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Yoga:
It's a Matter of Balance
by
Sam Dworkis
founder of www.extensionyoga.com
By
doing a regular yoga practice, you will slowly create both a physical and
emotional balance. From a purely experiential perspective, that is;
based solely upon how you feel and not what your have been told or what
you have read, you begin living a healthier lifestyle.
For
instance, you will find yourself wanting to eat better. It won’t even be
an intellectual experience. You will just want to eat less unhealthy
things and you will find yourself wanting to eat in a healthier manner.
The same goes for the environment around you. You will feel more like
surrounding yourself with a nurturing environment; with pleasant things,
people and sounds; and less with those things that upset you or even what
you were just indifferent to.
As
you begin to pay increasing attention to your yoga and how you respond to
it; you will find yourself taking better care of your environment,
that is, you will find yourself becoming increasingly sensitive to common
everyday things that “pollute” your environment, both internally and
externally. After a period of doing a yoga practice; as you learn to
properly adjust your body in yoga, you begin to adjust your life in
general.
Again, this is not something you think about doing, it is a natural
progression of yoga: a movement toward union and balance.
When
properly practiced, yoga also offers you help and insight into your
relationships including your responsibility and role in them. How could
this be? Successful relationships are built through respecting others and
by paying correct attention to the people around you. Unfortunately, many
of us have learned the hard way that lack of respect, or abuse regardless
of how subtle, inattention, or even over attentiveness, can damage a
successful relationship. Such damage can sometimes cause emotional and
sometimes physical distress, both to you and to others.
An
appropriate yoga practice is but a microcosm of life itself. You get out
of it what you put into it. By doing a correct yoga practice, you learn
that success does not come by how many repetitions you do or how hard you
try to get it right. Success does not come by how far or how deeply you
can force yourself into those “uncomfortable positions.” Doing such
often leads to frustration (by not getting what you think you should be
getting) or injury as your body interprets such inappropriate behavior as
“abusive.”
Instead,
success in yoga comes by learning how to be “present” with your yoga
exercises; by learning to enjoy and respect your body for where it is at
the moment and not where you wish it would or could be (which is living in
the future). Or not by living in the past by wishing that your body
responded as it did a few years ago. To do a successful yoga practice, you
don’t need to be anything, such as flexible or strong or
even healthy. You just need to pay attention to “the way things are”
and just do it (living in and enjoying the present). In so doing and by
not forcing yourself to meet unreasonable goals, you begin to experience
the pure joy of the moment while doing the exercise. Therefore, by
treating your yoga exercises intelligently and respectfully, you begin to
move toward balance of body, mind and spirit.
Over
time, as your body becomes increasingly balanced; you become increasingly
flexible and stronger, both physically and emotionally. And because the
body and mind or so intricately interrelated, as goes your body, goes your
mind. Likewise, success and joy in relationships comes not by forcing or
by manipulation, but from the sheer delight of paying attention to your
partner or friend or child or parent and by enjoying their very
perfection. This doesn’t mean that you do not guide or direct, but it
means that you can do so without manipulation or force.
As
you learn to pay attention to the “perfection” of your body and as you
begin to apply subtle details to your yoga, your body becomes increasingly
balanced. As you learn to pay attention to the “perfection” of others,
you become more aware of the subtle ways you affect your relationships.
It’s all about taking personal responsibility and not forcing.
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