Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

A missed meditation August 8, 2011

Filed under: meditation,reflections — R. H. Ward @ 2:45 pm
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This weekend, I missed my regular meditation practice. I managed to meditate 40 days in a row – every day even while I was packing, moving, and hosting out-of-town guests – but I missed this Saturday. It wasn’t on purpose. Some friends were stopping by first thing in the morning, so I got up early, got myself showered and dressed, had some breakfast and made muffins to offer to my friends. My only rule for meditation is that I meditate before I leave the house in the morning, so I planned to meditate after my friends left. But then they ran late getting to my house, then they left later than we’d planned, and I knew I had to leave to go visit my parents, and I just grabbed my things and ran out the door. Completely forgot about my meditation. I didn’t realize until much later in the day, when I was heading home from my parents’ house, and I felt too tired and dispirited to try to meditate then. I felt like a company with a worker’s comp injury, changing the sign from “40 days with no injuries” back down to zero. Total failure.

In his book Passage Meditation, Eknath Easwaran advocates for meditation every day. He states that the only failure in meditation is the failure to meditate faithfully, and he quotes a Hindu proverb that says “Miss one morning, and you need seven to make it up.” He also quotes St. John of the Cross: “He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again.” (pages 61-62) Mr. Easwaran advocates for putting meditation first above everything else, whether you’re on a jet, in a sickbed, or best by personal anxieties and problems.

Of course, knowing me, I started to make myself feel guilty about missing my practice. Clearly I’m not putting my meditation first if I could forget it so easily! 40 days in a row, and I ruined my record; now I’ll practically have to start over at the beginning. But in the grand scheme of things, missing one practice is not the end of the world. I do try to follow Mr. Easwaran’s good advice, but he also advocates for a full half an hour of meditation practice every day. I do five minutes and feel pleased that I managed to fit it in. And Mr. Easwaran also writes that we should be gentle in dealing with the mind during meditation. He writes that the mind “actually wants you to become angry and start scolding, because then it won’t have to return” to the meditation practice (page 45). He’s right – if I keep feeling upset and angry that I missed a practice, that’s going to carry over the next time I sit down to meditate. Instead, I need to be gentle and understanding with myself. I just forgot. It happens. Sure, I could have gotten up extra early to make sure to do meditation before my friends came, but I was tired from being out late the night before. (And why was I out late the night before? Yoga class!)

I’m doing the best I can, and it doesn’t matter how many days in a row I meditate, just like it doesn’t matter how many days in a row I floss. If I floss most days but skip it one night when I’m particularly tired, that doesn’t set me back to the point before I started flossing. And there’s no point to counting the days, really, it just makes me feel worse when I miss. In 2010 I flossed every day for 109 days in a row (see, I get weird about counting stuff like this) and then I ran out of dental floss and forgot to buy more, and I was really upset, but you know what? I bought more the next day, and that was in April of 2010, and I’m still flossing almost every night. I didn’t get a cavity because I missed that one time, and missing that one time didn’t mean that it was over for me and flossing. It’s the same way with meditation. I just need to stop counting, because counting the days when I do a thing puts more emphasis on the times when I miss, and in fact counting becomes almost like a good luck charm, like I’m doing the thing just so I won’t screw up my count. Better to do the thing every day because it’s right to do it every day.

Of course, it’s one thing to think these healthy thoughts to myself, and something else to really believe it. My head will say, here are 114 reasons why it’s okay, and my heart will whisper, you say all that, but we both know I’m really a jackass. I just have to keep working to believe it and keep telling myself the healthy things until I do believe them. I go on self-induced guilt trips all the time: Saturday’s was meditation, Sunday’s was chipping my brand-new manicure, and I’m sure I’ve got another one coming up any time now. And I hate guilt trips. The real truth (satya!) is that if I keep working hard and doing my best, I will make progress, and little failures are only that: little. It’s my overall hard work and attitude that really matter.

 

Yardwork Meditation July 21, 2011

Filed under: meditation,reflections — R. H. Ward @ 2:20 pm
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When F and I were first talking about buying a house, doing yardwork was one of the things I was least looking forward to. I’d never mowed a lawn in my life – my parents’ next door neighbor when I was a kid was an old guy who just liked to mow, so they let him have at it. Ever since moving out of my parents’ house for college, my idea of yardwork has been repotting a houseplant. Then we bought a house with a big backyard – a house that hadn’t been lived in for over a year, and before that had been owned by an older man in poor health. To say that the yard was in need of attention was an understatement: the lawn hadn’t been mowed in weeks, the bushes were determinedly trying to take over the front walk, the rose bushes had been engulfed by weeds for so long that the weeds had grown into 15-foot weed trees, and the ivy was everywhere. As a housewarming gift, my parents bought us a lawn mower and a weedwacker (among other things) and lent us their hedge trimmers, and… we got to work.

