The Yoga Hater

At what point in our lives did we replace surrender with effort? Yoga brings us back to remembering to surrender ourselves back to our true Selves and as we make the journey along the way we pick up and remember the jewels of ourselves that sparkle and help us celebrate our inner goodness. This is my theme for the week, enjoying the journey to our inner goodness, and right there in JDC as I posed this to the girls, one girl looked me straight in the eye and said, "Yoga sucks, why do we have to do this stuff and why do we care about our inner goodness anyway--this is stupid." I paused to allow the full affect of her statement fill the room. "And you're stupid, because all you talk about is how we have inner goodness, you don't know us and why do you care what we have--you don't, all these things are hard and you say to just try and I'm trying but I hate it and so I don't want to do it and then I feel bad about myself so I don't find my inner goodness I find my inner rage--so thank you." (Note to self, don't leave a pause.) The room fell silent--dead silent, and I quietly answered every point, yes sometimes Yoga is hard, yes I do want you to try, and I understand that you're allowing yourself to feel bad, but what if today you have the power to change the way you feel about yoga ---instead of fighting against it because I'm not going anywhere and we are having yoga class today--surrender into your feelings, allow yourself to feel whatever it is that comes up--feel it and with your exhale let it go like a wave from the ocean. When you feel yourself grasping at the framiliar feeling of pushing against the yoga allow yourself to feel the difference that surrendering into the feeling gives you and go with it. Just allow yourself to enjoy the feelings that are coming up in your body and your mind as we move through the poses. You have the power to surrender into or fight against everything in your life including yoga. She agreed she would try, and we began to center--I wanted the girls to ride the wave of their breathe especially now, not just go through the movements--we spent 5 minutes in centering breath, and even when I heard them fidgiting, we held true to our breath and the girls would join back in. One girl stated that it was easier to breathe if she just let it happen, instead of forcing--another girl said that she would mindlessly do the centering because I wouldn't know if she didn 't but today she really felt the breath moving up and down her spine as I was speaking, and she allowed herself to feel it. Another girl stated that usually her legs fall alseep in the centering part, but today they didn't, was that becasue she was not fighting against the sitting? I would love to end this blog with how I profoundly changed the thoughts of the girl who hates yoga, but I didn't and she didn't try, but the other 7 girls did and in trying they learned that no matter what they are good, and that feelings are not bad and that breath can carry you along way into yourself and so thank you to my yoga hater, because she helped me and the JDC girls become more surrendering about yoga and our class and ourselves.