After the launch of my new book, I began The Elemental Yin Yang Podcast: A Fresh Perspective on Yoga and Life and if you have been listening you know that this project, like my book, has little to do with yoga asana, and everything to do with yoga as a life path.Physical yoga is a tool. If you use it consciously it will help do more than change your body and help you relax. As a method, yoga offers a chance to see how you deal with your own emotions and expectations.
The way you show up and work through a challenging posture or sequence is likely the way you deal with challenges in your life.
The way you allow yourself the freedom to let go into savasana is reflective of how well you are able to find ease in the pockets of time when you need not act or react.
Something that has been unfolding more and more as I record these episodes for you is that as powerful a tool as yoga asana may be, most people aren't using it to its full capacity because no one is teaching you how.
Yoga classes give you a glimpse of the freedom and perspective available if you choose to redirect your attention elsewhere for a time.
But most teachers and students stop there. They get a pleasant experience on the mat and try desperately to cling to that space while cramming themselves back into a mundane life.
Sadly, most people can only handle these two extremes for so long before they decide that "Yoga doesn't work for me."
Yoga is not a magic bullet that will change your life.
Yoga doesn't work...
YOU do.
The chisel doesn't create the sculpture, the brush doesn't paint the masterpiece. The artist does that with tools and talents they have worked hard to cultivate.
So if you want add yoga to your tool belt just don't expect it to do the work for you. Instead you must decide to dive deeper and commit to self-study and inner development.
Reading the best books and working with brilliant instructors can help, but in the end it falls on no ones shoulders but your own to create the kind of life that makes you excited to get out of the bed in the morning.
That's what I am interested in.
And if you are too, I hope you will check out the podcast.
If something resonates with you, don't just sit back and listen, join the conversation. I promise to read all your comments and I will keep creating episodes as long as (and only if) you keep interacting with me.
Photo by the amazing: Kendell MacLeod
