Awareness Anticipation & Listening

Last week I wrote about learning yoga "by heart."

I received a great email from a Daily Yoga Tip reader suggesting two things he does to internalize the practices he is studying:

1. Always have fun, and
2. Practice teaching the the thing you are trying to learn.

Another Daily Yoga Tip reader wrote to pass along this old maxim:

Teach something to another person ten times and you'll never forget it.

I mentioned yesterday that my wife and daughter took me to see Fiddler on the Roof Saturday night. It was very enjoyable!

As usual, I was thinking about you while I was there that evening.

There's a scene in Fiddler that, combined with the experience of going to the theater, reminded me of this principle that will also help you take yoga to heart.

When Tevye's daughter Chava defies tradition by marrying outside of her family's faith, Tevye cuts her off from the family and begins to act as if she were dead.

It's heart-wrenching.

The political authorities then force the villagers to sell all they have and move out. Facing a journey to Poland, and knowing that her parents and sisters will relocate in the United States, Chava returns to her father's gate to bid him goodbye.

"He won't listen," the young woman's mother tells her.
"But at least he'll hear," replies Chava.

If you want to take yoga to heart, you've got to listen, not just hear.

Apparently, Tevye did both. Because Chava got through to his heart and he gave her a blessing.

Listening has an eager quality to it. It's full of potential and anticipation. It's like a dry sponge, ready to absorb.

I was thinking of this as we sat waiting for the show to start. The house lights had dimmed. Everyone was sitting quietly in his or her seat. The conductor's hands were raised. The curtain was about to go up. Everyone was waiting for the first sound. They were listening.

I studied with a yoga teacher once who said that when you listen, the shape of your brain literally changes. I've paid attention when I listen, and I think she's right. The whole quality of your being alters when you switch from hearing to listening. Try it.

I believe the key element in this shift is awareness.

BKS Iyengar will release his new book Light on Life sometime in the next few days. Here's an excerpt about awareness:

The purpose or goal of asana is to align and harmonize the physical body and all the layers, or sheaths, of the subtle emotional, mental, and spiritual body. This is integration. But how does one align these layers and experience integration? How does one find such profound transformation in what from the outside may look simply like stretching or twisting the body into unusual positions? It begins with awareness.

Want to learn yoga by heart? Listen.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., Experience alone won't do it. I can have the experience of hearing without the awareness of listening.

Our Experience Sanskrit workshop is designed to provide you with experiences that make the Sanskrit names of yoga poses hard to forget. We make these experiences attractive and vivid to help you keep your awareness and anticipation tuned into the "receive" mode.

Here's what you get when you participate in Experience Sanskrit:

• You'll learn the stories BEHIND the yoga poses. The stories are rich with details that make strong associations in your mind.
• You'll experience naming all of your body parts and using those names, too.
• You'll experience Sanskrit math. Counting will never be the same. But you'll find out that Sanskrit numbers are not very different from numbers you already know.
• We'll sort out the confusion about the difference between the "common name" of a pose and it's Sanskrit name.
  
• and more.

Experience Sanskrit workshops in Columbia, MO (October 15) and Dallas, TX (November 5) are accepting enrollments now. Find out more about the workshop at www.ExperienceYoga.org . Register for the Columbia workshop at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawocomooc.html . Register for the Dallas workshop at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawodatxno.html .

p.p.s., Annapolis, Maryland, we're coming your way in March, 2006.

p.p.p.s., Want to bring the Experience Sanskrit workshop to your yoga studio? Email me at info@experienceyoga.org. We'll set a date and we'll be at your place before you know it.

All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Practice 'Cause it's Precarious

If you've ever spent a moment in virabhadrasana III or ardha chandrasana or bakasana, or if you've even tried these poses, the thought must have occurred to you, "how in the world could this precarious position possibly have anything to do with the calmness and peace I want?"


warrior pose 3, virabhadrasana III


ardha chandrasana, half moon pose


bakasana, crane pose

My daughter's closest friend from school had a big part in our local community theater production of Fiddler on the Roof. So last night my wife and daughter treated me to a delightful evening of theater.

