Beginning Your Yoga Practice

(waves crashing) So what do you want from your practice? Try to know this. Are you seeking fitness? Are you seeking ease of movement? Are you seeking health, are you seeking peace, ease?

It doesn't actually really matter, because guess what, you're gonna get it. But the other thing you're gonna get is a whole lot of other things, and one of the things that happens with the practices of yoga is that our deeper wants and our deeper desires get revealed, which aren't always what we thought we wanted. But this is part of the play. As we breathe and move and stretch and chant and allow these practices to transform us, as we unravel from the tensions that bind, more of us is revealed. And so part of the practice as we allow more of ourself to be revealed is to simultaneously increase our capacity.

So one of the results, whether or not you're seeking this or not, is that you're gonna get bigger. More gigantic, more massive, more complex, more interesting. Sometimes people think that yoga is about simplifying the life, quieting the life, making it easier. (laughs) What happens instead, kapow, the life gets wilder, more exciting, more dynamic. More fun, more surprising, and part of the play is simultaneously, we increase our capacity for this.

This is one of the things we struggle with a little bit here at Yoga Anytime, because as we're trying to find the right imagery to represent what's happening in the practices of yoga, the temptation is to pick that classic kind of (humming) image. It's not like that. So you're in the Welcome to Yoga show, which means you've started to step into this. You'll have a honeymoon period where things just feel nicer, feel better, you'll feel a little bit more comfortable, more at ease. Enjoy it, (laughs) because what's coming is the opportunity to stretch and to become more of a whole person, more of yourself, which, trust me, makes this whole journey way more fun.

So start, know what it is you think you want, 'cause you're gonna get it, you're gonna discover really what you want, and what the yogis say that the deepest desire that all of us hold, the deepest desire that each of us carry in our heart is this desire to experience the connection of which we are already a part. Stay close, we're family. Namaste.