Ever watched a movie with someone who had seen it a million times, who was narrating the film as it’s playing, telling you what’s about to happen, what’s going to be funny, what’s going to be sad?  Don’t you wish they’d let you just watch the movie so you can find out for yourself?

For all but the enlightened, our brains are doing that to us all the time. and this somewhat spoils our experience of our life.

People have all kinds of ideas of what yoga is, but at its essence, it’s simply attempting to quiet our minds just for a moment, so we can directly feel our experience without narrating it.  

Our concept of ourselves is somewhere on the spectrum of a stick figure, to a stick figure with a brain, to understanding our musculoskeletal, fascial, nervous, digestive, hormonal and psychiatric systems, to a complete understanding of all that plus our role in our culture, spirituality, the ecosystem and the space/time continuum.  

What I’m saying is that for most of us, compared to reality, our minds contain an over-simplified yet relatively functional understanding of what’s going on.  We tend to call that simplified model “reality” and act as if it’s true.

In yoga practice, we do our best, breath by breath, pose by pose, to quiet our minds, even for one moment.  The ideal is establishing permanent access to that state of yogic presence, to notice when our mind has taken over, and simply feel what is actually happening in us, as us, around us, so we can actually enjoy the amazing mystery of life as it is happening, without our mind continually projecting it’s own version of the experience.  

In case you missed it, the key is doing that for just one moment, however short.  That’s the practice., and don’t let your mind spin a story of failure if you experience anything less.  Once we can do it for one moment in a practice, we can do it a second, a third, and eventually longer, more extended moments of being in a flow state, of being in awe and reverence.

This key helps us unlock access to our true potential.  It breaks us out of the exaggerated stories and judgments of our limitations, and liberates us towards our actual capacity.  When we master that in postures well within our range of motion, we start practicing it at our edges.  Or, I should say, our perceived edges of flexibility, strength, and endurance, where the mind tends to spin faster, wanting to believe it’s “I can’ts.”  Here our practice becomes listening to our sensations, directly feeling our experience, so that we can see how we are holding ourselves back, and update our stories with more accurate information of how incredibly powerful and capable we are.

As we establish that capacity in our yoga practice, this enhanced capacity to face our lives and melt through the illusions of limitations supports us in our “real” life challenges.  We stop wincing at what life throws us, and lean in to the expanded life that is waiting for us.

So start small.  Start with one breath, this next one, and allow yourself to enjoy the bliss of one moment of reduced narration.

Until next time.