Yesterday I decided to try to get myself back into the practice of meditation and yoga since I had taken a break from my own practice outside of lessons. However, when I came home on Saturday with a bit of a sore back from doing poses without warming up with my client, I decided I needed to work on my own. So with a seemingly lofty goal of sitting first for 30 minutes and then a practice, I set my mind to it.
Well, 30 minutes went by very quickly and just as I was starting to notice the numbness of my bum and legs, the bell rang noting that my time was over if I chose it to be. I felt quite pleased with this as I am trying to get myself up to 90 minutes for a 10-day silent meditation retreat at the end of June. My practice was good, though somewhat boring and also revealing that I need to work on upping my game a bit. I am not sure how to do this on my own – I may need to get on to YouTube….
In any case, stilling the mind was good. It also worked to bring about an immediate need that I had asked for by the end of the day. I am also looking for more signs from the universe/God about our direction for the future, but think I may need a bit more sitting time.
This morning I did not sit as my emotions have taken over today – perhaps as a result of yesterday’s session. So, I need to take a day to let everything process and see where I might need to be careful in my next sitting session. I know they say that part of the discipline is to sit through everything and so most likely I should be sitting through the emotions as well, but that next step is still in the works.
As I do learn to still my mind, I become acutely aware of how much we do not sit still. In our last yoga training weekend we had a brief discussion about the use of music in yoga classes. For me, I really dislike it because it distracts me from my practice as all I hear are lyrics or strand of music that come from pop songs. Due to my hypersensitivity to sound it invades my thoughts and keeps me from awareness of my body and mind in union together through the movements. For others, they crave the sounds and noise for the very purpose of distraction. They seem to almost be afraid of their own thoughts and allow frustrations of their minds to control the movements of their body claiming that the music helps them to focus. Yet to me, the music helps them to be distracted from their minds which defeats the true depth and purpose of yoga. (Think I found a good topic for the business blog!) It is not a stilling of the mind, but rather a distraction of the mind – which are indeed very different things.
So, as I process the waves of emotions that arose from my sitting and stilling yesterday, I also acknowledge that I, too, need to push through even that to further still the body. Practice makes perfect, right?! π
~T π
