Why a daily practice?
I was recently given the following assignment on my teacher training course – to write about how I might continue dedicating time to a daily practice after the teacher training is finished. To give you some context, as part of this training I have been practicing Asanas and Pranayama every day since November 2017. The question, of course, relies on the premise that I have somehow felt bound by a requirement to practice. In the beginning I did, I felt as if my teacher would read through me when I get to class next. I feared I might be singled out in our group as less than dedicated. This fear, though, quickly faded. Looking back, it took me less than two months to develop a deep and meaningful relationship with the Kati, who practiced Yoga every day.
No, you are not reading this wrong. It started feeling as if in the space of a Hatha practice I was, if not becoming a different person, than at least being a stripped-down version of myself. What I was stripping down at the beginning was worry, for everything and anything. Then, day after day, I began stripping away all the layers of me that I had put on in the name of a false sense of acceptance. My own personal anxiety was translated externally into a barrier of fake confidence, false invincibility and haughtiness. I taught myself how to strip that down, how to peel off that tedious old wallpaper I no longer needed, while coming back to a Hatha Yoga practice every day.
My dad used to tell me, in his own peculiar way, that consistency is the greatest lesson I can learn and apply to all things in life. I’m not one to deny I was resisting his advice for too long. Of course, he was right all along. Even though I found myself taking on a path that my father neither wanted for me nor understood, I was agreeing with him for the first time. Consistency is key if we want any of the lesson of a Yoga practice to stick. Daily, weekly, monthly, we need to teach ourselves to keep coming back to one constant piece of work, the work on ourselves.
It’s no coincidence that so many indigenous and ancient, now lost, cultures had a cyclical understanding of time. In Vedic philosophy itself times is seen as a cyclical phenomenon, of periods of time which turn like the sides of a wheel. The Neolithic people of the British Isles, as well, had their ways to make the repetitive cycles of time. For us the cycle of time takes on the formal change of seasons, but I want to suggest that there is a way to awaken that ancient understanding of cyclicity. A consistent Yoga practice has, for me, restored that sense of natural coming and going, the ebb and flow of life force itself. Once, we reconnect with that natural sensation of the material and ethereal worlds, something akin to magic might happen – peace. There is peace in knowing that everything is in constant flux, but that we, the stripped back version of ourselves, carry an eternal energy, which will never fade. A soul, Jiva, a spark – I am not in the business of teaching spirituality, but if you look deep you will find it.
For those who have already been to my classes, you will know I invite you to spend the time with yourselves each time. We don’t give enough importance to that time in a cocoon with oneself but we need it to become accepting and resilient. I found who I was underneath it all in the process of coming back to the same practice, day after day. We humans are fragile, vulnerable and in need of love, soft and easily breakable – and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If you don’t believe me, why not try to peel of some of your own protective layers and nurture yourself with a daily Yoga practice?