Weekly Letter: Yoga is quiet stillness

  *Weekly Letter is the letter I include in my weekly yoga studio newsletter.*

Yoga isn’t loud. Yoga is a quiet stillness, always present, patient. But we are not a patient society and to be conscious of the push/pull, it can make the yoga seem passive aggressive. But its not. It greets you without judgement. It waits and embraces you when you arrive and lets you go when you leave. You know what it will feel like to be there, which also lends to the ease of disregarding it. Because it also wont say anything if you ignore it. And because we are set to be constantly putting out the fires of what time demands of us, without the yoga actively guilting us (like everything else), it gets pushed back.

The guilt of ignoring the practice is not the yoga talking. The guilt is society building this message that we can never accomplish enough. A toxic culture trait that is as easy to access as fast food. Hell, I should have a drive up window for confession of missing practice. I may already, it looks like a long white counter inside a beautiful Downtown building.

If guilt is the fast food, yoga is the nice dinner with a good chair and great lighting. We never regret the really good meal. We always regret the fast food. Reassign where the guilt lives and stop placing it on the yoga. The yoga isn’t judging you.

~C

Weekly Letter: First Experiences

 *Weekly Letter is the letter I include in my weekly yoga studio newsletter.*

At what point do we stop having first experiences? When do we avoid anything new because it’s safe or comfortable?

Last week I had 3 different first-time experiences. All by choice, I feel I should add. I made these plans and kept all of them. All 3 are distinctively different, each with a different result.

Before each experience, I felt that twang of fear. That sensation pulling me toward the familiar. If I don’t go through any of these new experiences, I get to stay in the safety of knowing who I am. Kicking the can of opportunity down the road delaying who I could be on the other side. Justifying the fear by renaming it ‘safety’.

Leaning on the crutch of my current comfort doesn’t allow me the space to grow and be an evolved person. It also prevents me from having a conversation from experience-thus relying on the experience of others to inform me. And that may work for a while, at some point my narrative is no longer my own but a series of reviews or opinions of others. And then I become exactly what I fear-stagnant. My value is no longer my own because I no longer contribute to society by participating in it. I’d be more valuable wearing heavily logoed clothing and walking around public spaces. Funny how we pay to do that instead of getting paid to.

So, I compromise and exchange the twang of the unknown as a small price for evolution of self. Does it always work? No, I am human and thus fallible, but most of the time, the new experience is a sweet truffle along the way that I get to enjoy each time I think or speak of it.

What new experience are you putting off?

~C