AWAKENING CONNECTION, June 2005

Yoga is a Sanskrit word that literally means "yoke."   The practice of yoga is the practice of yoking together or unifying body and mind, which really means penetrating into the experience of them not being separate in the first place. You can also think of it as experiencing that unity or connectedness between the individual and the universe as a whole.   - John Kabat Zinn

It's ironic that in an age where so much communication and connection can happen almost instantaneously through electronic mechanisms, most of us feel isolated and disconnected.   However, as you practice yoga, you may begin to realize that it is not the lack of real connection that causes this feeling, but the *illusion* of isolation.   For example, stop and consider a simple food like an apple.   How many connections were made in various parts of the world just to bring that food to your table?   But because you did not grow the food or water it with your own hands, it may not be easy to perceive the direct connection of the food to the earth to your body.

As much as yoga is a physical release from our typical physical stances (slouching, sitting on chairs, typing at a computer for long stretches of time), yoga is also an emotional release from our typical emotional stances (feeling harried, just going through the motions of our day to day, tuning out through TV, drugs, alcohol).   Our modern life is a rush to move from one thing to the next in rapid succession, or seemingly better yet, to do them all at the same time (we even have a word to denote this: multitasking).   As we're flashed images on television, and even bombarded with advertising in most every conceivable place, most of lose our connection to the larger picture.   We can't see the forest for the trees.  

Likely you've noticed the signs of overstimulation - feeling numb to sensory awareness, an inability to concentrate on the person in front of you, a fatigue even though you've done nothing strenuous.   The practice of yoga is very much a refuge from the exciting, and sometimes overwhelming, pace of the world.   As Rodney Yee writes again,

"By taking the time to do a yoga practice, you give yourself the opportunity to digest your experiences and therefore awaken your consciousness of connection."

Often when I finish teaching a session, I will invite my students to consider that their yoga practice is not ending.   Only our time together on the mat has ended -   the big yoga of life, Yoga with a capital Y, is now beginning.    This is the yoga of relationship - with yourself, with other humans on the planet, and even with the planet itself and everything on it.    From the apple you eat to the people you live with, Yoga is truly practiced in those little moments when you become fully present and awaken your connection to being here, right now.   Bit by bit, we become aware that this apple we're eating is absolutely luscious, that this person we're talking to deserves our full presence, that the flowers on the neighbors porch, and the bright dress the little child is wearing in the park, are worthy of a moment of contemplation.    Little moments add up quickly, and will change the tone of your day, and then, of your life!

Namaste,