"I feel stuck in my practice, not that I am not progressing in flexibility and strength and learning new poses, but that it seems like more of the same after a while. How can I bring myself out of this feeling?"
Yoga, as practised in the modern context of fitness studios and gyms, certainly has its allure.
Mainstream Yoga emphasises the practice's body-building aspect, focusing on stretching, toning and strengthening. It is, at its core, objective-driven and encourages a practitioner's feeling of success and failure, achievement and shortcoming by this nature.
Understandably then, even if it is possible to experience even a fraction of calm and grounding from the practice, more often than not, what brings us back to the mat is the possibility of mastering that tricky pose, achieving a deeper bend, or catching some handstand hangtime. Mainstream Yoga can be entertaining for the mind in that regard. It can be another opportunity to play the lifelong game of collecting achievements, developing drama, and strengthening personal Identity.
Knowing this, our school adopts the modern practice language and even develops a curriculum around it but chooses to use the vocabulary of poses, alignment, peak pose sequencing, strength, and flexibility to tell an altogether different story.
By being present in practice with a solid connection to the breath, body, and movement, you can lead yourself past the process of Becoming to the experience of just Being. Guiding you towards experiencing this in your practice is our true objective.
“All the asanas in existence will not be enough to keep a reactive and compulsive mind satiated for long. But not even a finger needs to be lifted for the non-reactive, witnessing consciousness to bathe in its own timeless Joy and Fulfillment.”
That is to say; the need to accomplish, push, pull or struggle in an objective and agenda-driven mindset will yield to a passive and non-reactive mind. This mind will have the potential to feel deeply connected, magnitudes more profound than the fleeting feeling of accomplishing even the most impressive one-armed handstand. Peace and calm can happen even during something as simple as a cat-cow stretch.
Until we understand the Joy of moving on the mat for its own sake, unless we discover our practice as it is and not as what we want it to be, we will instead be in a continuous addiction cycle of wanting to crush the next big goal.
For transformation to happen, we must first become bored. We must reach the point where our cyclical behaviour feels like more of the same old same old. This feeling of being stuck is an auspicious blessing as it motivates you to reassess your status quo and seek change.
There are two paths you can take to effect this change:
The first is to find another studio or another teacher, or another practice, in the hopes of finding an altogether new set of goals to crush, things to learn or do.
The second is to find a different way of relating to the same practice. In other words, to turn the attention inwards to the doer and not the deed, understanding that there is a different way of experiencing this world and its objects.
I hope you take the second path because we have already taken the first path enough times in our life to know better. All the asanas in existence will not be enough to keep a reactive and compulsive mind satiated for long. But not even a finger needs to be lifted for the non-reactive, witnessing consciousness to bathe in its own timeless Joy and Fulfillment.
Start introducing a little more awareness to your practice and giving yourself space to experience a class minus the constant success or failure drama.
Use every breath and every pose of your practice; stay present and observing with mindfulness. Modern Yoga on the mat can be a moving meditation, and Union can be achieved even from the context of posture and alignment, provided you practice with constant awareness. Find a studio and teacher that is likewise practising from the Heart. Find a community or Sangha of like-minded yogis and practice together.
And May the fruit of your practice be Beneficial to all Sentient Beings.
Namaste.
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