March 15, 2024
Coming Home
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.
Sometimes I marvel at how things change and other times how they stay the same. A long-term yoga student has been having a crisis at home because her beloved has cancer. Due to her job and struggles at home, she hasn't been as present in class as she was in the past. A few weeks ago, she gave herself the gift of participating in a weekend workshop we offered at our yoga center. It was as if her eyes literally brightened over those days and her joy was palpable. When I saw her this week, some of the light still lingered, but the pain of her current situation was more present. She told me how being in the workshop was like coming home, how she felt herself again, and realized how staying closer to her yoga community would help more than she realized.
Much has changed in the yoga world since the pandemic. Most striking is the proliferation of online yoga. What was once unthinkable has become commonplace for learning and connectivity. As much as I appreciate and enjoy the possibilities that online yoga offers, it is something all together different to being in the same room with our teacher and fellow yoga students. The raw energy of being close to other people and all that brings, energizes, challenges, and carries us in ways not possible when learning online. Experienced teachers have keen eyes, deep knowledge, and the ability to hold space no matter where they are. But what can be seen and heard by teacher and student when we're in the same room together is something else entirely.
Geetaji Iyengar famously said, “If the body is stiff that is understandable. But if the mind is also stiff then you can't get anywhere. The mind has to become flexible.” Yoga practice has the potential to open our minds and redirect our focus, expanding our perspective on ourselves and life in the process. This is what Geetaji called mental flexibility. We're all living in troubling times, suffering and instability all around. Searching for and creating moments and spaces where we can “come home” are an antidote to our ills. Whether it's for a class or a workshop, let us keep building bridges to community, to finding ways to be together. There is enough that tears us apart, yoga can be the place where we feel at home.
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