What You Focus on Expands

Recently at our July Yoga Evening Event at Oakhaven, I read, “the foundation of yoga is Abhayasa, consistent steady practice in the direction you are going.” This sparked a number of great conversations, useful to us all at this particular time, and at all times really.

In contemplating these conversations, I began to plan the course of our upcoming months of practice, and wanted to bring us back to the 8 Limbs of Ashtanga Yoga practice with a specific point. If we learn the significance of each of the 8 Limbs in order, we start with the Yamas and the Niyamas, the ethical precepts and disciplines which govern how we project ourselves into this world and interact with others, as these are the moral values which help us all evolve in our lifetime, treating each other with kindness and respect.

The next limb is Asana, and it is easy to connect to the physical practice as we all connect first to our bodies, the outermost of the 5 Koshas. At this time of a global pandemic, we are finding that anxiety and stress have risen to such a high that the physical body is being hijacked by the mind and the fight or flight is well into overdrive.

So much so that more and more people are in “freeze” or “dissociate” mode and here is where we must come back to our asana practice, to put the mind on the body and not only see but feel that everything is ok, so that we can accept that we are indeed safe, and that we can use our practice for grounding as well as a springboard over the hurdle of fear. More than ever, we need to bridge the gap between just focusing on “yoga asana for physical strength, flexibility and balance” to the next Limbs of Pranayama, Pratyhara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi – all of these are geared toward mindfulness and meditation practices, ie turning inward, delving deeper.

Where your mind goes, your energy goes, what you focus on expands. Here is where we are going to travel together in this coming yoga school year at Life Fit. We will work together while apart -we will each make steady progress in the direction of our own self-growth, applying what we learn in our group practices.

We will celebrate each other’s milestones’ along the way.

Here is where community counts and where we must pull each other up. My humanity is bound up in yours.

I look forward to meeting you on the mat!