When Practice feels Lonely

Short thoughts in the next few weeks as I enjoy travels with my family.

Over the weekend I got on my mat.  I hadn’t slept well and had a crick in my neck.  I was a little irritated with my dog, and my husband.  As I came into child’s pose I realized “I’m not the only one”

I’m not the only one on my mat right now.  In fact, all over the world in the middle of the night, in the early morning, during a lunch break, and at bedtime people are pausing, rolling out their mats, and practicing.  I’m not the only one here on the mat with my breath.

As my practice proceeded I realize that not only was I not the only one on my mat at that moment, but there is always someone on their mat.  

For as long as yoga has existed it has been continuously practiced.  Certainly, it has changed forms over literally thousands of years. But it has been ongoing for those years.  One long continuous thread of spiritual reconnection that started in India and has wound itself around the globe.  

Yoga, as you know, is something about that.  It’s about connection, union, a yoking.  In modern physical practice we yoke body and mind, heart and spirit, individual and community.  At its most profound, it is a yoking the personal with the Universal.  My small self with the capital S Self.

When I come to my mat, irritated or blissful, what I am doing is making and re-making my connection with that which is unchanging, the ground of our being.  

The yogic sages of old will tell you, that powerful, creative, ever-changing unchanging ground of our being is WHO YOU ARE.  

On retreat recently my co-leader Izzy said: “practice can be lonely”  

It’s true.  It can be.

So I choose to remember.  Here on my mat I’m in yoga not only with myself, but with every yogi practicing in the world right now.  And every yogi who ever did.  When I remember that, I move back into heartfelt connection.  I move back into yoga.