More #realtalk our glorification of the body & yoga postures.
𝐈𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬, 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬? I believe so.
In my 20’s my goal was to finish the advance series of ashtanga yoga, I was driven by my young ego, attached to achieving and my body. It was only when I got injured and couldn’t practiced at all that I was really challenge and faced with my attachment to the physical practice and the body. I immersed myself in meditation because that was all I could do. And Wow! at that time I thought this was the worst thing that could ever happened to me. I was depressed and broken because all I had was my identification with my “advance yoga practice”. It was only when I lost it that I realized that it didn’t matter if I did basic or advanced postures, first or third series, sun salutations or just sat still. If I did it with full awareness and detachment, I was doing yoga.
So there it was when I had my "aha!" moment and felt free. And I was no longer defined by what my yoga practice looked like on the outside, about what my body could or couldn’t do, but what was going on inside of me.
In Eddie Stern's book One Simple Thing, which I highly recommend! there a passage that I love and says: ”the intense austerities that the yogis sometimes followed, including mula bandha, complicated postures, and long breath holds, do not always lead to liberation, but to a glorification of the body and the ability to perform extreme feats with it. Before he sat under the bodhi tree and attained enlightenment, the Buddha practiced austerities under the guidance of a yoga guru, but he eventually stopped doing them because he realized he was torturing his body without making spiritual progress”
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