Off the [Yoga] Mat: Bliss in Motion

I LOVE my yoga teacher, Debbie George. She's just amazing. When you listen to her, you know that she understands not just the importance of practice, but also the basic tenets of yoga--mainly, how yoga affects your life and your spirit. One of my biggest problems during practice (and I know I'll come off like a hypocrite because many of these posts are all about FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS on what you're doing!) is--yep, you got it--focusing during class. Debbie takes 15-20 minutes doing warm-ups, stretching, and meditating to center yourself before class (a good yoga instructor knows that mental preparation before class and meditation after physical practice is as important as the practice itself) and my brain is just everywhere: what am I cooking for dinner, did I tape that program I want to watch tonight, I'm really hungry--why didn't I eat something during class? (I'm often thinking about food), I need to call my friend Julia when I get home, etc. My brain just buzzes with JUNK. Yoga practice is the one place where I'm supposed to let that go and BE PRESENT--this is important. It's very difficult to be present in this moment--we're often thinking about what we should be doing or will be doing instead of what we actually are doing. Silly.

Yesterday was more of the same. I'd had a rough weekend--I lost my cell phone, which made twice in 2 months, and was bidding on one from ebay. The auction was ending at the beginning of yoga class. And for the first half-hour my brain was thinking "Did I win it? Will it work? Did I pay too much? What happened to all my money?? Can I even afford myself? Why am I so irresponsible?" You know, fun conversations with myself. So these are my rambling inner thoughts, and I realized I was NEVER going to be able to concentrate.

So as class started, Debbie talked about finding your inner bliss, and that your body knows exactly how far it should go, and you should listen to it--really listen--instead of pushing it beyond its limit. Focus on the flow and the movement, focus on the breath, focus on the alignment where all of your muscles and bones are working together. It's really quite beautiful--they body can do amazing things when you allow it to gradually get there on its own. And then something amazing happened when we started getting into our practice...I started really paying attention to my body and I was fully concentrating on it. Even when we were doing slow warm-ups and the beginning vinyasa (when my brain usually wanders), I was paying attention to my ujjayi breath (basically breathing through your nose but closing the back of the throat--think Darth Vader), the strength of my muscles in my legs, the energy traveling through my arms and fingers, and the alignment of my spine. It took so much work concentrating on all of these parts that I couldn't think of anything else. It was Debbie's version of Bliss in Motion. For the rest of the class, I just let everything else fall away. Don't we wish we all had a moment when we could just slow down and concentrate on something simple! So when I have the opportunity to do just that, I shouldn't let is go!

Oh, to have that level of concentration in other aspects of my life! I guess that's a goal to aim for, isn't it?