Awhile ago I fessed up to having joined a gym. I said that it allowed me to compartmentalize "exercise" and "yoga". Turns out...I had no idea what I was talking about. Yoga is so much a part of my life...inner and outer...that I can't compartmentalize it. It's everywhere.
When I'm lifting weights or doing other sorts of strength building work, I'm listening to my body (yoga-speak for feeling what's really happening rather than what I wish was happening, or simply ignoring what's happening), I'm following my breath, I'm noticing my mind and how it participates. So why is this not yoga?
I like having an indoor space to do cardio work. I will confess, I'm delicate. I don't like walking outside when it's too hot or too humid. (I spent the first 35 years of my life in temperate Southern California...what can I say.) So now I can be nice to my heart and lungs without collapsing in an irritable puddle of sweat afterwards. In fact I prefer to leave sweaty workouts to those flowers that thrive in the hot house climate. Dewy is about as far as I want to go.
After my workout, I put some peaceful music on my iPod and take a leisurely stroll around the indoor track. There's this one song that has the lyric..."breath connects us all". I meditate on that while I walk and breathe with everyone else in the gym.
Yeah...so I just added a different sort of yoga practice to my life. It's all good.
Alignment Matters: Change Your Mind, Change Your Joints – Podcast Episode
#108
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Katy Bowman reads three more essays from her book Alignment Matters: Your
Position in Life, Varus and Valgus, and Hidden Doubts, and riffs on the
connectio...
5 years ago
2 comments:
It's all good - it's all practice. :) I don't like taking my workout mentality into asana practice, but I do like taking my yoga mentality into a workout. It's amazing, for example, what you can do with the breath in a workout. Why not?
Yes. I sneak mindfulness into all sorts of places. I've found that it can add a delicious subversive flavor to really savoring what is going on in my body in the grocery store, at Target, in the library, at the gym. Nobody has to know. I can be connecting with the grouchy young woman at the cash register at Wendy's and softening my reaction to her by just trying to imagine her being safe and happy. I participated in a research study on meditation and they said, Okay, Don't meditate now. I had no idea how to follow that instruction. Like Shinzen Young said, at some point you find realize that the idea of going to a sacred place -- like church -- is impossible because you never really leave church.
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