Come Back to Yoga, Come Back to Yourself, Come Back to Life!

Yoga and meditation, in my experience, are less about creating a preferred experience and more about discovering what is so. We often struggle so much with the present moment. We compare it to our expectations, judgements and demands and find it somehow inadequate or insufficient. 

Consider that for a moment: we measure what actually is against our imagination and fantasy about how we think it should be or how we wish it were. We become dissatisfied with life as it is because it’s not living up to our ideas of how life ‘should’ be. Does that seem as ludicrous to you as it does to me? LIFE doesn’t get to be itself; it gets compared to an idea and an ideal and then criticized for not being something it is not.

I chew on this idea a lot. It makes me really curious to find out what is actually occurring before I have an opinion about it or a demand from it. What IS THIS? So easy to take for granted. So easy to dismiss as ordinary or mundane. And yet THIS. Here. Now. All that is revealed through the senses in the body about the present moment. We KNOW it won’t last but we live like it’s guaranteed. We search and search for some lasting happiness and fulfillment, always imagining it is just around the corner, or buried within an achievement: a new job, a house, relationship, outfit. We can be so busy strategizing our lives, trouble-shooting every imaginable potential outcome, worrying and dreading and resisting and, all the while, we miss the unfolding of our actual lives in real time, moment by moment. 

I just LOVE the possibility that, through yoga & meditation, we can cultivate unshakable confidence in our ability to meet life, fresh and unarmored, on its own terms. We can open to it, savor it, feel it and know it as our own utterly unique experience and expression of life. And it takes practice. A lot of practice. There’s a lot of undoing to be done. And a lot of rewiring, too. So join me in undoing and rewiring and discovering that which is hidden in plain sight … that which might lead to a deep and abiding sense of ease tinged with whimsy and awe. It’s a serious thing to be alive … to be you. Don’t squander it wishing it were different.

Wakefulness is being alert and responsive to what is actually occuring. Fully embodying the arising experience equals presence. Allowing yourself to feel the full-spectrum richness of emotion and to be touched by the world without shrinking, resisting or deflecting requires profound courage. Dropping all of the demands and expectations you have of life may be the only way to actually live it. And actually living your life – being present to it and for it, moment by moment – may provide the satisfaction and fulfillment you’ve been seeking. You can do it. I have faith in you and in us. We were born for this!

were different.