Your Energy, Your Body, Your Practice

I've been doing a lot of yoga lately. Ever since I went to that ashram I've had a renewed dedication to trying new classes, stretching my limits and expanding my mind. These days, I have to admit all I do is work and yoga. Even so, I'm not complaining, I find that even though my social life isn't off the wire, I've got an incredibly multidimentional life going into work and practicing yoga. I've started discovering that I have a fascination with the relationship of man-nature through architecture/planning and that yoga is an incredibly important in my life. As for architecture, even though my dad has been an architect longer than I have been alive, it is only this summer that I've started to really delve into the field of study/practice and see how much varied potential there is in it; I've heard the different opinions of various visiting scholars at the Canadian Centre for Architecture as well as seen the essays and articles and books they want me to find (sometimes holding onto the book or making an extra copy for myself). I've started learning that every moment of the day has potential for new paths, new learning, new connections. Extra employment in the form of translation jobs have popped up out of nowhere and given me a nice rhythm to life.

But while I am offering a nice little digression, I really want to write about new realizations I am getting to in yoga. Sure it's cool to build strength and pull of those difficult positions I couldn't do before (I'm still working my way into the free-standing headstand). But it's cooler to grow in emotional stability, inner strength. [I keep fearing that I am going to go off the Zen end and go a little hippy, if I do, please let me know.] I've had some trouble focusing in class, always straying to what other people are doing, always worrying if my body is in the right position, if I am doing the right thing... I compared myself to others and fell into a mental block of having my mind be all over the room. Now that I think about it, it's the same for life; we constantly worry what others think and don't take the time to turn in. Call it selfish, I'd rather call it selful and absolutely necessary. I came up with the mantra today heading into yoga class: Your Energy, Your Body, Your Practice. I just focused on the breath and repeated my mantra when I felt my mind sway, worry, tense. It's funny that the mantra is in not My Energy, My Body, My Practice... somehow I am disembodied.

Leaving class today I could already feel the benefits, or foresee them. If I come to terms with the way my body works, beyond straightening my arms in warrior or always rolling down the shoulders, and see the way my practice enriches my energy, I'll then be able to turn outwards to others and make stronger connections having built a stronger foundation. For me, this revelation of a mantra that just distilled itself from my thoughts is wondrous, it feels so freakin' cool. And it's for wonderfully liberating, accepting moments like these that I am going to continue raving about the exercise because, really, it's so much more.