The lead character, Tevye, gets right to the point. In the few brief phrases that open the show he explains the musical's title and the moral of the story. Above him is precariously perched the rooftop musician playing a wistful tune. Tevye says,

A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask 'Why do we stay up there if it's so dangerous?' Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!

Just ask the people who are driving like crazy to get out of the way of Hurricane Katrina. Our lives are precarious.

Like the people of Anatevka, we can keep our sanity and even make something beautiful, if we dedicate ourselves to a Higher Purpose and practice, as Patanjali says, with fervor, uninterrupted, and for a long time.

Even when it looks and sounds "crazy," as Tevye put it, we keep doing these traditional practices. Though Anatevka is not my home, my regular and attentive practice of yoga keeps me feeling more at home in my body and in relationships with those around me.

Keep practicing the traditions of yoga. Start where you are. If it's asana you're practicing, don't forget the rest of ashtanga yoga: yama, niyama, pranayama, pratyahara, dhyana, dharana, and samadhi.

Check in and read my Daily Yoga Tip tomorrow. I'll be writing about listening. The kind of listening you do right before the show starts. The house lights are down. The pit orchestra has warmed up, but is now silent. The conductor is in place. You know the show's about to start...but it hasn't yet.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., I am very happy to say a special hello here today to my very first yoga teacher, Betsey Downing. Betsey's been traveling and conducting Anusara yoga workshops around the country. I know these have been great events because her students from recent workshops in Ann Arbor, Michigan and The Woodlands, Texas have been writing to tell me how great they are.

Betsey's been spreading the good word about my Daily Yoga Tip. I know that, too, because they've been signing up to receive it by email. Thanks, Betsey!

p.p.s., Want to know more about our Experience Neti Flow workshop coming up on October 27, at Show Me Yoga Center in Jefferson City, MO? Visit http://tinyurl.com/bu3eg . Or, you can REGISTER NOW.

p.p.p.s., The Experience Sanskrit workshops in Columbia, MO (October 15) and Dallas, TX (November 5) are accepting enrollments now. Find out more about the workshop at www.ExperienceYoga.org . Register for the Columbia workshop at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawocomooc.html . Register for the Dallas workshop at http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-13837176072520/exsawodatxno.html .

All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Practice Teaching, by Heart

Yesterday I wrote about doing yoga "by heart."

I also mentioned singing in the choir and how great it is to learn a song "by heart."

Here's an email I received today from a regular Daily Yoga Tip reader. It's so great, I could not wait to pass it on to you!

First of all, like you, I love to sing and had not sung very often with a group until a year ago. I joined the Choral Society and am really enjoying it. Since I could not sight read, I always had to lean on the guy next to me and my memory.

Recently, I decided to learn sight reading at the tender age of 65. I have been taking voice lessons for 3 months and I am slowly starting to get it. The main thing is that, when I am singing, I am having FUN!

I started taking yoga a year and a half ago. For the first several months, I could not do the poses at home because I could not remember them. Eventually, I could remember them and then I started pretending at home that I was teaching yoga. This caused me to think of each movement within the pose and then I was able to commit the poses to my heart memory.

As I write this email to you, my spirit just nudged me with a thought. The aha thought was: why don't I pretend that I am teaching sight reading while I practice it? I can't wait to try it.

Kevin, thanks for the inspiration. See yah, JC

This is fantastic. Thanks, JC for the valuable nugget. I really hope I am an inspiration. You've inspired me today with your message.

For those of you who need the Reader's Digest version, here's what you should do if you want to learn yoga by heart:
1. Have fun!
2. When you practice at home, pretend you are teaching.

These are two incredible tips.
I've done them both and I cannot reccommend them enough.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., You'll experience both of these tips when you participate in the Experience Sanskrit workshop. We always have fun. Doesn't it strike you as odd? "Sanskrit" and "fun" go together? Yes! They do!

And we'll practice teach, too. We always help you learn the "story behind the pose." Once you learn the story, it's hard to forget the name. One way to remember the story is to teach it to a friend. We'll do just that.

Experience Sanskrit, an experience-based workshop. In four hours you'll experience just what you need to make dozens of yoga pose names unforgettable, in Sanskrit.

