Saturday, September 12, 2009

Happy Sitting

Place: Living Room
Time: 20 min or so
Circumstances: After doing some reading and chatting and sipping of the coffee

Don't we always say that what happens on your yoga mat mirrors what happens in your everyday life? I think I saw that the same is true when you are sitting. My sits are mirroring some things that I see arising in my lived life.

I was sitting, just began actually and Les (not looking up from her computer) interrupts with "Do you know that frien - oh shi...-sorry" and it took me about a full minute to bring myself back to my breath and not laugh. I noticed how easy I was to be distracted, how I wanted to smile to let Les know that it was okay, and that neither were really that important.

During the sit, I also found myself speeding through the practice at warp speed. Not sure why this started to happen, but after 3 or 4 breaths like this, I realized that I was just saying the ques to myself and not actually feeling them. I cannot count how many times I hold a pose for the requisite amount of time and then burst out of it like I am caught on fire. How many times I speed through traffic, without a real reason for the hurry, or the times when I race through my food, without really knowing what is happening. When I slowed down my thoughts in the sit, I actually could find where the joy was residing beneath my skin and I could feel how that joy would shift into happiness.

As always, very interesting experience.

2 comments:

poep sa frank jude said...

This is SUCH an important insight and 'issue' for contemporary practitioners, especially, I think. Does mindfulness and 'stopping' require that we move slowly?

To 'hurry' or be 'hurried' is more a mental state (a mental formation?) than some state related to speed. We can 'hurry' through a 20 minute sit! So, it's a rich field to mine: can one quickly move through asana, through putting dinner together and still be mindful -- be quick without 'hurrying?'

What do you think?

PS: Thanks for making it possible to comment! :-)

Anonymous said...

big ups Coolcat. love the new blog layout. BT baby.