Progress in your Practice

Dear members

What happens if, after years of yoga practice, you're never able to touch
your toes? Or balance in headstand for longer than a few breaths? Or
" jump-through" from downward-facing dog to sitting? What if, after years of
yoga practice, you discover that your body will not endlessly delight you
with new achievements and limitless progress in poses that challenge you?

This month, I invite you to consider your beliefs about progress in your
practice. Is your practice just one more domain in which you feel the need
to achieve? What is the "value" of your practice if you don't make physical
progress in each asana? What is the point of practice, if not to improve?

Ambition in your practice is misplaced if you aim to "achieve" more and more
difficult poses. The main achievement of a yoga practice is the ability to
sustain a steady breath and a peaceful, joyous mind, even when you are
challenged. Instead of trying to conquer, perfect, or 'achieve' challenging
poses, appreciate the opportunity to be challenged.

Yoga practice is an opportunity to practice qualities like patience,
steadiness, and contentment. This opportunity is greatest when you reach
your mental and physical edge in a pose. Advanced poses exist to create this
opportunity - and challenge - for every person, and every body. The point is
not endless, mindless, physical progress. The point is to provide a
consistently challenging and focused experience, no matter how flexible,
strong, and balanced you become. If you already have that experience in your
practice, be grateful for it. Be grateful that have poses that challenge
you. Be grateful that you have opportunities to practice relating to
challenge.

If you're not focusing on making physical progress in a pose, what can you
focus on? The process of your practice. Make every action intentional and
mindful, and enjoy the immediate effects of your practice.

* Focus on action and sensation - not physical accomplishment - in a pose.
Create clarity of both. Approach a pose intentionally. Ask yourself, What am
I doing in this pose? Then do it on purpose. Experience the pose as a
sustained action, not a place to get to and then rigidly hold. For example,
a forward fold can sustain the actions of moving forward, rounding, and
releasing. Stop worrying about where you're getting with the action.
Instead, notice what you feel when you sustain the action. Modify the action
to modify the sensation.

* Enjoy the energetic effects of your yoga practice. Yoga poses influence
how you feel, including your emotions and more subtle aspects of being.
These effects have nothing to do with getting "better and better" at the
poses. A forward bend is a forward bend, however far you reach in the pose.
Whether or not your head is on your knees, you can feel relaxed and
protected in a forward bend. A state of blissful flow can be experienced by
any practitioner - simply by breathing and moving mindfully. It doesn't
matter if you're practicing sun salutations on a sticky mat, or practicing
sun breaths in a wheelchair. Process, not progress, creates the experience
of flow.

Your yoga practice is an experience that you have while you practice. It
does not have to be a means to something else.

Ambition can be just one more way to postpone happiness. You will not reap
the benefits of a yoga practice when you finally perfect that pose that has
challenged you for so long. You will reap the benefits of your yoga practice
when you learn to enjoy that pose, exactly where you are.

~ Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.