We just added a new date at alleyCat yoga in Columbia, Missouri. We'll be there October 15th, 12:30 to 4:30 pm. Tuition is $50. Register now.

The Experience Sanskrit workshop will also be held on Saturday, November 5th at Surya Center for Yoga in Coppell, TX. Tuition is $50 for the 4-hour workshop. And you get a 100-page course manual to use and take home. It's included free with your enrollment.

Want to know more about the Experience Sanskrit workshop? Want to bring the Experience Sanskrit to your yoga studio? See www.ExperienceYoga.org . Then email me at info@experienceyoga.org. We'll set a date and we'll be at your place before you know it.

p.s.s., We're working right now to set Experience Sanskrit workshop dates in Maryland and Illinois. Keep watching for news about a workshop near you.

All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Yoga, by Heart

My daughter, the 5th-grader, goes back to school tomorrow. We met her new teacher today. Excitement and dread abound.

Of course the age-old question that has plagued students for generations is now resounding in the heads of school children everywhere. "Is this going to be on the test?"

Sound familiar? I remember it well.

It betrays what we all thought at least once back then. "This is absolutely useless to me. So all I need to do is memorize it long enough to regurgitate it back on the test. Then I can forget it."

This was all driven home to me yesterday at choir practice.

When I sold my yoga center about a year and a half ago, I told everyone that one of the things I wanted to do was sing in a choir. I haven't sang in choir since I was a high school senior, back in 1979. That's a long time ago.

I finally joined the choir and sang with them for the first time Friday night. We'll see how long they keep me.

The choir director said yesterday that how you feel about a song has a major impact on the beauty of your performance.

She also said there's a huge difference between learning a song by heart and learning a song by rote.

For example, she said that throughout the many years of her childhood piano lessons she had memorized dozens of songs for recitals. Now as an adult, she can't play a single one.

But she remembers every word, every phrase, and every nuance of some songs she learned as far back as 4th grade...because she learned those songs by heart. She loved those songs.

She stood there in front of us and sang one out from memory, without a flaw. She learned that song by heart.

Do you practice yoga at home? Or do you just take yoga lessons now and then?

See the difference? If you simply go to yoga classes, you can, if you want to, follow along and do what you're asked and never internalize the lessons you might apply to enrich your life when your teacher's not around.

Or you can take yoga to heart. What you learn by heart is yours to keep 'til the day you die, whether you ever darken the door of a yoga studio again, or not. It's yours.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., I think that learning by rote "because I have to" is one of the reasons yoga students have such difficulty learning the Sanskrit names of the yoga poses. That's why I designed the Experience Sanskrit workshop. When you participate in the Experience Sanskrit workshop, you get experiences. Those experiences are designed to make the names of yoga poses hard to forget. What makes them hard to forget is the emotional connections and images you establish as we play together and do yoga.

The next Experience Sanskrit workshop will be held on Saturday, November 5th at Surya Center for Yoga in Coppell, TX, near the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Tuition is $50 for the 4-hour workshop. And you get a 100-page course manual to use and take home. It's included free with your enrollment.

Want to know more about the Experience Sanskrit workshop? Want to bring the Experience Sanskrit to your yoga studio? See www.ExperienceYoga.org . Then email me at info@experienceyoga.org. We'll set a date and we'll be at your place before you know it.

All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

The Ideal Yoga Pose

As a part of my teacher training program, I ask teacher training students to draw stick figures of what the yoga poses should look like when viewed from various angles, i.e., from the front, side, and top.

Usually I get moans and groans about this request because people are self-conscious about their artistic ability.

But we press on, because I want to see if my future teachers can reperesent on paper how they think the skeleton should be ideally aligned in a particular pose. That's good.

It's good because alignment matters. (I can still hear my very first yoga teacher telling us that alignment is more important than flexibility. Thank you, Betsey!)

If you get your body segments aligned properly, you become structurally stonger, more stable. With stability comes ease. Less work. More awareness.

