Question

Lately I’ve noticed that while I thought I was a really happy person, I am much quicker to point out the negative rather than the positive. I make fun of others (not to their face) a LOT more often than I’d like, just to be funny. I feel a lot less optimistic than I used to.

How can yoga help? I’ll admit I don’t practice every single day. When I do, my ankle hurts from a recent break, so it’s not for very long. Any ideas?

Thank you so much! You all are so great! See, I can be nice too 🙂

The Short Answer : Change what you practice

Seeing the negative side of things can be a useful part of discernment, and making fun of people can at times be an entertaining distraction.

But it is a distraction, and too much time here can wind up distracting from you. Which leads to less time feeling good, less time feeling optimistic. This is worth a look.

Yoga gives you what you practice. If you’re not getting what you want, look at changing what and how you practice.

If you have fixed pose or routine goals, if you’re stuck competing and comparing to other people, this might be a good time to let that go. Just get into you.

If your ankle hurts, that’s fine! Trade in the single leg balances; spend more time sitting, and more time on your back. Spend more time in places that can’t even be defined as poses, and are just you exploring, breathing, and feeling into you.

Create your yoga as practice time for feeling. This doesn’t mean just sitting and breathing. You can move and explore through great challenges, both physical and mental. Just stay easy in your body, keep breathing, and keep feeling.

Spend some time here. What you’ll find is, you feel good!

When you feel good, you’ll probably have less time for sticking with negative things. You might be less interested in making fun of other people all the time. You might even get into helping other people get into their own good feeling.

So in short, make your yoga your yoga. Make it about you, and keep it there!

The Long Answer : Why and how?

Yoga gives you exactly what you practice, and there are a few twists and turns here. Just practicing “yoga” doesn’t always lead to the results we want.

It’s fairly usual to look around your yoga studio, see this or that person doing this or that pose, and say “I want that pose” or “I want that body.”

It’s fairly usual to look around your world, see this or that person doing whatever they’re doing, and say “I want that life.”

The problem begins when someone tells you there is a single right way, that it’s something you don’t have, and you believe them.

The solution begins when you see the right way is your own way, it’s something you have, and you believe your self.

At this point, your yoga is yours. You get to explore and feel into you, discover what you are, and build your own great life.

When you see other people, your interest will not be so much to copy or compare. Your interest will be to support others in finding their own right way. Because you like what you’re feeling, and what you’re finding.

Yoga can be practicing poses. It can be practicing a “right” way to pose, to move, to breathe, and to live. It can be practice putting your body, and your life, in someone else’s box. Yoga can be practicing the stress and strain of needing to be someplace else from where you are, and someone else from who you are.

Or

Yoga can be practicing you. It can be discovering your own way. It can be leaving boxes behind and creating a you that is beyond comparison. Feeling you, believing what you feel, and responding. Inventing and reinventing your own right ways, inventing and reinventing your own life.

It’s all in how you practice. Following other people’s rules, comparing to other people’s lives, can seem easier, even comforting. But putting yourself in someone else’s box, body, life, is never comfortable for long.

Exploring, discovering, and following you is a challenge. But creating your own life is a good challenge to have. It’s your life.

How you practice yoga can give you the stress and strain of competing for something that isn’t yours. How you practice can also give you you. You feel good. That feeling can be addictive.

-Mike

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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.

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