It's Been A While...

I know it has been quite some time since I've posted on LoveYogaDream, but please let me clarify that that does not mean I have not been practicing. I have just not along the lines of the prescribed 6 days a week with Saturday and Moon Day exceptions. It's been off and on over the past few weeks. One week its 3 days. Another week it's only one. At first I thought it was because focus and discipline may not be the spiritual lessons I'm supposed to be learning right now. Perhaps its because I need to learn to flow. But after searching and literally allowing myself to "flow" for a little bit (these were the weeks where no practice was done :-/) and talking to one of my spiritual teachers I realized I was simply being lazy. A laziness that needs to be overcome in my eyes. But instead of allowing myself to beat myself for being lazy for weeks and not doing my asana, among other things, I had a realization. A click or a "yogic" connection, if you will...One that I've come into contact with before, but had to be reminded of now...

Life is a flowing journey that will one day reach a destination (notice I say a not "The" destination). It goes through ups, downs, plateaus, steep mountains, gradual mountains, sudden falls and lifts, turns and curves. It's just the way it is and yoga asana practice teaches this very fundamental concept to life. We start upright looking to the sky, as progressing and moving forward or upward and then we fall into a forward bend away from the imagined ideal blissful pinnacle of the "top." Only to keep falling or lowering into chaturanga. Then there's a slight lift, a slight progression with cobra or upward facing dog and then we're completely turned over or bent over in downward facing dog, but through all of that we rise again to the "top." 

With each pose, you're brought into this weird funky situation that you may have never been in before. How will you respond? What will you do? Will you just get out of it and quit? Will you try to think of ways to make downward dog more comfortable? Or will you surrender to it and allow it the pose to just be what it is, knowing that one day it will pass? With each pose, you are taught an essential tenet or aspect of life. With each pose, you truly begin to learn what life it is and what its all about. Although poses will bring you down, bring you slightly back up, only to come down again, eventually you will rise, but eventually you will also fall again. And start the entire life cycle all over again within a matter of minutes. 

But this is what yoga is all about. Yoga is life. Yogic asanas are the physical manifestations of the realities of life. Harsh realities that I'm facing. Harsh realities I don't want to face, but know I have to if I want to change my life. If I want to accept life for the way it is and appreciate and live every moment, the good, the bad and the ugly. Yoga...is life....

For some reason, this time around, this connection, this click hit me harder, penetrated more deeply; seeping into another layer of my being to become more embedded than it did the last time....But that's also the purpose of yoga right? To help us uncover the onion-like layers that make up who we are, the layers that keep us from realizing WHAT we are?...I guess yoga really does work ;-)

Question: Has you ever had an experience like this? Where yoga deepened your understanding of something?