YOGA: No Better Time Than NOW

NOW

It is all we have, the past is gone & the future is yet to be decided. But being in the present moment is not an easy thing to do. Our minds keep us moving from thought to thought instead of being present to what is happening in THIS moment. When we are in the moment, uncomfortable things can come to our attention & we are hard wired to want to avoid discomfort, so we make ourselves busy, or distracted by using some outside sources instead.

If we focus on something else, maybe that discomfort will go away. But does it really?

So you discover Yoga to help you with the things that challenge you, you sore hip, “bad back”, stresses at work. Now, you learn that yoga is about being in awareness, to meet yourself where you are right NOW. But when these discomforts come up, (this can be truly fearful to meet them) we might go into a story as to why that “pain” is there, the past, or what we can do to rid ourselves of it ,the future.

We learn there is a lot of uncomfortable things in our body, mind & emotions, not just what we came to yoga to address. So this yoga practice that we sought to help us heal, has awoken more that we feel we can handle. So you might start to using yoga as an escape from what we found by striving to push ourselves past our limits. Using it to distract ourselves from what we are feeling & just do what we think we should or being told to do instead. Sometimes because of this discomfort, we begin to avoid the very thing that can help to gain the future we are striving for, our yoga practice.

So just like our lives, our yoga practice can become another form of trying to justify our self worth by “look what I can do”, instead of look how I am. What we discover can be so difficult, we might choose not to do our practice at all anymore.

This would be letting our past dictate our future in place of finding our strength, our courage, our compassion to be with what we meet when we practice.

Take a moment, THIS moment to take a few breaths. Ask yourself this question:

“ Can I meet the discomforts that arise, breath to breath & let go of the outcome of things & now simply move my body?”

Seems simple enough, but this is a challenge. You may have spent a whole yoga class, at least if felt that way, struggling with being in the moment & feeling things. It feels like an uphill battle, that can’t be won.

JUST STOP EXHALE START OVER

move, breath & focus moment to moment. Again, again & again….

At the end of this mindful movement:

- do you know more about yourself?

- can see those parts you’d rather were not there, without judgement?

- can you remind yourself you are safe, take another breath then another & come back to the moment…..

now repeat an infinite number of times :)

By being in the moment, no matter how brief, that is when change occurs. Every moment we change, but it is it in the direction we need?

Begin by giving yourself a challenge to find a moment to a pause, on or off the mat where you are just present to yourself. Allow that time to be of listening, feeling, being. Give yourself space where change is allowed & encouraged. Can you learn from the past, be present to the moment & allow that to change your future.

Now, none of us can only live in the NOW, but we can strive to be more open to it, to search for it & appreciate when it happens. Take time, staring now to commit to finding moments of pure awareness, drink them in as the life nuturing force it is. There is no better time to start than NOW.

PS

Don’t get me wrong, the past is important as it has made us who we are, & the future is where our goals are. However, it’s when we live our lives in the past or future instead of appreciating this moment, that we can get stuck in doing instead of being.

"I am a human being, not a human doing. Don't equate your self-worth with how well you do things in life. You aren't what you do. If you are what you do, then when you don't...you aren't." - Dr. Wayne Dyer

For more on now, see: Discover the Power of The Present Moment, that spoke to me & inspired me.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kino-macgregor/yoga-being-present_b_3339112.html

For more NOW this Summer, join me for a mini-workshop on how to help your posture, increase strength, release pain & just feel better in your body.

Get Your Head On Straight.

Sunday July 16 10 am - 12 pm.

$35 + gst

YogaMcc.com or call 403-251-YOGA form more info or to register.