Thoughts During Yoga

I told myself that the next post I wrote needed to be lighthearted. So far, most of my posts have had such a serious tone. My past personal blog was full of funny happenstances and amusing things I had found online. However, do you ever feel like one facet of your personality takes center stage during different times of your life? It seems, at the moment, Ms. Serious has the spotlight in mine.

There has been discontent and disputes on a local level in my life. Then the violence in Paris, Beirut and now Mali occurred. As I scanned the news websites and my never ending Facebook feed, I felt like my emotions had been shoved in a blender: jumbled, confused and battered. I don’t think I could have conjured up something lighthearted if I tried.

Yesterday, I went to a Yoga class for the first time since before my son was born. It has been awhile. Our instructor explained that we would be doing Yin yoga, which consists of cold, gentle stretches, and more focused on the joints and flexibility compared to Yang yoga which is aggressive, powerful movements focused on strength and muscles. Yin seemed fitting after last week.

And so I exhaled and stretched my stiff limbs and thought. I can’t claim any profound thoughts, but instead refreshing, quiet thoughts that seem hard to come by. I thought on the concept our instructor shared with us concerning Awareness of a position out-of-line, Acceptance of the situation and then Adjustment. She was instructing concerning various yoga positions, but it seemed to apply to life. Over and over again, she encouraged us to make micro-adjustments. Living in a society that feeds us the philosophy of instant gratification, I don’t see many (including myself) who are very successful at micro-adjustments. Perhaps that’s what we need the most.

I thought about my last blog post and how I made the goal to be more grounded and not flitter about to the next new thing, but focus on the here and now. It seems as I have done this, changes have come my way without even having to look for them. These changes are neither good nor bad, just different and time will tell what effects they will have. Life really is a funny, fickle thing.