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daily practice
Jan. 10th, 2011 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beachlassSometime in the autumn between the stress at work and the two tumbles I took (sprained ankle, hurt back) - I lost my habit of daily practice. I've finally, over the last couple of weeks settled back into it. This morning as I sorted myself out for a morning practice, I realized that I had finally shifted my perspective back into "Yay, yoga! Something I do for me!" from "OMG, I fail, I have to do some yoga today"
A key piece for me to get back into practice was to focus on practice - that whether I did any challenging poses, or mostly breath work, that if I was practicing, even a little that day, I was doing well. It's a refocusing on practice rather than accomplishment that I'm needing to make in a number of areas in my life.
And that brought me two realizations this morning. First - that my yoga practice really is a bedrock spiritual practice for me. (Setting aside issues of religion and culture and appropriation and all that, for the moment) Secondly, I had an epiphany moment where, for the first time, I really understood, in my heart a teaching from one of Thich Nhat Hanh's books about living in the moment, and making each moment, each chore, time for myself. It's a shift from yoga as a chore, because I ought to, to yoga as a gift to myself. Or doing dishes as a gift to myself, because I like having clean dishes, rather than a somehow imposed chore.
A key piece for me to get back into practice was to focus on practice - that whether I did any challenging poses, or mostly breath work, that if I was practicing, even a little that day, I was doing well. It's a refocusing on practice rather than accomplishment that I'm needing to make in a number of areas in my life.
And that brought me two realizations this morning. First - that my yoga practice really is a bedrock spiritual practice for me. (Setting aside issues of religion and culture and appropriation and all that, for the moment) Secondly, I had an epiphany moment where, for the first time, I really understood, in my heart a teaching from one of Thich Nhat Hanh's books about living in the moment, and making each moment, each chore, time for myself. It's a shift from yoga as a chore, because I ought to, to yoga as a gift to myself. Or doing dishes as a gift to myself, because I like having clean dishes, rather than a somehow imposed chore.