My first try at mowing the lawn was surprisingly satisfying: getting all the little clumps, making the lines straight and even, mowing around all the obstacles. Going after the weed trees was even better – clipping and chopping and hacking until we found the fence under there! (It’s a six foot fence. I’m serious, weed trees.) I spent close to two hours on Sunday turning the huge bushes out front into smooth, neat hedges again, even though my arms hurt from the vibrations of the hedge trimmers. And after each yardwork session, we bag up all the clippings and take them out to the curb.

It struck me that meditation is a lot like yardwork, and yardwork can be a form of meditation. When I’m doing yardwork, I’m completely focused on the task in front of me – the sort of one-pointed concentration I strive for in my meditation practice. In yardwork, you can see immediate results – the weeds are gone, the lawn mowed – similar to the calm feeling you may get at the end of a meditation practice, but the real satisfaction, I imagine, comes in taking good care of your lawn in the long term, planting your garden and watching it grow. This too is like meditation, where the practice we do now sets the stage for future growth. Maybe in meditation you discover something unexpected, like the wasps’ nest I found under the second hedge on the right. (I’m not dealing with the wasps’ nest yet, but it’s sure good to know it’s there!) And, finally, you don’t have to be particularly good at yardwork to be successful, just like in meditation. Whether you’re a professional lawn care expert or a newbie like me, at the end of the day, the grass is shorter. All you have to do is show up and do the work.

 

Meditation Round-Up July 15, 2011

Filed under: checking in,meditation — R. H. Ward @ 1:32 pm
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This month has been incredibly challenging on a personal level. Two days after our last teacher training weekend ended, my husband and I bought our first house, and since then, we’ve either been packing, moving, arranging for repairs, spending hours looking for tools we never needed before at Lowe’s, learning how to do yard work, and just plain settling in. I haven’t had any time for reading other than when I’m on the train to and from the office, and my personal yoga practice has suffered too. Add to that the fact that this was a short yoga month with just three weeks between teacher training weekend sessions, so it’s been difficult for me to complete all my homework this month, and with all the chaos, difficult to see whether the meditation was having any effect in my life.

However, I do feel like I’ve made some progress with meditation this month. I have meditated every single day: even if I was just sitting down for four minutes in a room full of boxes, I still did it. Most days, I was able to do a little yoga or basic stretching before meditation, and every day I’ve done some sort of pranayama before meditation. I feel really glad that I’ve been able to make this a priority.

During this month, I’ve practiced either counting meditation or passage meditation. When I know I only have a few minutes, counting meditation has been a good option because it only takes a few minutes to count down from fifty; it’s like a built-in timer. For the most part, I have been able to keep my mind relatively on track during counting meditation; I’ve had some distractions, but never so much that I lose my place in the count. I’ve become amazed by how many thoughts I’m able to have between exhales! Staying focused on the breath and the count is difficult, especially with so many tasks on my mind this month, but I’ve mostly been able to stick with it.

I’ve also practiced passage meditation. With so little time available to read spiritual books or to meditate at all, I chose a line from a Rumi poem as my passage and have just stuck with that – it’s short enough that I feel like I can get somewhere with it in the few minutes I have available to meditate, but long enough that there’s good spiritual content to get somewhere with. Meditating on the passage has been interesting in different ways. Occasionally I’ve caught myself daydreaming in the background while the words of the passage float on the surface; once I found myself getting sleepy and substituting in other words and images that weren’t part of the passage. Overall, though, I find the passage technique to be really helpful for me in relaxing my mind and having something to focus on. The passage technique has also led me to consider different interpretations of my passage. For example, it occurred to me that one phrase that I had thought was about worship could just as easily be about service; I realized that another phrase that I’d thought was about natural physical beauty could also be interpreted as being about kindness. These realizations have carried beyond my meditation practice and led me to consider how I practice service and kindness in my life.

