Faith Through Practice: A Relationship with Self
Years ago a wise student said to me, “now that I know what I’m supposed to do, I know many poses and alignment details, I become discouraged at how much I don’t actually do.” It provided a nice segue into a discussion about the importance and benefits of your own personal practice.
Yoga practice is a relationship. When we first start, practice often feels amazing. We feel relaxed and awake and we wonder how we ever lived without it. In short, we fall madly in love. Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg describes this period as “Bright Faith.” We believe in the practice as a means to make us feel great, and, often times, to heal us.
After a while, there is no formula for how long this can take, maybe we start to recognize that Yoga actually won’t solve all of our problems. We learn about teachers who have “fallen;” we pull a muscle during a practice; we realize that the shoulder that we thought had healed may not be as healed as we thought; we realize that the practice has not filled us with infinite patience as we had thought. This is a time of “Verifying Faith” to quote Sharon Salzberg.
During this time we doubt our practice. Sometimes we quit. But many can’t stay away too long because, even though we realize that Yoga is not going to solve all our problems, and even if we may feel somewhat betrayed by that, the fact of the matter is, we feel better than we did without it.
Then comes the time of “Abiding Faith.” For me this came as a sudden realization. I was participating in a “ghosting” activity at Halloween time with my daughter. With this activity, a neighbor anonymously delivers a paper ghost along with some candy or treats in the days before Halloween. The idea is that you will copy the ghost and turn around and anonymously deliver another set of goodies to yet another neighbor.
On this occasion, we had delivered the goodies, rang the doorbell, and we turned and ran away mischievously. As I ran away I fell on the concrete. Before I knew it, I fell right into chaturanga dandasana (four-limb staff pose AKA the yoga push up – see image!) position, palms down strongly. My chaturanga position prevented me from smashing my face into the ground. My hands were scraped up, but my knees, hips, body and face were unharmed. And somehow I jumped up and kept running!
I realized in that moment how much worse off I would have been if I hadn’t been practicing Yoga to the point where Yoga had made itself a home in my body. My very instincts had shifted to include my yoga practice. In her book Faith, this is what Sharon Salzberg termed “Abiding Faith”. It lives in the bones and makes itself at home. You might skip practice from time to time, but what you have learned won’t be taken away. This is a lasting relationship.
As with any relationship, you need to work at it. You cannot neglect a relationship and expect it to always be there for you. But also as with any healthy relationship, you can thrive within it. If you would like to try to create a healthy relationship with your body through Yoga practice, join us!