March 22, 2024
Fox and a Cat
Elizabeth Brass
Certified Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher & Yoga Therapist (IAYT)
It's the small progressions in ourselves that often go unseen.
By not recognizing our own progress, it's easy to become frustrated.
The positive changes in our posture, in our energy, in our outlook over time are impossible to measure.
Because we can't measure the transformations that occur in us from our yoga practice, they go under valued.
Yoga practice is never a straight line. That's part of what makes it interesting, the surprises and challenges bring discovery and transformation. But, at other times, when we push our limits, we feel confused, scared, overwhelmed, or even angry. These can be the unseen reasons why people give up yoga and find something that is more user friendly, something that asks less of us, in mind and body.
I once heard a teacher say that we take one step forward with our yoga practice, then two steps back. The seasons of the “two steps back” can feel like they last forever when we're in them and, for me, I don't always know right away when I'm in one. It can take time until a pattern of resistance or things feeling hard starts to emerge. I've had weird times in my life when I continually and literally bang my head everywhere, into doors, into walls, or into people. At other times, I fall down a lot or hurt my hands over and over again. At other times, the activities and people that once brought joy, become sources of stress and anxiety. These patterns have caused me to reassess my life and my yoga practice.
Recently, I started to wonder if I'm in a “two steps (or more steps?) back” phase. I started to notice things that used to be okay weren't okay anymore. I noticed resistance in my practice where it hadn't been and have looked to understand what was going on. Then this week, after a long day, I was walking to the train with a friend after class, and there, illuminated by the glow of a streetlamp, in the middle of the city, was a fox. Orange-red hair, it turned around itself, then froze, then moved again. We realized that it wasn't alone, a cat was up against a wall, and they were deadlocked in a moment. The cat hissed, the fox waited. That little cat held her ground and the fox did too, spotlighted for us. They waited, we waited. Suddenly the fox ran off in the direction of the graveyard (yes, our studio is near a graveyard!) and the cat went in the other direction toward the street. The moment was over.
Living in the city, I often forget to look beyond the buildings and the concrete. Even with spring arriving, it's all too easy not to slow down, take in what's right in front of me, and smell the roses, as they say. It's all too easy to keep doing what I'm doing, rather than acknowledge change and allow questions. Change can be hard, even when needed, it's not always welcomed. The fox and the cat, were an infusion of wild, standing there in the dark. The surprise of it all, a moment of life, reinforces life and it's uncontrollability and unpredictability. These moments bring us back to wonder, to exploration, to our practice, and yoga back to life.
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