This week I want to share with you an observation that I gained while working with my clients. It was so interesting to come across this pattern in their practice and them see similar things in my own practice.  And I'm curious if you have found this in your personal lives as well.

I have two clients who don’t know each other and have very different personalities. However, they both have something big in common.

During their yoga sessions, they love to continually distract me and themselves as well. They are constantly coming up with ways to not pay attention to their breath, make conversation about random topics, and come out of poses long before I lead them into the next pose.

The latest is bargaining with me on what poses they feel like doing or not.  I have begun to experiment ways to lovingly tell them to “be quiet and concentrate on their breath.” I have been counting how many time in a session they can start a conversation about a topic totally unrelated to yoga. 

My patience as a teacher is being tested. MMMM….. How do I get these two clients to stop giving up on themselves and move into those uncomfortable places?

I went home and thought about this and how I could let them identify with what I was seeing in their yoga. Whenever they begin to go to their edge, they find a way to make a joke, make silly noises, disconnect from their breath by talking or just jolting out of the experience of remaining still and calm in the pose, following their breath and being with whatever comes up.

Yes, this is the ongoing practice of yoga. It is not easy to face what arises and know how to handle it or just be with it. I have begun to point out their habits that have been forming in their practice so that together we can begin to change their state of mind and unnoticed behaviors on their mat.

I came to a realization the other day.

The way they are being on their mat, all the diversions and not wanting to totally connect to the pose or their breath, is a metaphor for how people deal with other things in their lives.

As I thought more about this It became so clear. How we are showing up on our mat is the same way we are showing up in other areas of our lives.

This could mean a myriad of things for many different people. The beautiful thing about yoga is there is the other side of the bridge where we learn more about who we are, uncover buried emotions, become more present in our lives, develop more patience, find balance within and open our hearts to the impermanence of life.

As much as we gain on our mat, I think at times we all show up in our yoga with ways of being we may be blind to.

The more we open our inner eye and uncover what you may be doing on your mat that is a metaphor for the way you are being or may be holding back form in an are of your life.  By showing up on the mat, we have already started the practice.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enjoy your practice, dive in every day like a dolphin playing in the ocean for the first time,

Om Shanti,

Sara