I like to remind students, as I have oft been reminded, that yoga "is not a race and it's not synchronized swimming." By that I hope to subdue the (sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious) tendency to be in a hurry and to compare one's practice to someone else's. Often when I look into a room of students, regardless of their experience level or the longevity of their practice, I see an embodiment of "faster is better." During "windshield wiper" twists, for example, I see legs flapping back and forth so fast I want to say Your wipers are on monsoon when they should be on drizzle! That student isn't thinking about what they are doing or why, they are just going through the motions.
I also witness a lot of compromised alignment and mindfulness for the sake of "keeping up." Sometimes another person's pose or the teacher's instructions are translated in your mind (and then in your body) as "you must do this right now." Actually, my instructions are more of a preview or guide for what you can expect to do in the next few moments/seconds/minutes, not a command to perform immediately. It's like when your GPA says "turn right in 500 feet." You know you have to stay focused on your current position and actions while also preparing for what comes next. That's why you hear things like "with your next inhalation..." and "when you are ready..." included with the instruction. I'm like the Garmin for your sticky mat! :)
It's reasonable that you want to participate in the class, you want to keep up with the instructions, you want to do the same thing(s) as your fellow students. It makes you feel proud and excited which are valid feelings. Especially when the instruction happens to be something that you know you can actually do, you may be inadvertently provoked into hurriedness in order to feel that sense of accomplishment. Also nobody wants to be the person in the group who is still trying to get their back foot to step forward into Lunge while everyone else has already been in Warrior for three breaths. And nobody wants to be the only person who goes to the wall during Headstand.
But why? Those are arbitrary measurements of capability which in no way define your skillfulness. Those kinds of impetuous value judgments only perpetuate insecurities and inadequacies when your practice should be a source of empowerment and, if anything, a measurement of all the things you can in fact do.
When you turn yoga into a chase or competition -- either with others or yourself -- you risk losing your sense of direction and getting lost. Then, rather than trusting your ability to take one steady step after another, you just worry about what's around the corner. We waste a lot of time worrying about what is about to happen -- and not in the mindfully prepared way I mentioned earlier, but hastily and conditionally -- and then we aren't engaged in what is currently happening. Instead you think about poses you know are coming later in the practice, you think about next week's practice, you even think about next year's practice. You think about the poses that challenge you to the point of frustration or frighten you to the point of inertia. And you try to pep-talk yourself into an experience that doesn't even exist yet because the moment hasn't yet arrived.
When you think into the future in that way, even by just a few minutes, you are neglecting the present moment. You are gridlocked in the consequences of problems that don't actually exist. And you are measuring your practice by all the things it doesn't have or that you don't or can't do rather than what you do have or can do.
The moments during practice when you move hastily are often measurements of lack, as well. They are overcompensations for those things you feel like you don't do well. There is a little voice in your head saying Oh that one is easy, and I'll prove it by doing it quickly and perhaps even multiple times which will be satisfying! But while you are counting your "I can't's" and making a mad-dash through your "I can's" you are missing the point.
My teacher likes to say that in order to practice yoga well, you have to know how to get off the bus at the right stop or you will end up in the wrong neighborhood. She means you have to pay attention to what you are doing in order to make good choices (both short and long term) or you risk ending up somewhere you don't want to be. Yoga is the practice of noticing. It is a process of learning to pay attention to what you are doing while you are doing it, to feel what you are feeling while you are feeling it. To notice means to know, not to judge and not to compete. It isn't about measuring or labeling, or liking or disliking, or accepting or rejecting. It's not about finish lines or best times. And it isn't Simon Says. It is about witnessing.
You may be in a room full of other yogis all taking part in the same led class, but you are there with and for yourself. It is okay if you need a prop when no one else does. Or if you don't "take a vinyasa" every time your neighbor does. Or if you used to stay in Headstand for ten minutes but you don't anymore. Whatever another student is doing and the pace at which they are doing it is irrelevant to your own practice. As is whatever you were doing in your last practice or will be doing in the next. What is relevant is that you know how pay to attention; that you can pause to notice right now just the way it is. Be in your own practice. Be in your own existence.
There is no itinerary. There is no timetable for mastering any given pose or sequence of poses. In fact there are so many contingencies influencing the performance of asana: body shape and size and proportion, character and disposition, desires and goals, motivations, psychologies, quantities and qualities of investment, accessibilities, preparedness, maturity and background, etc. It is a multifaceted experience as well as an experiment perpetually developing.
By learning how to slow down and really notice what you are doing while you are doing it, you will learn how to thoroughly cherish your practice in its current fineness, no speedometer or trophies needed.
As if your true self were shrouded in inaudible fog: the will
to speak is often absolved by the sheer inability to enunciate
the simplest of questions: where is your heaven? And why
did you leave me? What was the meaning of that hypnopompic
driving expedition, the car like a body whose heart was a wheel,
you thought you could steal minutes from the timeline
by driving faster, velvet Monza ether, soft top down, stars
performing their star roles though death is often mistaken
for tireless dreaming, what is the meaning of the true self
speechless, yet desperately steering the body whose heart:
on autopilot: inaudibly searches for new ways to be alone
Rumsey, Tessa. "Corvair." Assembling the Shepherd. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1999. 38. Print.
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