Coming & Going of the Breath
A yoga class is a great time to reflect - some classes are an hour but if you've cleared time for a 90 minute session on your beloved yoga mat, you have plenty of time to turn down the volume on your thinking mind and turn up the volume on noticing your breathing, and enter the quieter more subtle simplicity of being, feeling into an embodied meditation in action.
We need the practical part of our mind that comments, judges and plans and as we leave the summer behind and head into the new academic year. For many yoga teachers and students, its a new yoga term, and you may be doing just that - planning for the term ahead - what is Autumn for you? a marker for new learning, a time to assess what needs to get done before the end of the year or a time of reflection on what has passed?
We know through meditation practice and restorative yoga, that we also need proper time to simply breathe, clear the mind and be. And its often from this place of relaxation, that the best and creative ideas bubble up to the surface - and as I'm writing this, I hear my own words and create an intention to do this more so here's one of my favourite quotes at Yoga United to remind us of what the spirit of yoga is all about...
'The internal dialogue is always commenting and judging and planning...it blocks the light of our natural wisdom; it limits our seeing who we are: it makes a lot of noise and attracts our attention to a fraction of the reality in which we exist. But when the awareness is one-pointedly focused on the coming and going of the breath, all the other aspects of the mind/body process comes automatically, clearly into focus as they arise' Stephen Levine, A Gradual Awakening
Have a great class,
Namaste,
The Yoga United Team, in the spirit of yoga.