I’ve also found myself thinking about more spiritual topics this month. Usually when I’m moving, I get very caught up in the physical tasks that need to be done, and I have been caught up in those things, but I’ve also been thinking about more spiritual concepts. For example, I reflected on patience: how slowing down is mentioned in almost every text we’ve read, and how slowing down and being patient can help us in our daily lives. I also did some thinking about striving for excellence, and reflecting on how teacher training has influenced my thoughts, opinions, and actions in this realm. My reading in the yoga sutras this month has also affected my spiritual reflections. I’ve also been thinking a lot about practicing non-attachment (especially as I pack all my worldly possessions into boxes and carry them around).

Overall, in spite of all the personal challenges in my life this month, I feel good about the time I was able to create in my schedule for meditation practice, and I’m happy about the progress I’ve made. I look forward to continuing the journey.

 

Counting Meditation July 12, 2011

Filed under: meditation — R. H. Ward @ 1:50 pm
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Here’s a meditation practice I’ve really been enjoying this month. Practicing counting meditation is simple and only takes a few minutes.

First, before beginning any meditation practice, sit down in a comfortable position with a straight back, adjust your clothing so nothing’s irritating you, and arrange to be left alone for a few minutes; consider doing some stretches or pranayama breathing exercises to calm the mind. To begin counting meditation, close your eyes and inhale deeply. On the exhale, say the number 50 to yourself. Exhale fully and deeply. Inhale again, and on the next exhale, think the number 49. Continue counting backwards on your exhales. As you relax into the practice, your breaths may become shallower, and that’s okay, just keep breathing slowly, continue to observe the breath, and count down. When you get to 20, you can begin counting both inhalations and exhalations (i.e., inhale, exhale 21; inhale, exhale 20; inhale 19, exhale 18, inhale 17…). When you get all the way down to 1, exhale and open your eyes.

I like this practice because it gives my mind something to focus on. I have trouble sitting in meditation and simply thinking the words “inhale” and “exhale” with each breath; I find that I get distracted very easily. Counting meditation is a little more interactive and gives the mind something to do. The other plus is that it’s a self-timing practice. Meditation takes only as long as it takes you to count down from 50. If you have trouble sitting still for a long time, doing counting meditation may help you to stop looking at your watch every 23 seconds; if you’re on a schedule trying to fit in meditation in the morning before work, this is a practice you can do without having to set a timer (as long as you can trust yourself not to fall asleep).

You’ll still get distracted during counting meditation just like in any other meditation practice, but as long as you can keep bringing it back to your awareness of the count, you can continue counting down. If you get so distracted that you lose your place in the count, then you should stop and start over from the beginning. (I’ve never had to start over, although I’ve become amazed at the number of thoughts I can have between exhales.) You can also swap the order around and count both inhalations and exhalations from the beginning, and change at 20 to counting only exhales. Or you could count only exhales the whole time, or count both inhalations and exhalations the whole time. Give the practice a try and see what works for you!

 

Letting the beauty we love be what we do July 11, 2011

Filed under: meditation,reflections — R. H. Ward @ 2:04 pm
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My meditation practice this morning reminded me always to act with love and kindness no matter what’s going on. I’ve been practicing the “passage meditation” technique that Eknath Easwaran describes in his book; the passage I’m working on right now is a line from a Rumi poem. The passage reads:

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

I chose this passage because for some reason it moved me very deeply, and meditating on the passage has been both pleasant and instructive. Until this morning, I had been thinking about “the beauty we love” as external sensory beauty, like a song or a sunset, and I’d been interpreting the poem as saying that we should try to incorporate the feeling of that beauty into our daily lives. Today, repeating the line to myself, I realized that “the beauty we love” can also mean simply kindness, gentleness, and peacefulness, and that when we love these things, they can become a part of “what we do”.

F and I have been in the middle of moving for the past two weeks; it has been grueling and stressful and messy, and exhausting both physically and mentally. In the midst of all that, it’s easy for me to become grumpy, but instead I want to try to cultivate gratitude: gratitude that we were able to buy a nice house, gratitude that we had a beautiful apartment for the past two years and the means to fill it with so much cool stuff, gratitude that I’m doing this with an amazingly wonderful partner, gratitude for the good friends who carried heavy boxes when they were expressly told they wouldn’t have to carry heavy boxes, and gratitude for our parents, who take us shopping at Lowe’s for home improvement materials and freely give their time and energy to help us.

