December 8, 2023
Unterwegs
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.
This past week, I traveled to some place new, near the German-Czech border, to Weiden in Bavaria, to teach yoga. It's been a while since I've been somewhere new, in part, because I spend vacation time every year visiting my extended family who live far away. When I travel, it's often yoga that takes me out of my homey comfort zone and out into the wider world.
As yoga practitioners, we cultivate the ability to tune in, to fix our awareness away from the outer world and explore inner realms of feeling and expression. At some point, I learned that whether I practiced with honking horns on the streets outside or with quiet fields below my window, my struggles in practice were the same. Ultimately, my struggles are how I respond to all of it in and around me. With this knowledge, rolling and unrolling my mat in new locations with new people gives me goosebumps.
Goosebumps due to the uplevel of uncertainties and complications that come with travel. Some of us love the rush of adrenaline that comes with travel, while others crave consistency and familiarity. I used to be the first kind of person, constantly seeking new adventures. Now I wonder what kind of person I am. I'm called by yoga to move out into the world, to serve and to share this beautiful practice even with the obstacles that we know are part of it. Or rather are it – the practice of yoga.
It brings me to intention, which I've been reflecting on as the year ends. What have been my intentions for this year, and what will they be in the next? What do I value, and how am I expressing these values? Where does my yoga practice fit into this big messy picture of life? In the moments of travel, when we're not really here or there, unterwegs – on the way is a word for it in German, is a liminal space, being in between locations. In between states are locations in themselves that allow us to explore where we've been and to dream about where we're going. Being unterwegs is the connective tissue embedded in each of our lives that binds us and can sustain and support us, wherever we are.
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