Never having had a blog before, but having kept many diaries -- under various more sophisticated-sounding psuedonyms, and to varying degrees of usefulness for venting, dreaming, envisioning and romanticizing -- I would like to approach keeping a blog in very much the same way, with the exception that this blog is meant to allow venting, dreaming, envisioning and yes, perhaps the tiniest amount of romanticizing on the topic of yoga very specifically.
The beautiful thing about yoga, however, is that it is a practice by which our body and our breath -- the things with us more constantly than any frame of mind or resolution to a certain philosophy -- become teachers that permeate every moment. So, every moment is an opportunity to learn, and every activity is a teacher, so every detail of life is fair game for a blog about yoga!
I'll use this first post to explain the reason for the blog's name: Practical Grace. Grace has been a favorite idea of mine ever since I learned as a little girl that in addition to referring to the kind of strong, fluid ease of movement we strove to create in dance classes, it is also the undeserved, unearned kindness we receive from our Creator. There are graces all around us: the beauty of nature, the kindness of the people who love us (and who don't), and the circumstances that nurture us even when we know we are undeserving of such nurture. It was a part of that childhood lesson as well, that as creatures showered with graces, we are meant to extend that same grace to the people we encounter -- never seeking vengeance, being kind to the unlovable, and forgiving even when it is hard.
As practicioners of yoga, we are taught to meet our bodies with grace, as well, and here is where grace becomes practical, and practice-able. We are taught to meet our bodies in just the state they are in this day, and to breathe with gratitude right there. Then and only then is the progress we make genuine and sustainable. Vinyasa krama is the sanskrit term for taking the right step at the right time, when our bodies are ready to take the next step, moving deeper into the potential of our bodies as they open and grow strong. As a dancer in background, I am quite familiar with the approach to a body that simply insists, pushes, demands to the point of damaging a body rather than honoring it as a vessel that has the potential to carry us into old age with all the strength, ease and fluidity of our youth.
The definition of forgiveness I have always liked best is relinquishing the right to hurt the person who has injured us. We don't have to say that what they did was not wrong, we simply leave their fate in the hands of God, or Karma, instead of punishing them with our own actions. So, as we approach our bodies with grace, we must leave out of our approach any grudges we may have against them... our frustrations with shape, range of motion, injury, must all dissolve with our slow, relaxed exhales. We must practice, as intently as we practice our breath and our posture, meeting our bodies with undeserved, unearned kindness, forgiveness, patience and even, when we are quite grown up, gratitude.
May that be the place from which I always teach, and may it be the lesson my students most internalize into their own yogic journeys. Namaste.
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