If teachers can hold in their minds an ideal model of each pose, they can compare the student in front of them to that model. With a little skill and compassion they can help their students get closer to the ideal and the ease that comes with it. (By the way, sometimes it's not ease you get when you approach the ideal. It's some other lesson or insight.)

But if you're not careful, alignment becomes a holy grail that you pursue, at times, to your detriment and the detriment of others. Perfectionism takes over and you can't see the gifts you've been given from yoga. Your vision is clouded by all the imperfections you see.

If you're a teacher and you can't see the good in your students, yoga classes start to get oppressive.

The ideal yoga pose then is a tool that can help you on your way, but if misused can become a bludgeon.

The great actor Michael Caine has been quoted in many interviews describing the difference between a movie star and an actor. I think his distinction is a useful one here. He says:

The difference between a movie star and an actor is this; a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' But an actor will say; 'How can I change me to suit the script?'

Therein lies the value of the ideal yoga pose. On my way to expressing the beauty and uniqueness of who I truly am, through the form of a 'standard' asana, I change. I become a bigger person.

Imagine if you will the probably millions of actors who have attempted over the years to faithfully portray a character in a well-known drama. If they change it, everyone knows. If they change themselves, no one knows but them and those close to them.

Take encouragement today and go after some ideal yoga poses. But on the way to reaching your perfect pose, don't forget to count the blessings you receive.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., Enroll today. Sallie Keeney and I just set a date for our newest workhsop, Experience Neti Flow, at Show Me Yoga Center in Jefferson City. During this 1.5-hour workshop you'll experience the ancient practice of jala neti. You won't just read about it or hear about it or learn about it. You'l do it. And you'll be glad you did.

Jala neti is a simple purification process that uses a neti pot and water to cleanse your sinuses. The benefits are amazing, especially if you constantly battle sinus infections and headaches, post-nasal drip and irriateted throat, frequent coughs and colds, or allergies.

If you don't have problems with these upper respiratory illnesses, you'll still want to experience the benefits that your immune system gets when it is relieved of the daily duty of eliminating dust, pollutants, toxins, irritants, mucus, pollen and allergens. You'll get a great energy boost when your body isn't sapped of the strength it typically uses to battle these invaders that we breathe in daily.

Tuition is $30. Advance registration is required. Everyone gets a brand new neti pot to use and take home (a $15 value) along with a course guide that answers all of your questions.

The Experience Neti Flow workshop is scheduled for Thursday, October 27, 2005 at 6:30 pm at Show Me Yoga Center in Jefferson City, MO. Call (573) 636-5656 to register with your credit card.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Explode Recoil Blossom

I was working with my yoga students on downward facing dog pose today (adho mukha svanasana). And I was doing it for a particular purpose. I wanted them to eventually do a full arm balance (handstands, adho mukha vrksasana).

Before you do handstands, it's a pretty good idea to be sure you're fairly adept at really pushing with your arms, i.e., extending them long, from shoulders to hands. You can learn and improve this action practicing it in dog pose.

It's also a pretty good idea to make sure you're fairly adept at using your legs. Here's the big secret: If you use your legs a lot in dog pose, your arms aren't required to do as much work. It's true of handstand, too.

You see, you can sort of 'hang out' in dog pose, if you want to. No big deal, really. But you can't just 'hang out' in handstand. You've got to be doing something. And that doing something is extending your arms straight, pushing your hands into the floor. If you don't do it...collapse.

I noticed when I asked my students to push hard into the floor while doing dog poses, what they did was a very mechanical explosion of effort. It accomplished what I wanted. Their arms were straight. They got longer from hands to sit bones. And they transferred more of their weight backwards, to be borne by the legs. All good.

But this explosion was immediately followed by a recoil that left my students in exactly the situation in which they began. Not so good.

Exploding and recoiling. These are not commonly seen in nature. But they are very common in machines. Think of your car. The sparkplug fires. The piston slams in one direction and immediately rebounds. Or think of a rifle. Pull the trigger and the bullet shoots out one end. But the butt of the rifles kicks back into your shoulder.

A more natural movement is called for.

Change your imagery from a machine to something more organic and you'll see slow steady expansion. I like to think of the image of a flower opening up in a blossom. Just when you think it won't open any more, it goes a little bit further.

