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.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
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2 comments:
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! :-)
big ups Coolcat. love the new blog layout. BT baby.
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