When we start to get serious about yoga, we start to take yoga seriously. We turn it into a struggle, start setting bench marks for ourselves and get upset when we don’t reach them. Instead of playfully approaching postures, we start to criticize our execution and even start judging others. Yoga actually becomes cause of stress instead of a stress reliever. It becomes a chore. Something we have to fit into our schedule. We start to lose our joy and then our practice becomes practically nonexistent. When we see it as constructive play, it becomes fun and enriching.
The fastest way to ruin your yoga practice is to stress about it. "When am I going to be able to jump through?", "When will I be able to complete a class without going into Child's Pose?" "Why is my practice not progressing?" Stressing over yoga is counter productive! Yoga is supposed to relieve stress and bring health to the body. When you are frustrated, you just draw more of that to you anyway.
How To Keep Your Practice Happy and Stress Free:
See it as Play
Try new poses and techniques without judgement
Enjoy the journey and don't worry about the destination-it is good to work towards poses you want to achieve but focus more on the fun you have getting there.
Know when to move on-work on the pose a little bit and then keep it moving. You are not wanting to get into the pose just once. You want a firm foundation that allows you to enter the pose at will. If it takes you 10 times or 10 minutes of efforting to get into it, you are not there yet. That one time was probably just an accident. Try the pose a few times paying special attention to the foundational work and then move on. By working the pose this way, you are building it from the ground up. Your body starts to reprogram itself with this information and when you approach the pose, it becomes second nature. Then you start working on another foundational piece. When everything finally comes together, you have a strong pose that you can access at will.
Don't compare your practice to others-Just because Joe could do handstand after 6 months doesn't mean you should be able to as well. See your own small incremental achievements and be proud.
The changes are happening but sometimes you don't see them-you will have periods where your changes are so infinitesimal that you cant see them and then one day you will be doing the pose seemingly overnight....but not really....All the preparation just came together...finally
Continue to practice and trust that help is on the way-there are times where you will run up against a brick wall with your practice and you may not be progressing. Enjoy your practice where it is today knowing that anything you want you draw to you. Eventually, the information you need to move on will be presented to you. However, be careful of jumping around from teacher to teacher, studio to studio, watching tons of You Tube videos, reading tons of books with this hungry need to find it. Constantly looking can sometimes put us on a roller coaster of looking for the next best thing and not being content with the present moment. This can lead to frustration as well. Joyfully keep your yoga ears and eyes open but practice non attachment to results. Again, it is the journey and not the destination.
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