Opening the Jan 2015 session of Classes at AASY was a wonderful homecoming after a long Holiday Season break. Classes began with a short conversation regarding “Why” we are here doing our yoga. When I asked the students what brings them to class and to their home practice many different answers were shared. Quite a few reported the initial reasons they were attracted to the study were not actually the same reasons they continue. We must be doing something right!
The practice and study of Yoga should be transformative and so as we develop and mature in our practice the attraction to, and effects of, our practice will evolve.
So with an opening week of classes where stiff cold hips were visited by moving fluidly into leg positions that led to forward bends, and some standing asanas paired together to continue the idea of fluidity and stability we began a new year of ongoing study. Some folks really liked the double block work we did in Adho Mukha Svanasana and Sirsasana (other’s not so much). But on it goes as we continue to ask ourselves why we study and practice, and what happens when we do. And who exactly, which layer of who we are at any given moment, is practicing? And can our practice transform us towards understanding ourselves more intimately and honestly?
Of course it can, how could it not?
I started Yoga many years ago (in Flint) when I was early on in my professional career. Teaching new classes, publish or perish, service commitments and so on. Too much going on between my ears. I welcomed attending yoga classes because my attention was fully focused on what I was feeling as I was beginning to learn asanas. There was no way I could be thinking about anything else!
I am now retired, enjoying gentle yoga, with a mind free from those worries. I practice yoga as a means of bettering myself as a mind and a body.