness through a short, focused moment of letting go, then bask into the feeling of blooming that comes from it. Practice yoga for a minute or for an hour; meditate for 5 seconds or 5 minutes. However long or short, devote yourself to letting go into the flow of the day, however much time that day allows for yoga practice. Then let it all go, and rest for a bit. Namaste!