I go to a yoga studio just around the corner called Southern Om. They offer only hot yoga, which is the same as yoga, only in about a 95 degree heated room. I sort of have this love hate relationship with it. I fight going. I don’t want to slow down and quiet my mind for an hour and a half. Just like in the entry I wrote a couple of days ago, stillness is something that is so hard for me to commit to. It’s hard for me to rise early and be still before the Lord and ask Him to guide my steps through the day. In a related way, it’s hard for me to commit to a yoga practice that promises to still my mind while exhausting the body and ridding it of toxins.
But then I have to remind myself of my whole “comfort zone” talk I just wrote about. Hot yoga moves me out of my comfort zone. Not in a painful, torturous way. But in a way that takes me right to the edge of what I can do and teaches me to accept my limits. That’s not what our society tells us today. It tells us that we must push beyond our limits. We must always be doing more. Sometimes in my yoga practice, it’s just about reaching the edge and saying “okay, this is where I am today. Maybe one day I’ll move beyond this point. Maybe not. It’s OK.”
So I’m about to embark on a 40 day journey that includes a yoga mat and the weekly support of about 15 other yoga junkies. This journey officially begins this Sunday. Each person will commit to a certain number of days per week he or she will practice yoga and then meet every Sunday to share what we are learning. So I suppose you could say I’m putting my yoga practice to the test. I want to know what will happen along the journey—physically, emotionally, spiritually.
All I know is that yoga opens up places in me emotionally that I was not aware where even there. There have been several occasions in yoga, where I’ve just started crying—not bawling crying—the tears just come. There is a release that happens on the yoga mat.
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
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