It Matters that You Practice
How many times have you come to your meditation cushion and wondered if sitting quietly for 20 minutes was making any difference in your life? How many times have you gotten off your yoga mat, feeling a bit better, but wondering if you should be doing more.
DOUBT
It’s easy to doubt the effectiveness of your practices if you’ve been at them for a little while. The “wow factor” that you had as a beginner has worn off. There can be many days when it feels like you’re just going through the motions but not getting anywhere. It’s not unusual to spend weeks, months, or even years not making discernible “progress” in your practice. The poses still feel challenging but there aren’t as many breakthroughs as before. Meditation seems to soothe the mind, but you’re certainly not enlightened yet.
Unfortunately, some folks see this as the time to quit. They reason that yoga isn’t doing much anyway, so it must be time to move on.
KEEP WITH IT
But I’ll tell you, this is exactly the time to keep with it. When you start to get some familiarity with your practice you can finally start to deepen and settle in. Until the newness wears off you can rely on fascination and inspiration to get you to your mat or cushion. It’s easy. But once that newness is gone, you need the strength of your intention to get you started. And you start to build dedication as you show up week after week even without seeing “progress”
This is also when your practice becomes seasoned. Like cooking a stew, your practices need time to marinate before they can have bigger effects on your life. As you return to practice day after day, you slowly go deeper and get more seasoned as a practitioner. It may happen so slowly that you barely notice it, but eventually the yoga or meditation seeps into your every day life. And more importantly, it’s there for you when you need it.
WHY YOU NEED TO PRACTICE
Many of you know my family recently had a pretty intense week when my daughter needed to be hospitalized for 6 nights due to a mystery illness. (Spoiler: We figured out what was going on and she’s well again now, so no worries!) Of course, getting on my yoga mat was not a priority, being present and available for my daughter was. While I was waiting in the hospital room all my hours of practice arrived to support me. I couldn’t do handstands, but I could watch my breath and center myself when I got nervous. I wasn’t going to hold revolved triangle, but I was going to pay attention to my own feelings and make space for my daughter to express hers. It was a very hard situation…. but it would’ve been a thousand times harder if I didn’t have the lessons from my yoga and meditation practices to fall back on.
IT MATTERS
Thing is, you never know when you’re going to need to be present, spacious, and accepting of something really big in your life. You never know when life will throw you a curve ball where you’ll need what your practices have given you.
So you practice even in the easy times. You get on your mat or sit on the meditation cushion even when the practices don’t seem like they’re going anywhere. When life is simple, you practice, so that when life is hard you already have what you need inside. The more practice you have the deeper the well for you to draw from when times get challenging.
My hope is that your life is simple, relatively carefree and easeful. But more than that, when your life isn’t any of those things, I hope you’ll have the lessons of your practice to fall back on.
As I mentioned, my daughter is doing much better now. Thank you to all of you who’ve been flexible with me as I cancelled classes and coaching calls, and had subs for some classes while I took care of her. It feels amazing to be so supported by all of you. Sending you a big hug in gratitude!