One thing you should know about most Yoga teachers is we get easily excited when we come up with a new rad and smart sequence while designing a class. Placing the body consciously through smart alignment is the goal for most of us out there and is actually one of the various interpretations of what Vinyasa Yoga means.
The mat being the reflection of how we are in life, the greater lesson here pertains to the Vinyasa of life of course.
HOW DO YOU SEQUENCE YOUR LIFE?….That’s our focus this week.
We all have the capacity to design the sequence of our life, and we are taught through the vinyasa yoga practice to do it through awareness of breath (outer vinyasa) and intention (inner vinyasa); which really means being very present in every step we take with no concern to where we are getting to.
There is no beginning, middle and end to anything. It’s all part of one continuous cycle and when we start to look at our lives in this way, things tend to get easier, because we can see the bigger picture, the thread that binds it all. “I failed this project” can be a statement that will always reflect back to you the idea of your own failure, but if you ask yourself the following questions: “Why did I fail in the first place and how will this failure better serve my future?” then you are using Vinyasa as an excellent spiritual recipe for both class and life.
We all appreciate and grasp the essence of this teaching darn well, but it doesn’t mean we always succeed at applying it to our life. Often, we get stuck in the past, replaying how we could have done things better, obliviously ignoring the step we’re in right now. Paying the past remorseful visits is not intelligent Vinyasa and worrying about ten steps from now does not make for smart sequencing in life either. Personally, I know these pulls and pushes of past and future keep poking me to remain alert and aware that everything I do NOW is preparing me for what will come next.
Granted, It becomes easier to see this when you’ve been around for a while and start to have a substantial amount of “past” to look back at the events of your life and see how it is all connected and how it all makes sense now.
Why you made this life choice then, has proven today to be exactly what you needed to do. You didn’t know this then, but can you always remind yourself when in doubt, that one day all of it will make sense.
This is what I call using the past in a smart and constructive way. You take it as a reference to better understand the sequence of your life and improve on all that is coming next, not to dwell on it or wish it had been otherwise. Lose the coulda-shoulda-would- haves, por favor!
Life might appear to be happening in stages but it is one seamless, uninterrupted chain of events, one leading to the other, weaving the very fabric of our entire existence.
Stay tuned in to where you are right now and I guarantee a successful and smooth ride throughout.
The past has happened in the now, the future will most definitely happen in the now and all we have is the now, the now after and the one after…
One step at a time, we will get there eventually.