I am keeping a yoga journal for the yoga apprenticeship program I am doing under the guidance of master yogi, Krista Shirley. So I decided to use my blog as a way of keeping my journal, at least on some days. We will see how it evolves! :)
Today is a rest day, following a moonday. One could choose to practice asana today; I did not. My body told me it wanted to take advantage of this rare two-day off opportunity, and get some much-needed rest after what has been a whirlwind since arriving home from India and the cruise about five weeks ago.
To sum up, I left my business partners, went back out into practice for myself, moved my office to a beautiful location that is deeply connected to my late father, slimmed my practice down to about 30 active files, enrolled in an intense, 10-month, 200+ hour yoga apprenticeship course, and purchased the domain name
http://www.theyogalawyer.com/ (on my friend Ming's recommendation because, "you never know" lol)
I am sharing space with two of my former partners at the firefighter union hall on 441 overlooking Lake Fairview and this is the view out my office window:
It is pretty much awesome. At the same time, it is sort of like a train slowing and stopping before it can start back up again. Each car has to slowly come to a stop before the first car can start moving in a new direction. With that comes some organized chaos, and lean times before the eventual feast.
So this morning I did not practice asana. I did practice yoga upon wakening. I did some chanting and pranayama techniques in the shower (Kyle Roberts, ayurveda master, taught me that the water element deepens the effect of the practice) and then drove to work. When I got to work, I went and sat by the lake and practiced meditative chanting. Then I came up the office and had some insight about a situation occuring earlier this week:
When we are looking for approval from someone we love, we often try to read that person's reaction to see if it is negative or positive. If we perceive something negative, we have a tendency to take it personally, and perceive that we must have done something wrong. However, more often than not, the other person's negativity was something going on in their own mind that had nothing to do with you.
Someone did this to me, and it made me realize how often I do it to others.
The situation reminded me about the agreement I have with myself not to take anything personally (check out "The Four Agreements" - great book, short read). It is a yoga practice, in and of itself. I find part of my practice is learning all the different ways I've learned to take things personally and bringing awareness to them, so that they can let me go. As I start to take less and less things personally, I also find I am happier and happier.
Practice, practice.
And now off to work. I pray:
May my practice continue and deepen while I do my work. Kali, let me lose not the connection to your divine essence, the Divine Mother, even while I am working. May She permeate my work and may all my work in this life be in service to Her.
Om Shanti <3
