What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
You get to make happiness happen. To rely on someone else to “make” you “happy” is to live in a state of illusion.
This is a beautiful, simple and powerful question and answer from The Happiness Project that I absolutely needed to hear and to share. Enjoy.
During class tonight, I noticed myself sweating up a storm. Which is great, except that I was leading class, not just taking one.
Does this mean I was over-doing? As a newer teacher, I often find myself demonstrating every transition – mostly because I get tongue-tied trying to describe them without feeling them in my body as I lead. But I wonder if I’m also struck with this need to “do” instead of just hold space for my students. I’m finding it hard to let go into just “being.”
Holding the space, creating a safe environment, is the most important part of leading a class. I want to teach a class that is all about the student, and not at all about me. And yet, I find it hard to stay still.
Is this a rookie move? Has anyone else had this experience?
My dad sent me this essay recently, so I thought I would share. It’s reminded me to take deep breaths.
Yoga teaches you to notice how you feel and to use your breath to accept your current situation, even if it makes you uncomfortable, angry, sad, or agitated. As you learn to weather situations like these on your mat, you’ll see that as quickly as difficult emotions arise, they also change and fade away.
You’ll also be less fearful when similar feelings – whether physical or emotional – surface in your daily life. In fact, you’ll gain confidence and know that you have the fortitude to cope with the array of emotions that course through you. Developing the ability to stay with pain can ultimately diffuse panic and depression, or allow you to get to the root of the difficulty. The ability to stay with pain will eventually allow it to subside.
Lasater believes that depression arises when a person tries to deny feelings such as anger or sadness and that LEARNING TO TRULY FEEL THESE DIFFICULT EMOTIONS is what weakens them until they pass away. “We develop a lot of strategies for escaping anxiety or sadness – overeating, drinking, even exercise – because we’re a sadness-denying society,” she says. “But when you learn to sit still in yoga or meditation, you become a container for your feelings. The discipline is not to interact with them, and they will pass away. Sitting with them really is the cure.”
The release from fear is what finally precipitates the full flowering of love.
In this state you will love what you see in others, and others will love you for having been seen.
This is the softened perception of the world that yoga promotes
Yoga can help you trust in the flow of life. Suddenly, you may learn that when you connect with the deepest part of yourself, you realize that you are connected to everyone else, too.
Looking for an extra gig to fill my schedule, I stumbled on this ad from Craigslist:
Yoga Instructor (Midtown West)
Date: 2009-11-02, 11:49AM EST
We are an independent video production company focusing on spirituality and naturism. We are looking for yoga instructors for a new project: naked yoga instructional videos. You will instruct and demonstrate yoga poses/ movements while you are naked. It is NOT sexual video! Naked does not mean sexual.
Right on the heels of Playboy Bunny Yoga, this ad shouldn’t take me by surprise, but it does. While I agree that “naked” does not mean sexual, I still question the need these videos are filling for yogis and yoginis.
If you like to do your yoga naked, do you really need to watch other people do naked yoga? What do you guys thing about this whole naked yoga trend – is it freeing, or just porn?
martinis and mantras 