Yoga Practice – A Time of Quiet
In the busy and bright world that we live in one of the advantages of yoga is that it is a basically a silent practice. We do not jump around to loud energetic music like in an aerobics class, in yoga we focus on the breath and the internal processes of the practice, some classes have a meditative kind of music plays low in the background but it is not necessary for practice to have music. The only noise is the sound of the teacher’s instructions and voice; in fact for many people yoga is a much needed time of quiet reflection in a hectic life.
For a one hour class or twenty minutes in your living room you are totally focused on the quiet of your breath and the serenity of your practice. You are not thinking of the long list of things you need to do, I usually arrive at yoga breathless and in a rush but as soon as I roll out my mat this is me in this moment. A lot of times in the day we are focus on what we have to do in the future, work, shopping or thinking of things we wish we had done differently we are rarely focused on the now moment, the present.
As my yoga teacher is fond of saying, for this practice your thoughts should only be focused on what is happening on your mat not on the person next to you or what your are going to cook for dinner. The focus is on the breath and on your yoga.
It was really only when I started yoga regularly that I noticed now busy and noisy life is, if you live in a town or city, moments of quiet are rare unless you go to the park early in the morning and even then traffic starts up early as people go to work. I believe that if you incorporate regular periods of quiet in your life you very quickly become a calmer and more relaxed person who deals well with times of stress; this is what happened to me. It is as if the body and minds neutral point is set at a lower calmer level due to relaxation practice so that it takes longer to become stressed and also the level that the body and mind registers stress is higher. Since starting yoga and relaxation daily, people have commented on my much calmer nature, things like traffic jams and other daily irritations just don’t seem important enough to get excited about; I just go with the flow.
The reason that I know that it was yoga that caused this calm, is that when I was unable to go to classes because of other commitments and I skipped my home practice, I was much quicker to get irritated about daily ups and downs. I quickly pulled myself up about this and got my yoga mat out and sorted myself out with a calming bout of yoga.
Donna Houston
