Shining Eyes

I love teaching yoga. I love guiding others to yoga. I love love love the life I have been so blessed to find and continue to create. I love yoga.

Last night I attended a lecture on leadership. We watched a Ted Talk and discussed how the role of a leader is to help discover the possibility in others and to make their eyes shine. You know you're doing it right if their eyes are shining and if they're not you know something needs to change. 

Well, the eyes of my dear friends were shining after I taught this morning. I don't take any credit for that. I just take it to mean that I've led them to the right place. They feel yoga and the Spirit and I can only take credit for following the things I know to lead them there. 

There is incredible joy in seeing others eyes shining. Actually there is little else that brings as much joy as helping to bring the shine to another's eyes. I feel so very blessed to have been brought to a practice that makes people's eyes shine. I see it every time I do yoga with someone. I love it. I see my own eyes shining. What better way to know that you're doing right than to see the shine in their eyes?
www.gobodhiyoga.com

Becoming

I often heard at the gym I worked at that people were amazed at how their bodies were changing. And yes, their bodies were changing. But I've learned something from yoga that is at least true for me and just a little bit deeper than the idea of mere change for me: through yoga, my body is becoming. It is being refined and stripped from its natural man bounds until it is pure and clean and what it was meant to me.

As I progress in my yoga practice it doesn't feel like I'm going from being Emily the normal person to Emily the yogi. It feels more than I've been Emily the yogi all along but am just uncovering that truth. When my body slips seamlessly into a pose and there is no strain and I have the strength and flexibility to get there without injury I realize that that possibility has been with me all along. I just had to breathe into it and find it. 

Yoga is about finding who you really are and have been all along. It's about discovering the divinity within yourself and feeling it in body and soul. 

I salute the divine within you. Namaste.
www.gobodhiyoga.com

To Be Led

Yesterday I had an incredible yoga practice by myself. This morning I went to a yoga class. I've been thinking about the difference in the two practices and what I can learn from each.

My personal practice is beautiful. It fills my soul. Sometimes. Other times it makes me antsy and frustrated about where I am. But it always teaches me something. A downside to it, I suppose, are those times when I am not willing to go where I need to go to learn. When I'm the only one participating in my practice I might just go where's it easy and comfortable. Not all of the time but definitely sometimes. If it's a good, courageous day I go far beyond where I will go with anyone else. But if I'm feeling fearful I stay right in the center of that comfort zone. 

Now to a class. I sometimes have battles with ego in a class. Sometimes not. I often find myself analyzing how I would teach and say something or even how I would adjust another student. On the other hand, I sometimes find that I can go incredibly deep into a practice when I have a guide that I trust completely. I will do whatever they say and let myself be drawn to places I might not be willing to go alone. The practice is different from my personal one and thus teaches me different things. It can be uncomfortable but I go there anyway and find new places in myself to discover. 

So this morning I was led in a yoga class. I went new places and discovered new things. Yesterday I went so deep into my own practice that I can still feel it today. Both are good. Both are needful, in my opinion. I think you just need to let yourself be led by the proper Guide.
www.gobodhiyoga.com

Honest Yoga

I am continually amazed by how much I can tell of my state of mind and heart when I do yoga.

This past little while I have been entertaining a lot of fear in my life. Satan has really been working on making me fearful. And I have felt that in my yoga. I stopped doing my practice because deep inside I didn't feel like I could do hard things. Well, I stopped feeling that way yesterday and today I wanted desperately to do the kind of practice that was hard for me but that would take me deeper and really do something to me. So I went on a hard bike ride and then when I felt like I was ready, I did my practice again and I was able to see how I had changed. 

Yoga is honest. I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's impossible to hide anything in yoga. You have to face it and feel it or not do yoga. It's a hard thing sometimes but a good thing.
www.gobodhiyoga.com

The Things I Know

This morning I am grateful for the things I know. I realize I still have a lifetime, if not at eternity, of things to learn about yoga and the universe but I feel extremely blessed to have been taught when I know now and to have the desire to keep learning.

I love basically any yoga class I can get to. Especially because I can always make it my own. But I especially love what I learn from each class. Sometimes it's a new pose that I really needed and want to use (that happened today) and sometimes it's a great way to explain something or other times it's how not to do something. I like learning all of those things. I never mean them judge mentally because we all come from different places in our journeys. I just try to learn from where I'm at. 

Today I learned a new pose - straight leg forward, other knee bent on the grounds forward fold. Beautiful stretch for the front of my leg. Love it. I also learned some things not to do. Always be careful about which poses you ask people to do when there are so many students that you're hitting each other. Figure out how to teach shoulder stand. Always give easier alternatives as well as harder. Don't point certain people out, even for good things. Let people do their own variations.

I love my teacher from today. She has such a beautiful practice and love for yoga. She brings such light to her classes. I am grateful for what she teaches me. 

I am grateful for Bodhi and Syl and the many different tools that have come into my hands at the perfect moment to teach me. I thank God for the yoga I know and the yoga I want to know more about.
www.gobodhiyoga.com

Inside Battle

Yoga this morning was actually quite the adventure for me. Last night was a super moon and I had evil dreams. It's still taking me time to feel in control of my thoughts and emotions. Thus, yoga started off feeling like a great battle being waged in my mind. But I fought hard and by the second hour I was feeling a little more peace.

Yoga really makes you face those battles though. With all that quiet for thought and even the physical things that draw you into yourself, you have to have the courage to face what's going on inside.
www.gobodhiyoga.com

Oh the joy!

A few days ago I got a massage from an absolutely fantastic massage therapist that I've been to a few times before. She does some energy work as well as massage and I always go away feeling wholly renewed.

It'd been a good six months since I had had a massage and so I was really looking forward to it. It's one of my great pleasures. 

The beautiful massaging of the muscles began and as it did I realized that my growing knowledge of the body and how it works made me think of everything in a different light. I was trying to decipher which muscles she was working on and which would be the best way to stretch them. I was thinking about yoga. And as I did so I found myself experiencing my body in a new way and understanding it in a new way. And what was incredible to me was that I saw such a difference in my body from the last time I had been given a massage. Even my massage therapist said something about it. My muscles were loose and easy to run the length of. I was relaxed and completely at ease with her touching the muscles because I was familiar with each one - I has stretched them in yoga and felt them in myself and grown used to the way they feel. 

It was truly a beautiful experience. Yoga has done some incredible things to my body and I was able to feel the changes. Oh the joy. I love yoga. 

There is still much for me to learn and experience about my body! Haha just wait until I have a baby and have to relearn pretty much everything. But I am so grateful for the relationship I am gaining with this beautiful creation of God. I am continually amazed and awed. God is powerful and good and this body is truly amazing. I can't wait to know it better and learn more through yoga!:)
www.gobodhiyoga.com