awaiting the moment of practice

More Treehouse yoga teachers getting real about yoga. Refresh yourself with Laura Whitaker's words then take a deep breath, and know that this too is "practice".

 

Practice by Julie Rappaport

Today I wake. Sort of. Roll out of bed. Make Tea. 

Awaiting the moment of practice. 

It never comes. 

I notice this moment of never-coming practice as true as any other. 

I notice.

If you read Misty's post, you already learned that yoga teachers are real people. Teachers are students. Teachers, too, fall out of tree pose.

And sometimes teachers even {gasp} fall behind in their asana practice. I can't say I'm exactly proud of the amount I practiced in January, which is unfortunately less than I'd have liked, but I'm okay with it now. And I appreciate that yoga is in fact the very thing that's made me better at accepting my lack of yoga this month. 

"Wait, what was that? Yoga helped you do less yoga?" Well, what I'm trying to say is that the most important things I've learned through yoga over the years - honoring my body, noticing my breath, acknowledging my thoughts and (attempting) to let them go - continue to remind me that there is no perfect and that our well-being has no space for judgment. January happened.

 

 

With the realized goals of running, teaching, and taking more graduate classes came adjusting to a new schedule and an unfortunate decrease in my own asana practice. I practiced of course, but not quite to the extent I initially envisioned I would. But I've been practicing yoga through acceptance, acknowledgement of what was happening, and simply taking things moment-by-moment. 

So, if you ever find yourself in that moment of never-coming practice (or never-coming fill-in-the-blank-with-whatever-isn't-coming), notice it just as you would your breath when you're centering in a yoga class. Maybe in that moment of true acknowledgment, the practice will actually come. 

Or maybe it won't. But that's okay. It will come back, I promise.