I have been enjoying this yoga class in the afternoons, which is also offered in the morning, so I went to the morning class instead. Early mornings are chilly here until the sun heats things up around 10am, so my body was a little more stiff. I have been practicing Yoga for so long that I have a tendency to approach postures in my own particular way. I decided before class that I would do the practice exactly how the teacher instructed regardless. Some postures were more challenging for me because I got into them his way versus my way, and I discovered I also had some patterns in my body that needed undoing. I was grateful to find them. Now I have some new approaches that I feel will bring greater alignment to my body, but it was a struggle both physically and mentally to do them differently. Already in my plans was to move to a different guesthouse from where I had been staying, so that was a given to change. I am enjoying my new abode with his majestic mountaintop view of the Ganges, but packing up and moving seemed like a chore. I took a different route on my walk today. If I found myself naturally walking slow, I would speed up. If I found myself walking fast, I would slow down. Interestingly, I noticed that even these simple changes required effort to do.
The previous 2 days it was very easy to remember my set intention for the day. Today I kept forgetting that my intention was to do things differently. Our system isn't always open to change, even if it's small. I wasn't feeling that I was getting as much from this exercise as I had the others, so I decided I needed to make my intention stronger. Then the thought came to me, it is not my natural way to just go up and speak to strangers. Sometimes it's shyness on my part. Sometimes it's introspection, and sometimes I am just too self-absorbed to care what is going on with anyone else. When this thought came to me, I knew if I were to be following my own intention to things differently, then I would have to speak to some strangers.
I could feel the awkwardness well up about doing something out of character for me. "Oh, you silly woman," I thought to myself. You're a grown-up. People consider you a strong, courageous person, and you can't strike up a conversation with someone you don't know?" I am not one that often says no to a challenge, so I started with a woman, asking about a bag that she had. I sincerely liked it, so I asked her about it. She seemed happy to have someone to talk to, and our interaction was sweet. I saw a young man who seemed to be looking for something. He was trying to find the post office. I knew where it was. I felt good that I could help someone. I even tried to talk to someone, a man who wasn't interested in talking to me. It was a good mirror for me that showed how it is for someone else that wants to engage with me when I don't want to. It wasn't bad. I just shrugged it off. It was only an experiment, right? In all this, that is one of the things I am discovering, life is like an experiment to discover who we are.
Today didn't bring the same bliss the other two days' experiments brought, but it did bring more introspection. Conditioning and routine make life easier for us, but they can also keep us stuck at times. It is important to examine our patterns to see if they are serving us in any purposeful way or just creating road blocks for us. We don't have to work on ourselves. We don't need to fix ourselves. We only to be open to life, look for the beauty in it and be willing to find a new groove if the old one is too worn to be of any use any longer. There is nothing to do. It has already been done, so just relax and be with what IS.
I am excited to see what the voices tell me tomorrow.
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