Posts Tagged ‘action’

“I did not come to yoga to stretch. I came to live.”
~Maya Breuer, Kripalu Yoga Instructor

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This article is a repost from our old blog – originally dated June 2008.
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Coming to Yoga

As we age, we embrace new things, we evolve and grow in wisdom and strength. This is not always so, but it can be, if we maintain an openness to new ideas and accept life’s challenges gracefully, as difficult as that may sometimes seem.

In my own evolution I have recently embraced a challenging new thing, one that actually facilitates my ability to accept other challenges with grace and strength. That thing being yoga.

I do not know what originally drew me to yoga, especially as the attraction began a few years ago when I was in the worst physical shape of my life. Still, yoga had an unknown appeal and I began reading and learning about it. At that time I did not incorporate it into my life, but that door remained open.

Brief dabblings in yoga over the last year have shown me that it’s not easy but that it is fun, and it remained very appealing.

Now, having been vegetarian for nearly nine months, and having shed over 40 pounds towards reclaiming my college/high school weight, I just suddenly incorporated a practice of yoga into my life.

The impulse was my thirty-second birthday at the end of March. I received an organic yoga mat as a gift from my fiancé, Serge, and he also paid for my first two yoga classes at the local ashram. Those classes were in the Sivananda style of yoga.

Though the classes didn’t work out, as the instructor was like a drill sergeant, I adopted a home yoga practice that has really done something good for me.

In the very beginning I did not believe that I would be able to stick to a regular yoga practice, and doing it every day seemed like a chore. I felt silly mostly, there was hardly a single … Continue reading →

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

~Will Rogers, Cowboy, Comedian and Actor

In our hectic everyday lives it can be so easy to become complacent about things that bother us and about the things that we know we are supposed to do. A deep lethargy can set into us, and do it so slowly and subtly that we don’t even realize we have fallen asleep on our own life.

We can be sitting in a pile of junk, knowing that we would feel better if it were only clean. But yet we seek out that one clear corner and cower in it day-after-day. Or we can be feeling depressed knowing that our self-esteem would improve, if only our backside didn’t have so much cellulite, but we never get on that treadmill. Or maybe we are wanting a change in career, knowing that we should learn a new skill, but never seeming to implement that thought into action.

When we have a big task to complete or a large challenge to overcome, it can seem so overwhelming that taking it past the point of realization and thought is virtually impossible.

Well, I have been there, I have faced the place of hopelessness, daydreaming and inaction so many times in my life. After all those false starts, after living through the periods when something that could have taken me two weeks wound up taking me two years, I have finally mastered the ability to face that lethargy monster and move it out of my way quickly and efficiently.

You’ve heard the old adages: Make hay while the sun shines. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. No time like the present. Just do it.

The truth is clear, if you want to … Continue reading →