Meaningfulness

What a joy to be back in Christchurch and teaching again! It’s been wonderful to see my familiar faces and also meet many new and enthusiastic yogis in classes. I feel recharged and reinspired after my studies abroad and will continue to share the shakti when I see you!

In every class I teach, we work with a theme. This theme inspires the physical yoga postures and sequences I choose for class, the postural languaging and instructions that I use to verbally guide our practice, and always appeals to the students to make their own personal practice on the yoga mat connect to the bigger universal picture.

Last week, my theme was intention. Meaningfulness more specifically. One of the hallmarks of the Anusara approach to yoga is that we place importance on making meaning. Setting an intention. As you’ll often hear me say in class... It’s not what we do. It’s how we do it. This simple idea is at the heart of this practice. When our actions are infused with meaningfulness, with intention, they are transformed. The smallest moments of our lives are no longer ordinary and mundane but are rather extraordinary and sacred.

Think for a moment about the last time you prepared a very special meal for (or with!) a loved one. Cooking and eating are two activities in which we regularly and often thoughtlessly engage, BUT when we bring our intention to all aspects of the event -- perusing old Cuisine mags for the perfect recipe, heading to out to the local farmers market to hand pick ingredients, playing soft sweet music while the smells and sauces simmer on the stove, carefully laying a beautiful and intimate table -- we savour both the act of cooking and the act of eating what’s been created in a deeper, richer way.

Whether we are on or off our yoga mat, our experience is defined by how we choose to participate.

Next time you take your seat on the mat, sit quietly and contemplate an intention for your practice. Why have you set aside this time for you and your yoga? What is is that you hope to gain? What is it that you hope to offer? Let whatever arises formulate itself into one or two clear sentences. Throughout the rest of your practice, weave and embody this intention into every movement and every breath!