When I am tired and sweaty and filthy, and itchy from my dozen bug bites and the thick layer of bug repellent chemicals on my skin, and annoyed at the fact that the seller didn’t disclose that our yard is apparently some sort of wildlife sanctuary for virulent nasty little bastard insects, I can work on being grateful to have a big yard and strong arms to work with. (I’m working on practicing ahimsa towards the bugs, but that’s a little harder.) When I can’t stop thinking about the million things I need to do this week, at home and at the office and to prepare for my upcoming yoga weekend, I need to practice acceptance of the fact that the train broke down and there’s nothing I can do about it but sit there on the broken train and wait, and practice non-attachment to the results. It doesn’t do any good to blame myself for not getting ready in time for the early train, or for not planning better or packing better; I am where I am right now, and blaming and whining won’t do me any good, but making the best of things will make me more content with the situation. In all of this, I’ll get there when I get there. In the meantime, I can try to make my chaotic, messy life into something beautiful by my actions.

 

Books: Passage Meditation, by Eknath Easwaran July 5, 2011

Filed under: books,meditation,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 3:29 pm
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Eknath Easwaran’s book Passage Meditation: Bringing the Deep Wisdom of the Heart into Daily Life is a kind, thoughtful guide to meditation for beginners and more experienced practitioners alike. Mr. Easwaran takes the tone of a helpful friend and mentor; the book is an easy read that makes meditation seem doable.

Mr. Easwaran starts by discussing the many benefits of meditation, describing how he came to meditation in the first place as a busy young professor at a university in India. He then details his method for meditation: in essence, to find a passage from spiritual literature that appeals to you and touches you deeply, to memorize that passage, and then to repeat it, word by word, in your mind during your meditation practice. Remembering each word of the passage gives your mind something to focus on. In addition, Mr. Easwaran believes that we are what we think about, and if you spend time thinking about an inspiring passage, that passage will become part of your consciousness, enabling you to become a better person.

You could probably start practicing this simple passage meditation technique just based on my description above, but Mr. Easwaran’s book is so finely written and so pleasant to read that I recommend it strongly.  The rest of the book discusses the benefits of a personal mantra in daily life and of slowing down instead of racing through each day; Easwaran also talks about improving concentration and training the senses (pratyahara), and other just good ideas for spiritual practice, such as putting others first and finding companions to practice with.

Not since reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace is Every Step have I been able to recommend a book of spiritual instruction so highly. I loved this book. It is appropriate for any spiritual seeker regardless of religious tradition, as Mr. Easwaran is conscientious about using inclusive language and making his meditation techniques accessible to all. Mr. Easwaran is well read in the religious scriptures of many traditions and recommends spiritual passages from writers as diverse as St. Teresa of Avila to the Buddha. I highly look forward to reading more of Mr. Easwaran’s work.

 

Meditation progress: five days July 1, 2011

Filed under: meditation,reflections — R. H. Ward @ 9:12 am
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For all of May and a lot of June, things were really up in the air in my life. All the upheaval affected my home practice of yoga in a big way. Even once things began to calm down, I think I still used it as an excuse, a little bit. Also, I typically used to practice yoga at home in the morning before work; now that I’m doing the teacher training program, I have to go to the studio at least once a week, which means skipping my morning practice and going to work early so I can leave the office early and get to the studio. Doing that throws my schedule off for the day, but I’ve also been letting it throw my whole week off.

Last month, I managed to do my pranayama breathing practice almost every day, but I could never get into a rhythm with it; I kept realizing at the very end of the day that I hadn’t done my pranayama yet. At least I was doing it, but I always felt like things would go better if I could have a regular schedule.

For the past five days, I have practiced my pranayama and meditation every morning. I also practiced yoga on four of those mornings. I started the week feeling really pumped up and excited about my commitment to my new schedule. Today I feel less like that.

On Monday, I had taken a personal day from work, so I had a 40 minute yoga asana practice. I worked on some savasana relaxation techniques, did all my pranayama breathing, and meditated for four minutes. Really felt calm and content afterwards.

On Tuesday I squeezed in a 20 minute yoga asana practice, which is better than nothing, did an abbreviated version of my pranayama breathing, practiced yoni mudra (which is a pratyahara thing I’ll post more about later), and meditated for 4:30. I felt distracted during the meditation, like my mind was drifting a lot. I think I might have been trying to shove too many activities into one practice.

