A friend once said to me that he enjoyed practicing yoga but ultimately, it wasn't for him. "I am not these shapes" he said, commenting on the asanas, or poses (postures, gestures, shapes), of a traditional yoga sequence. I understood what he meant, and largely agreed with him.
I realize now that yoga practice is a practice of making each pose your own, making each shape your own. In yoga we seek to create each pose in our own image, thus creating ourselves in every pose, and creating ourselves into every pose.
We seek to do this because our yoga postures represent the other shapes in our lives -- our situations and circumstances, our life events. Often in life we experience situations that we feel do not represent us. "I am not this situation" we might think. The practice is to make each pose, each situation our own: a perfect reflection of the created image of ourselves, the pose-rs.
When I consider my friend's statement, his depiction of the felt experience of not being those shapes, I see that he indicated in that moment that he had not yet created those poses in his body in his own image. Almost like they belong to someone else. I get it. And it's a wonderful awareness. What strikes me is that as we continue to grow, we continue to create more and more of our world in our own image, we make more of it our own. So the spoken truth of the poses not being him expired the moment the words left his mouth.
I'll have to ask him again if he still feels like same way...
Always the opportunity exists to make every situation, every pose your own. Always the opportunity exists for you to expand yourself into the space around you, to create more of yourself in and into the space around you.. As a tree grows, more and more of the space around it becomes tree. The branches and leaves extend further and further, the roots plunge onward. Animals take up shelter in the trunk and branches, further expanding the trees influence into the world. A tree grows its entire life.
So do we.
We are not in the moment. We ARE the moment. We are the waves that we surf.
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