A Yogi as I see it.
To me, a Yogi does not mean you practice yoga all day, everyday. To be a Yogi is to consider your yoga practice as a microcosm of the way you live your life. A Yogi as I see it is someone who takes his/ her practice to his/her everyday life.
To me yoga means learning how to be present with everything that arises, whether it is pain or pleasure, sadness or joy, failure or success.
Yoga is an ancient discipline in which physical postures, breath practices, meditation, and philosophical study are tools for achieving health and relaxation.
There are different kinds of yoga. My favorite is yin yoga. Yin yoga is a slow-paced style of yoga. In yin yoga each pose is held for longer periods of time than in other styles of yoga.
It is amazing to me how much you can learn from this seemingly small practice of holding poses, that you could apply to your everyday life situations.
In yoga we learn how to allow whatever arises in the present moment to be exactly as it is.
During your practice as you hold the pose chances are physical or mental discomfort will arise.
There 2 ways of approaching the discomfort that may arise:
- The use of your will power. Regardless of what is going on you are going to hold the pose and remain calm and still no matter what.
- Or, you can allow the discomfort to be as it is; you do not fight against it, there is no effort involved, and there is no will power. You just allow what is to be exactly as it is.
Allowing what is to be exactly as it is, is the most helpful approach and it is how you want to approach your yoga class as well as whatever happens in your everyday life.
In this approach:
- You don’t react,
- You are not identified with the conditions of the discomfort,
- You become the space in which the discomfort is passing through. You are not the discomfort. The discomfort is not who you are. You are that which is aware of the discomfort. Now you have transcended the discomfort. Now the discomfort is no longer controlling you even though it may still be there.
The physical, emotional, mental discomforts and the challenging situations and people that happen in your daily life are similar to the challenges that arise in your yoga practice just on a much larger scale. If you practice how to handle them in your practice you will be better in handling them when they arise in your daily life.
Second in yoga you learn to be as free of thinking as possible; you practice being in a state of alert presence.
As you hold the pose, you try to be as still in your mind, as your body is still.
Allowing what is to be, is basically related with the ability to be free of thinking. Because when you allow what is to be, almost naturally the mind slows down. A lot of your mental activity has to do with denying the present moment in one way or another.
To be free of thinking and present to whatever arises whether it is in your yoga practice or in your daily life is the ultimate goal of a Yogi!
I wish you well. Make sure to leave me some comments below and let me know how your yoga practice and your daily life practice is going. I would love to hear from you.