Yoga & Jesus

Yesterday we got my books and binder from "Blue-Eyes" as I will refer to her.

I'm starting Yoga Teacher Training.

Yoga and I have a complicated relationship. It's like me and Jesus; I love it, but I only seek it out when I'm really hurting.

I started doing yoga at home when I was in my late teens, just sporadically. I took a class in junior college and fell in love with it. I needed rest, and relaxation, and permission to forgive my imperfections, and yoga was my sweet spot. I also felt fit, and lean, and it seemed to coincide well with my vegetarian lifestyle.

Yet, the complications are many.

I'm a perfectionist. I have a personality that tends to lean towards the extreme. I get stressed easily. I have anxiety. I have a history of depression. I have a history of an eating disorder. I am competitive.

Yoga is freeing, it tells you to love yourself, to not expect perfection, because perfection is an illusion. You listen to your body, and you forgive it, and you accept it's limitations. You relax.

Competition in yoga is nonexistent. You have goals, perhaps, but those goals are only for you. They are never in comparison to another.

And here's me: comparison, judgement, must be the best and always do it right.

But that's why I always come back to yoga.

It heals me. It helps to remind me that I'm okay; I have permission to fail, to falter, to sway when I attempt to balance.

Yoga is the physical place where I find spiritual awareness. Maybe the practice originated in Eastern religion, but I follow Christ, and so always come back to God, Yaweh. He can only speak when I am still. When I stop comparing. When I forgive myself and others of imperfection. He finds me when I lay in the dark during Shavasana, and I'm open to His voice, and He reminds me to come as I am.

As I lay with my hands open to the sky, and my eyes closed, and nowhere else to be; He reminds me I am loved, with no expectation.

Perfection is an illusion, and the happiness that I seem to think I will find once I reach it, a terrible lie.

This should be an interesting journey. I'm trying to remind myself why I began loving yoga in the first place, because the path ahead feels a little daunting. And it's scary to do something new, and venture into the unknown.

Namaste.