On Wednesday I skipped yoga asana because I had to get to work early. Did an abbreviated version of pranayama breathing, practiced yoni mudra, and found that meditation is more difficult without some yoga stretching first, because my back hurt all through my meditation practice.

Thursday, I did 20 minutes of yoga asana, all my pranayama breathing, and tried passage meditation for the first time (based on the book I’m currently reading: basically, you meditate on a brief passage from inspirational literature). I loved it and the time went by really quickly.

Today, I had time to practice, but I only did 30 minutes of yoga asana and an abbreviated pranayama breathing practice. I started off strongly with meditation, but when my alarm went off at the end of 5:30 minutes, I realized I had dozed off. I was still saying my passage in my head, but I was mixing it up with other things and all kind of dreamy stuff was drifting in. I got up from meditation feeling sleepy and heavy and unrefreshed.

This morning, I staggered back to the bedroom after my sleepy meditation, feeling bad and upset and like I would never be able to succeed at this thing. Looking back over my journal and typing it all up now, though, I can see that I had a mostly successful week of meditation: a lot of good experiences.

I think that this week has just caught up with me today. The reason I took a personal day on Monday is because we bought a house and we had our settlement on Monday; we’ve been either been packing or over at the house every night this week. I have slept really well all week, but I don’t know if that’s being tired or if it’s the meditation helping me calm my mind. Maybe a little of both?

My hope for this month is that I can keep up with the good habits I started this week. Mr. Easwaran writes in Passage Meditation that when you are the busiest, you need meditation the most, to help you deal with all the things in your life. He also writes that missing even one day of meditation can really set you back, and that you should persevere and keep at it no matter what happens. So that’s what I’m going to try to do this month. We will be moving into our new house, dealing with repairs and settling in and tons and tons of yardwork, so we’ll see if meditation can carry me through all that.

 

Meditation introduction June 30, 2011

Filed under: meditation,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:17 pm
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Recently I talked with a friend who mentioned having some medical problems. I said I’d heard that yoga could help with the problem she was experiencing (because really, what else do I talk about these days), and she said, “I tried yoga once in college but I couldn’t get into it! That last pose – the instructor kept saying we had to make our minds TOTALLY BLANK. And I just can’t do that!” I wanted to hug my poor friend because she got cheated so badly! Here’s someone willing to give yoga a try, who could really be helped by it, who’s been turned off from yoga because of bad and inaccurate teaching. I wish I could give her old instructor a talking-to! Instead, all I could do was tell my friend I hoped she’d give it another try with a new teacher and that it might be different for her this time.

Contrary to what a lot of people may believe, meditation isn’t about making the mind a blank. The mind is never blank! Anyone who says that to practice meditation we need to make our minds completely blank is dead wrong. Our minds are like crazy drunk monkeys, careening around from one thing to another. Meditation, savasana, pratyahara, the pranayama breathing exercises I did last month – it’s all about calming down the monkey in our brains and training it to do what we want it to do. It’s still a monkey – it’s always going to be a little crazy! But you can teach the monkey to listen. Meditation isn’t about making the mind a blank, because that’s impossible; meditation is about working with what you have and learning to calm your monkey down.

The first step in meditation is to give your mind as little to worry about as possible. Sit in a comfortable position, arrange your clothing so nothing’s bothering you, take off your sweatshirt or put on some socks, blow your nose, drink some water, shut the door, tell your family not to come in for a few minutes. Eliminate the distractions before you get started, so that once you start, you can stay put. Before meditation, do some yoga poses: they keep the body limber and healthy, so that when we sit for meditation, we can be still for a while without the body distracting us. (I got a reminder of that this morning, when I skipped yoga and went right to meditation, and my back ached the whole time.) You could also take a walk, which allows you get some fresh air and some exercise, refreshing you before meditation. Try reading from a sacred book or inspirational text to get in the mood for spiritual practice. It’s also good to do some pranayama breathing exercises like alternate-nostril breathing: this slows down your breathing and gets the mind starting to focus on the breath.

When we sit down to practice meditation, our crazy monkey brains are going to be bored. They’re going to want to do anything other than meditate. If you sit down and try to just make your mind a blank, your mind will fight you! It’ll make lists of everything you need to do after this, it’ll wonder what happened to Kristin who sat next to you in third grade, it’ll replay every embarrassing moment with every past sweetheart, it’ll remind you to call your mother. But if you give the mind something to do, something to focus on, it won’t have a chance to do all those things, and this makes the whole process easier.

