Question

Does life get easier? Or is it just how it is, hard? Can yoga help?

Answer

You don’t need to buy a new window to change your view.  You just need to change your view.
I’ve been having some fun this past week with a little project at the studio: fixing up the mat room!  It began with a 10-foot length of PVC pipe and a saw, little bits of plastic flying everywhere. It gradually evolved into cardboard mailing tubes that happened to be just the right length and diameter, delivered right to our door.  It’s nice when easier is also better.

When I was about mid-way with my project, a friend of ours came in, got her mat, and asked me: “What’s the point? Why all this change?” It got me thinking. I had watched people struggle for months tugging, pulling, wrenching their mats from beneath the chaotic pileups. Now you just walk in, draw your mat from its tube, and move on your way. You can even have a seat on the new bench, if you want to rest your bags and have a look around!

It’s easy to assume that things just aren’t easy.  It’s easy to work like work isn’t easy, to move like moving isn’t easy, to relate like relating isn’t easy.

When my friend looks at a simple yoga mat room, she wonders, why is that so exciting?  It’s a little room, with shelves, and mats.  Nothing is going to change that!  If it takes me pulling and tugging and knocking all the other mats around to get mine, that’s just how it is.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  We can change our view.  We can make the smallest, most utilitarian, most ordinary things into peaceful, useful, enjoyable experiences. Making tea. Getting a mat. Moving with ease, not struggle.

We can create the feeling we want in life, in everything we do.  Things aren’t just how they are.  You are how you are.  And, happily, you are your own creation. You get to create your life, your experience, just by seeing it’s possible, and making the choice.

If we expect life, work, relationships, to be a struggle, they will be.  If we see a mat room as just a mat room, we’ll keep practicing that expectation.  If we think yoga poses are hard and need to be pushed and forced, well, you get the picture.  It’s your choice.  Your life will feel like what you practice feeling, seeing, believing, and doing.

We each get to create our own view, in each moment.  It’s not the window that’s given to us that creates that view.  It’s what we think is possible, and what we choose to build.

-Mike

About Strala Yoga Training

Strala combines the movement and healing wisdom of tai chi with the form vocabularies of yoga, tai chi, qigong, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine, to help people release stress, move easily through challenge, and live radiantly inspiring lives.

It begins with a mindset, that says our best way to get where we’re going is to feel good along the way. It also works miracles for whole health, helping us to find ease in our bodies and minds, and create the right conditions both for healing and optimal performance.

In our Strala Training Courses, you learn to shape your destiny on every level that counts, from your psychology, chemistry and neurology, to your chromosomes and even gene expression. The unique set of skills you develop – for connecting with yourself and others, unblocking your energy, healing what needs healing and accomplishing challenge with ease – uncovers your ability to create the life you want, and be an inspiring leader to the people around you.

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