Alright, Shanti-towners, bidnezz first. Yogala, the coolest new studio in Los Angeles (that's right, I said it), is off to an AMAZING start. If you're in the LA area and you haven't checked it out...dooooo it. Besides myself, there are a ton of great teachers there, lots of class options, a beautiful light-filled studio, and just such a lovely vibe all around. That beautiful bhav (mood) is due to the intrinsic loveliness of Yogala's founder, Samantha Jones. (No, not the Sex and the City character, a different Samantha Jones.) It's impossible for a place not to end up being a reflection of it's maker, and Yogala is definitely that--just like Sam it is full of sweetness and ease and hip-young-mom awesomeness. Can you tell I like this place? I like this place. Come and visit!!
Okay, onwards.
I'm back in the saddle this week, and plowing my way through more of the Erich Schiffmann book I've been reading/half-reading since Christmas. I love this book (and many thanks to my soon to be sister-in-law for getting it for me), but it's dense, and I can't seem to do more than a few pages at a time before I have to take a break to madly scribble down the best bits.
So, this week's best bits (which I robbed for a theme for a few of my classes) were about growth, and about how uncomfortable growth can sometimes be. He used the metaphor of a child growing out of a pair of shoes that have become too small...
"It's not reasonable for them to continue wearing their favorite shoes when they no longer fit. You get rid of the old ones and buy a new pair. The reason you need new ones is that their feet have grown. Growth has occurred. Their feet grew, the shoe became too small, their foot hurt. Pain is not an inherent part of being a foot. Nor is it an inherent part of growth."I can't even tell you the number of times that I have found myself repeating an old way of being or thinking, even though I know that I've grown beyond it's hold, just because it's familiar and because I can't imagine myself really no longer needing that old pair of shoes. We have to constrict in so many ways in order to stay where we are, in order to stay static. And it's painful. The world around us is in constant motion. Everything is changing, all the time.
I woke up this morning, and the sky smelled different, and I knew that it was finally Spring. Change. And even though I wake up, and I walk into the same living room in the same apartment every morning, nothing is really the same as it was when I went to sleep. My cells have changed, the makeup of my body and heart and mind have changed. The air has changed. My breath, from moment to moment, is constantly ceaselessly changing. And yet I have--all of us have--built so many structures and patterns that we use to approximate stability. We build routines and relationships and patterns of thought about who we are and what we're doing, so that we don't have to feel like we're just living in a cosmic soup.
And also, I think, we're all just terrified that change means pain. That growth means loss. I've found for myself, that even the loss of negative patterns, things I'm so grateful to be free of, still feels like loss. My heart still pangs a little bit with every shedding. Will I be the same once this is gone?
And I watch this in classes--both with myself and with my students--because as you get to know yoga, get to know the poses and your body in them, you start to make decisions about what you can and can't do. How far you can and can't go. And oftentimes, even when our body has changed and strengthened and opened enough to take us farther in some pose or another, we still stick with the version of the pose that we know.
I've had moments in a class where, for whatever reason I decided to, say, roll my top shoulder open a little more, and I realize that I have SO MUCH more space than I used to have to complete that action. And I don't know when that change took place, but in the moment of exploration I realize how often I am just stepping into the pattern I've already established, and no further. This is what this pose looks like for me, it's pretty good, I'm happy here. Done. Which is fine...for a while. But eventually that pose is going to start to get...uncomfortable.
Which is amazing, because it means that even the places in our lives where we are trying to consciously open...if we're not being sensitive to the continual changes taking place...that thing that felt at first so free, can start to feel constricted. And not because IT changed, but because YOU changed and you forgot to go with yourself.
So maybe, just maybe, if you're feeling constricted in some way--in your body or your heart or your mind--maybe it's not about something being wrong with you or your life. Maybe it's just that you've changed, you've grown, and you've got this new version of yourself sort of...waiting. Just waiting for you to step into yourself. And maybe that stepping in, that stepping forward, maybe it's not a painful process at all. Maybe it's the simplest thing in the world, and once you do it, once you slip into that new appropriately-sized pair of shoes, you'll realize that all the discomfort has been left behind.
Maybe...