I also like the image of bread dough rising. Slowly and steadily it expands.

In my experience, breath is key. When I steady my breath and focus on the smooth flow of air into and out of my lungs, I can slowly and steadily expand my torso and lengthen my spine shifting more and more weight back into my legs. Just when I think I can't go more, I refocus on my breath and I keep expanding and lengthening.

I become steadier and stronger when I act like a flower, not like a shot-gun.

Look for explosions in your poses today. See if you can blossom instead.

By the way, if you see neither and explosion nor a blossom, maybe you're just 'hanging out.' Hangin' out is okay, but probably won't serve you if you secretly, or not so secretly, desire to move on to more challenging poses.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
http://www.ExperienceYoga.org/

p.s., Adho mukha svanasana. Adho mukha vrksasana. What's the difference? I'm sure there's an urdhva mukha svanasana. Is there an urdhva mukha vrksasana? Have fun playing with our virtual Sanskrit refrigerator magnet at http://www.experienceyoga.org/magnet/default.asp. Drag your mouse over any word root on the virtual magnet, like adho, and you'll see the pose names that contain that word root.

p.p.s, I am excited to annouance that Sallie Keeney and I will be conducting the Experience Sanskrit workshop on Saturday, November 5th at Surya Center for Yoga in Coppell, TX, near the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. This is the workshop that makes learning the Sanskrit names of yoga poses fun and unforgettable. More details will follow. Tuition is $50 for the 4-hour workshop. And you get a 100+ page course manual to use and take home. It's included free with your enrollment. Want to know more about the Experience Sanskrit workshop? Want to bring the Experience Sanskrit to your yoga studio? See www.ExperienceYoga.org . Then email me at info@experienceyoga.org. We'll set a date and we'll be at your place before you know it.

Saiou Ga Uma

"Saiou ga uma" is a Japanese phrase that means "Saiou's horse." It's an abbreviation of "Ningen banji saiou ga uma," by which a famous Japanese proverb is known.

The literal translation is "All human affairs are like Saiou's horse". It basically means you can never really know what will prove to be "good" or "bad". The meaning came from a Chinese folk tale about an old man called Sai. Here's the story:

Once upon a time, an old man, Sai, lived near the Chinese Northern Fort. One day his horse ran away. His neighbors commiserated with him over his misfortune, but Sai said "How do you know this is not really good luck?".

A few days later the horse returned, bringing another horse with it. When his neighbors congratulated him on his good luck, the old man said "How do you know this is really good luck?"

Sure enough, some while later Sai's son fell while riding the horse, and broke his leg. The neighbors called it a misfortune.

But it turned out to be good fortune when all the young men of the village were ordered to join the Emperor's army. Sai's son didn't have to go because he had a broken leg.

Psychologists call this reframing. When you take an event and view it from slightly different circumstances, its meaning can change dramatically.

Here's another example. Can you imagine a circumstance in which this statement is a positive one?

Her face was horribly disfigured.

How about on Halloween night? See what I mean? A gruesome face is a prized disguise on the right night.

When I think of these examples it strikes me that it's never the event itself that causes me happiness or suffering. It's how I interpret the event.

The broken leg, for example, is neutral. But if I think it's bad, it's bad. If I think it's good, it's good.

If all events are neutral, maybe I can train myself to always see the good.

I think that's what Patanjali is asking us to do when he tells us to practice the niyama samtosa. Samtosa means being content. It's a spiritual discipline. It's a practice. You can aspire to it. You can cultivate it. You can train yourself to do it. Be content.

The writer of the Christian scripture says:

For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. (Phillipians 4:11)

Notice he didn't say I am content. He said he had to learn to be content.

Keep the "Saiou ga uma" proverb in mind today. It will help you see how you sometimes choose to be happy and at other times you choose to be unhappy. It takes practice, but you can always see the good. And it will help you acheive the state of yoga, in which the mind has ceased its relentless churning.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Feelings

I'm feeling raw today. Emotionally raw. I've had an intense week.

As I was driving up to Columbia this morning to teach my Saturday morning yoga class, all I could think of was feel. That's it. Feel.

