Discomfort in yoga posture practice
How often are you not comfortable in your body or with the thoughts that your mind accumulates? How often do you experience discomfort in body and mind, one caused by the other, even in yoga posture practice?
Yoga posture practice can be an invitation to get over that discomfort. Practicing postures in flow or stillness whereby we listen to the body, inviting our mind to follow it, can do that. Yoga offers great tools to encourage stagnation in body and mind to be released. Move your body and your mind will follow.
While applying i.e. the Dynamic yoga training method, we invite the body to open from the inside out. In the process, we create a feeling of spaciousness, to be felt in the body, most obvious in the chest and belly. Postures and movements feel easier, more satisfying, more fulfilling. Less effort is needed, it feels like floating while flowing from posture to posture. Boundaries and body parts seem to dissolve and melt while holding postures. Body & mind eventually are comfortable within the movements and in stillness.
It is clearly visible for the observer: movements and postures are charged and appear as if magic happens to be present.
The body is speaking to us
We need to be willing to listen to the body by recognizing sensations. We then respond to these sensations with sensitivity, dedication, an open mind, generosity and passion. Learning to listen to the body will teach us to accept and respect our body and become more familiar with it. We might experience challenge and ease, limitations and a range of motion that feels encouraging. Accepting and enjoying all this will bring satisfaction to our practice, nourishment to our whole being and love for who we are.
We might even get a glimpse of who we really are, stepping away from certain ideas about who we are or should be. Or what our body should look like and feel like. Not to forget what we should look like in yoga postures. That’s the obvious – what does it look like? Yoga is an invitation to explore and become familiar with the more subtle, the less obvious. Enjoy the journey!