My youngest daughter is fond of saying: “If you want to be a runner, you have to run; and if you want to be a weightlifter, you have to lift weights.” A runner, she knows that the only way she is going to improve on her race time is to run. Her no-nonsense attitude toward running serves for me as a reminder of the spirit of yoga.
The Sutras (1.14) teach us that to become firmly established in our practice, we must attend to it for a long time, without interruption, with an attitude of devotion and service, and a full heart. Students often come to yoga filled with enthusiasm. They invest in yoga mats and yoga attire; they sign up for classes and declare they now “do yoga.” As they immerse themselves in their practice, they begin to come face to face with their ego, their fears, frustrations and anger that they can’t touch their nose to knees. Bodies long conditioned to a state of numbness respond with pain as underused muscles are summoned to the work they have long leveled on joints. Egos suffer as yogis look around the room comparing themselves to advanced students.
Many stop coming to class and eventually quit. But it’s at that juncture where we meet our obstacles and excuses that the true challenge of our practice begins.