Way back when I was in high school I read that when you guard yourself against what ever you are feeling, especially pain, you store those avoided feelings in your body. Specifically, you store your avoided sensations in your fascia, a connective tissue that runs throughout your body.

This idea floored me. Fascia, the writer said, is a recording medium. It records the events of your life that you are unable to feel fully at the time they occur.

What floored me even more was that later on in life, usually when moving around or doing something out of the ordinary with your body, you start to tug on your fascia. When you move it around and soften it up, you "replay" the original event, just like you would replay a song recorded on a CD or a video recorded on VHS tape.

That's right. It is not unusual to relive the pain, emotions and details of the original experience. Often it's an experience that you've completely blocked off from your memory.

Physical therapists, bodyworkers, massage therapists and others have told me they see this all the time. I never saw it...until I started practicing and teaching yoga.

The first time I saw it was also the first time I experienced it. I was in a yoga class lying over a rolled up blanket. I was positioned so that my chest was expanded and opened.

I was lying there still. Eyes closed. Relaxing. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed and began to cry. When class was over, I noticed that the person next to me had been crying too.

Now I've come to expect it. Sometimes it's backbends. But often it's the quiet relaxation pose savasana that gives people the space and safety they need to relive their incompleted experience.

Frankly, while I was teaching today, I felt terrible. I felt stiff and wooden, like my body was not my own. But as I kept moving and kept paying attention, I began to feel more at ease and more at home in my own skin.

Here's a coincidence: after class today, one of my students told me she was so angry with me she wanted to cry.

No coincidence at all.

We buried my Mom yesterday. I'm grateful for my yoga practice today. By moving around and paying attention, I can soften myself up and safely feel the full impact of the current events of my life. I don't have to wait.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Martha Gets Three-Week Restriction for Yoga Joy Ride

Have you heard the news that Martha Stewart got caught sneaking out of the confines of house arrest to take yoga classes with her daughter?

Stewart, who was characterized in the news as a "home-making guru" will now be required to spend an additional three weeks under house arrest for breaking the rules of her probation.

Now that's dedication! Or is it?

The same article said, "Stewart's lax approach to the restrictions and her extended sentence have not harmed her flourishing career."

I wrote a Daily Yoga Tip back in May about yogic restrictions as a way to freedom. You can read it here:
http://experienceyoga.blogspot.com/2005/05/unbridled-spirit-jack.html

It's about the yamas and how you've got to stay inside the restraints to be free.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC.

Stop Stopping

Lots of family are in town this week. I enjoyed going to see the movie "Bad News Bears" with them yesterday. I'll caution you, it's irreverent...but not irrelevant.

When the Bears had their very first bad day on the diamond they decided to quit. I don't think of Billy Bob Thornton as an oracle of wisdom, but here's what he told the team:

Once you start quitting, it's hard to stop.

It sounded like advice from a person who's been there.

I like what Patanjali has to say when he tells us how to achieve the state of yoga. He says in order to stop the fluctuations of the mind and be in the state of yoga, you've got to practice (abhyasa) and detach (vairagya):

I.13. Practice is concentrated effort to keep the mind steady.
I.14. It becomes firmly grounded when carried out for a long time without interruptions and with earnest attention.

If you want what yoga has to offer, you can't bail out when the first obstacle raises its ugly head. You can't quit. Practice yoga with sincere dedication. And keep doing it. Don't quit.

Yoga is a way of life to be mastered. Unfortunately, most of us aren't masters. We're dabblers. Hobbyists.

Mastering anything begins with a commitment to not quit when the going gets rough, or when the going gets boring. Had it not been for the fact that I was teaching yoga, I doubt I would have made it past some of the long plateaus during which I saw little progress.

Don't give up.

Don't just read about it. Get up. Experience it. Experience yoga!

Kevin Perry
www.ExperienceYoga.org

p.s., It's short and sweet. But it's the best I've ever read about the long, slow path of mastery. I recommend it highly. It's called Mastery, by George Leonard. I recommend it to all my students who have difficulty maintaining a consistent practice over time.



Copyright 2005. All rights reserved, Mo Yoga LLC