The simplest thing to do is just to focus on the breath. Make the breath quiet and calm; on each inhale, say to yourself “inhale”, and on each exhale, say “exhale”. You could also try working with your breath energy: inhale “peace” and feel peacefulness flooding through your body; exhale “love” and imagine your love and compassion going out to all beings in the world. Choose any concept or word that resonates with you. You’ll get distracted at some point, because that’s what happens, you can’t avoid it. Don’t get angry or upset, as that just gives your monkey brain more ammunition to work with. When you get distracted, just accept it calmly and start over, bringing it back to your practice, inhaling and exhaling.

There are a few other meditation practices that I’ll share with you over the course of this month. What’s key is to remember two things. First, meditation is hard work, requiring a lot of self-control and self-discipline. Second, anyone can meditate. Not just Buddhist monks in orange robes, not just really holy people, but everybody. The more crazy stuff you have going on in your life, the more you probably need to meditate! Be open to learning, be gentle with yourself, and pretty soon you’ll start to enjoy those quiet moments.

 

June Teacher Training Weekend: Saturday: pratyahara, meditation, and teaching practice June 29, 2011

Filed under: meditation,teacher training,yoga,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 1:50 pm
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In Saturday’s teacher training class, we continued our discussion of relaxation and moved on to pratyahara and meditation.

Pratyahara refers to the drawing-in of the senses. It’s a gateway to higher levels of consciousness, which makes sense when you think about it, because it’s our senses that distract us from meditation and spiritual practice. We want to look out the window, we hear a strange sound, we adjust our clothing or shift around, something smells funny, and it all leads to distraction, whether you’re in a church or on your yoga mat. Our senses exist to protect us and help us to survive, but in the modern day and age, we rarely need to rely on our senses for survival anymore. Drawing in the senses, blocking out the outside world, can help us to focus on our meditation or spiritual practice.

J gave a great talk on meditation as well. Meditation begins with concentration, and we actually start meditation right in the middle of yoga practice as we concentrate on our asana postures. Then we take that concentration and apply it to focusing our minds. This month, I’ll be talking a lot about concentration and meditation as I practice these things every day. Here are this month’s homework projects:

  • Read the book Passage Meditation by Eknath Easwaran
  • Read book II of the Yoga Sutras (we’ve read some of this; just need to finish whatever we haven’t done yet)
  • Practice meditation daily
  • Keep a journal of my meditation practice; write a reflection paper based on the experience
  • Write up a guided relaxation sequence
  • Pose of the Month write-ups: two backbends

When I first heard the homework assignments, I was excited because I’ve wanted to do more with meditation for a long time. Then J began to talk about how important it is to practice meditation every single day, always at the same time and in the same place. This month, F and I are going to be moving to a new home – there won’t be a same time, same place for a while, at least not every day. As J talked, I began to feel discouraged before I even began. I asked J for advice, and he said, “Then practice meditation sitting with your boxes.” He said not to let the situation get in the way of my practice, and to focus on appreciating the boxes – after all, they mean we’re moving to a beautiful new home! I felt so much better and was glad I’d said something.

Saturday’s class was a big help to me because I always feel like I’m doing meditation wrong. I read a lot of books by Buddhist monks and other spiritual authors, and they always say that it’s difficult to calm the mind, but I figured, a Buddhist monk has no experience with the insanity going on in my brain. I thought I must be terrible at meditation because I keep getting so distracted. Now, though, I feel a little more reassured that getting distracted is part of the experience – that’s just what happens, and it happens to everybody. I’m not doing it wrong, and I’m actually doing it not too badly. I have a variety of meditation exercises to try this month, and I’ll share them all with you here.

At the end of Saturday’s class, we did some yoga teaching practice. J told us to pair up, but my pair decided to join with another pair into a group of four. This meant that none of us got quite as much teaching practice – instead of teaching half of the time, we each taught a quarter of the time – but the experience more than made up for this. It was really good to work with my classmates and hear their voices as teachers. We’re all getting much more confident! We also had the freedom this time to teach poses that aren’t necessarily part of J’s or N’s usual repertoire. Sarah gave us some challenging standing poses to do, and I taught some of my favorite seated poses. We’re all getting there! I don’t know if I’ll have time to practice teaching on friends and family this month, but I hope I get the chance soon.