Why Yoga

What if the concept of yoga was to just move your body and see your reaction? Stretch your body and feel what’s happening. Move your breath like you’re moving your body. Suspend your beliefs and explore sensation.

Would you do it? Would you do something without knowing the outcome? It has no rules and regulations, no teachers. Just the concept of being in your body, of opening the doorway into yourself.

As I practice through the years I explore the question. I started from being young and doing all these acrobatics, these beautiful movements. And then as time goes on, maybe after completing a movement or struggling with it, I ask myself, what is the purpose.

Is yoga like running a marathon? After a while the question emerges, what is the purpose of running a marathon? The illusion of being healthy. Strong. Vibrant. Or is it more? When I used to run I loved the sensation of moving through space. Feeling the moving of my breath and the pushing of my legs and the pumping of my arms and the stillness of my mind. Because in moving so much I was not thinking about my day to follow.

I believe the fulcrum of the experience of moving brings us to a place of release, an understanding of limits. And after doing that for a while you begin to look at what feels good, what you can do for the long-term, for longevity, and you look deeper into your practice.

Like a runner, you find a trainer, and you also train on your own, in the solitude of your practice. Like a monk going into the forest to find—what?

My forest is my mat. And the fruits of my labor are a sense of what’s going on inside, a sense of who I am physically, emotionally and spiritually, and the psychological sphere that revolves around my reactions to life.

These are my thoughts for the day.