Why I Practice

I can't say it any better than this.

from Meditations from the Mat, by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison


Day 218:

"If your eyes and ears are open, you will see the windows of opportunity around you." --Cherie Carter-Scott

In asana our eyes are open, our ears are open, our minds are open, our hearts are open. As the months turn into years, we realize that our practice is a long unfolding, an opening into promise. We learn to stand easy, firm, and relaxed, and our problems become the open windows of opportunity.


Day 219:

"True men of Yoga, striving, see Him within themselves." --Bhagavad Gita

Success in asana requires stamina. I forget this in times when I am not working very hard at my practice, and remember it when I am. If I train hard and long enough, usually over the course of a few months, something magical happens. I find that in posure after posture, I can endure past the initial difficulty. The pain softens, and the training of my mind begins to kick in. I invite myself to relax, to breathe, to enter the dance of the asana, mind, body, and breath. I encourage myself to have faith, to smile, to have fun, to feel gratitude, to be in love with the moment, the opportunity, the posture. This requires strength, physical endurance, and mental discipline. The fruit of this strength, this discipline, is that I am able to pause in each posture and connect to life pulsing in every cell of my body-- life dancing in me, life dancing through me.