Rediscovering Yoga

When I was a kid, my dad and I used to do yoga and meditate every day. It was a routine we both enjoyed, and I have fond memories of that time we spent together. 

When I was older I got really into yoga for a while, I would do it for about an hour and a half each day. I loved how it made me feel physically and internally. It allowed my meditations to be more settled too. 

But life got busy, and for various reasons, I lost the regular practice of yoga. I missed it but I couldn’t see a way to do it regularly. And you know the way my mind works: if I can’t do it regularly, I don’t want to do it at all. So yoga sat on the sideline for many years.

Maybe Taking a Month Off Helped

The practice of “doing nothing” last month allowed me to consider other ideas for my time besides just work. My partner and I took a yoga class which reminded me how good it feels to do yoga. That teacher didn’t continue the classes, but she gave me some resources for online yoga training. 

Then I remembered that I have an app for my yoga that I used to use some years ago. I opened it up and it was all there, upgraded even. I could feel the pieces starting to fall into place again.

But I Still Didn’t Have the Time

On a whim, I did yoga for an hour last Saturday and Sunday. I knew I wouldn’t be able to continue when I went back to work, but I just wanted to do it even just once or twice. It felt wonderful. But I figured that will probably be all.

However, I decided to question my thinking about it. I took the thought, “It’s impossible to do what I want,” to inquiry. This was my first piece of work coming back to doing The Work of Byron Katie after my month off. 

I’m still just starting this work, but it feels like opening the possibilities again. Maybe it’s unrealistic that I’ll be doing an hour and a half of yoga every day at this point, but I’m seeing how there is time in the morning to do some yoga, maybe 15 min, maybe 30 min, maybe more. 

My Mind Was Closed

I didn’t want just a little yoga, I wanted it all. And I saw that as impossible. But when I did The Work on it, I saw that I can start where I am. My desire to do more yoga is valid, but I have other desires too. 

In the past, I would have dumped everything else as I did when I lived in an ashram in my 20’s. Now, I prefer an integrated life, and that means gradually building a yoga practice again, not cutting everything else out in favor of it.

With a little inquiry, the impossible becomes possible, even if it doesn’t look exactly as I might have fantasized. I love how The Work keeps me grounded. With just a little inquiry, I’m finding a way to connect my dreams with my reality in a balanced way. And it feels like I’m coming back home again.

Are You Ready To Find More Balance in Your Life?

If you want to question the thoughts that prevent you from being at home with yourself, join us for The Work 101 course starting Sep 13. You will learn how to go from stress to self-inquiry. And you never know what you will find when you look.

Learn more about this course and sign up for The Work 101 starting Sep 13 here. Registration closes on Sep 8.

Have a great week,
Todd

“So the confused mind comes to unlearn its troubling thought through inquiry. It comes not only to see that the thought isn’t true, but also to understand the specific effects of believing it, the price in anger or sorrow or resentment that it pays when it believes the thought, and the freedom that would be available without it, and it sees also that the thought’s opposites could be at least as true. Eventually it realizes that reality is all mind and that the world changes as its perception changes. ” Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy

Further reading: The Work Is Only Exploration