How Long Does It Take For Yoga To Work?

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A friend yesterday sent some thoughts my way, pondering the question of time scales. We agree that yoga should work. It shouldn’t hurt people. It should only help. We can even say – if it’s not working, change how you yoga! Because the yoga you make is the life you make.

So the next question is, how long does it take? Does the timing depend on the severity and nature of our problems? Should we understand that yoga works very deeply, over a great deal of time, rewarding daily effort and patience?

This sparks an image for me – it’s one I see a lot in yoga, all around the world.

 

One person is dragging all this heavy luggage into their yoga room – great piles of it stuffed with problems! – because they need all of it. They are thinking “I have all this luggage because I’m here to work on it. It’s deep! It’s going to take time. Lifetimes, probably.”

 

Another person walks in – wherever they go, just carrying themselves – because that’s all they need. They move along pretty easy. When things get challenging in yoga, still, pretty easy.

 

It’s not that one person’s life is harder, and the other free of challenge. Everyone has challenge and difficulty in their life. It’s the choices we make, how we go about things, that make a difference.

We can approach challenges stiff and tense – ready for war – assuming it will always be a struggle. Or we can go about things easy in our bodies and minds – believing that we are enough, that we can do it.

 

We can see the world outside as the world we create inside. Pushing and struggling, we know we’d create a world of pushing and struggling. Moving easily, we create a world where we can move easily, creatively, even in the midst of great challenge.

 

I don’t think much about time scales – how long things should or shouldn’t take, how deep or not deep things are. Everything there is happens for us in an instant when we change our minds – about life, and about ourselves.

 

Our bodies, our lives, and our world, all go along for the ride we create in our minds.

 

I hear a lot of “yoga talk” about these things. Sometimes it’s more comfortable to hunker down, draw the blanket around us, and surround ourselves with heavy luggage – unending study, books, blocks, bolsters, rules, languages, terms. We occupy ourselves this way.

When this hunkering down for the long “deep” study becomes a habit, it doesn’t do much for people. From here, we pull each other down. So get up.

Don’t wait for the universe or anyone else to give you permission. Don’t wait to collect all the facts and knowledge. Don’t assume it’s going to be a long, difficult struggle. Just go do what you want to do. Create it from right where you are. Believe you are enough.

From here, we lift each other up.

🙂 Mike

 

PS – Want to practice yoga with Tara and me? We created an online course on MindBodyGreen to get you going 🙂