I went to a new yoga studio yesterday,
and found the class I took there quite refreshing. It wasn't so much
that the teacher was super amazing - she really wasn't - as that the
class she taught was so calm and therapeutic. Of course, there were
some challenging poses; any yoga pose is challenging when you bring
your full physical and mental attention to it. But there was also
meditation to start and end class, and a feeling of calm and
sensitivity in the room that made its way into my mind and body. I
was able to be present in a way that I have not been in a yoga class
(or anywhere else) in quite some time.
The studio I normally go to holds
one-hour classes that are incredibly intense from a physical
perspective. They are crowded - mats are laid down edge to edge like the patches of a room-sized quilt - and it's
hard not to feel as if you're at some kind of yoga revival. I don't
mean to be overly critical or dismissive of this approach: it draws a
huge crowd and is definitely an intense workout. I'm just not sure
that an intense workout is what I'm really looking for from yoga
anymore.
What am I looking for, and am I going
to find it in yoga? I'm not sure, although I have been consistently
drawn to yoga for ten years now, though it's never really found a
comfortable niche in my life. I have always been drawn to its
spiritual and philosophical aspects, but never enough so to really
dedicate myself to their exploration beyond reading a popular book or
two. I suppose I'm a yoga commitment-phobe: I want the benefits of a
cursory relationship with yoga - strength, flexibility, a toned body
- without all the intellectual and spiritual work of delving into its
literary and meditative teachings.
Maybe this speaks to a larger issue I
struggle with: a hesitancy to believe thoroughly in anything. I try
to avoid dogma in its many forms, even when disguised by things I
believe in, like nature and science. Does this hesitancy keep me
from fully investing myself in a course of study and spiritual
development? Or am I simply, as I sometimes think, just lazy? Am I
just satisfied enough with the way things stand that I don't feel any
need to dedicate a lot of time to profoundly changing my life - a
life, I must say, that I'm very happy with?
Whatever the case, the cursory
relationship I've had so far with yoga no longer seems to be enough,
and in some way, I desire to go deeper. This may mean facing some of
my own assumptions head-on: after all, I realize there is plenty of
room for critical thought when one is engaged in studying philosophy
or in developing a spiritual practice. It's just a matter of owning
up to the rigorous work that represents, instead of brushing the
whole thing off as dogma and therefore not worthy of my time and
serious contemplation. It's just a matter of deciding to invest - an always risky, often rewarding, proposition.
