when the mind get's uncomfortable, the body reacts

learnings from yin yoga

Yin has drawn me in so deeply. I say it’s because my life is so yang; and it is - full of movement, excitement, and determination.

My yin muscle needs tending to, and perhaps, that is why I am so drawn to it as a practice. Because I need to sit and lean into the muscle. I need to feel deeply into the body and what it is telling me.

Yin invites me to listen, to my comforts and discomforts, my pleasures and my pains. I need to listen, because I have no other option. I have to sit, and be with stillness, be with my thoughts.

So many times I have found that when thoughts arise that have tension, dis-ease, my body follows: an itch in my foot, a scratch on my forehead, a need to adjust, or to move. A desire to draw attention out of the inner world and into the outer.

I don’t necessarily want this to happen - it just does. It is. It is my reality.

The mind gets uncomfortable; the body reacts.

But the practice still calms me. It grounds me, and invites me to feel the awareness, to feel the discomfort.

Sometimes I shift or adjust; sometimes, I don’t. I notice, and eventually, it goes away.

I make the choice to react - and sometimes, I don’t.

All I wanted to do was get home and curl up with a book, but I didn’t. I showed up, and I practiced.

The practice taught me something beautiful: that the mind cannot be closed, that it needs to be given the space to be, to determine, to think, and to feel.

There’s not much else I can do in that moment, than just be. And in simply being, I find me.

-my devotion to yin