Thrown Out of the Nest

Last week, I was at the studio helping with adjustments in the Mysore room.  Actually, I'm not sure I would say I was "helping" so much as "absorbing".   Absorbing like a porous open sponge.   There was a moment, as I learned different alignment rules, new ways of moving bodies, and how to support deep openings in the students that I felt overwhelmed.   I thought, "I feel like I've been thrown out of the nest".  It was a moment of realization, not that I needed to abandon all I had learned, but that I needed to be open to learning more.  That if I attached to the idea that I knew all there was to know already, I couldn't approach this new  information with openness and willingness.  Having a comfortable base level of knowledge and sense of pride in my teaching ability, I was required to be humble and not attached to what I "know" as I accepted the new information being offered.

Practice is the same.  We can get awfully comfortable with a practice that feels good, that doesn't challenge us to move into spaces that bring up discomfort or feelings of being weak, inexperienced or not knowledgeable about our practice.   In our comfort, we begin to feel ease and at times pride in our practice. When we get on the mat, even in a class setting, we work with the things that make us feel good and back away from the things that challenge us.   The nest is very comfortable, predictable and safe.

Each time we come to the mat, we need to approach our practice with "beginner's mind".  Cultivating a sense of newness and freshness with each breath.  We need to be willing to come to the practice as a bird being thrown out of the nest.   Today's practice won't be yesterday's practice or tomorrow's.  If we think of our progression as linear, we will begin to cultivate patterns of movement and thought that will pull us back into the comfort zone.  Our teachers, like a bird's mother,  are supporting our practice, encouraging growth and insisting we move into the spaces we may feel uncomfortable moving into.    Listening to their guidance, and trusting them will create a new safe space to begin to explore our practice more deeply.

Deepening a posture does not mean making it harder, or even expressing a more complex variation on a posture.  It means having a more cohesive approach to the concept of equanimity on the mat.   We feel less effort as we open ourselves up to discomfort and let the breath carry us through the posture.

Finally, as we end our practice we take rest.  We find stillness in savasana, allowing our bodymind to integrate the practice.   When we practice savasana, corpse pose, we die.   We've practiced and cultivated new patterns, and moved into some new spaces and then we detach.  Our body has memory of practice, but the ego mind lets go.   When we return to the mat, we return reborn and open to what will come.  Our body will flow with a sense of familiarity but our mind needs to feel fresh and new like this is the first time we've ever come to the mat.   This is the practice.

"Abhyasa-vaiagryabhyam tan- nirodahah"

Continuous endeavor and non-attachment are both required to constrain mentality.  Patanjali Yoga Sutras Samadhi-pada (12)