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Feeling short of words today. This short writing keeps coming back to me. Each time I read it, there is some new piece that resonates. Today, this caption on patience is just a short section, but please take time to read Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. “I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” 
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 All aboard the bandwagon! I’m doing a 12 day Instagram challenge with Prana brand (#bringingyogaback). You’ve all seen them – an influx of instagram pics in your newsfeed showing yogis in crazy postures each day. I’d never really imagined I’d jump on the trend, but now that I have, it’s actually pretty awesome. So why now? Well, it’s not to show off my asana practice, to score a sweet modeling gig, or even for the 1:10,000 shot at a prize at the end of the challenge. It’s not about winning or even marketing myself. I am publicly accepting accountability to show up on my mat every day for 12 days. I am joining a community to motivate me and then holding myself responsible for meeting the challenge each day. Under all the clever marketing and catch phrases, that’s what these challenges do for their communities. They create a buzz around #yoga and encourage us to stay involved, placing the answerability directly on us. It creates a whole accountability community. Accountability is accepting responsibility for one’s actions (or inactions). It is both a mindset and a skill. By sharing my commitment publicly or even to a partner, I have more motivation to help myself stay on track with my accepted goal or task. While I never really imagined myself being part of an Instagram challenge, I’m already finding there are multiple benefits to it. Aside from accountability and motivation: 1) It’s fun and free! Yoga can be an expensive lifestyle when you add up studio classes, gym memberships, workshops, and retreats. A home practice saves you money and always fits your schedule. You don’t need to drop a dime to participate in a home practice or an Instagram challenge. 2) Expands community and networking. When you follow the hashtag for a challenge you are immediately connecting with a vast community of people who share at least one similar interest. It’s a source of finding your next inspiration, or maybe even connecting and becoming inspiration for someone else! 3) Documents progress. That progress could be leading up to a specific pose or your evolution towards establishing a daily practice. Remembering the importance of the journey is easier with photo documentation! 4) Encourages conscious attention. Instagram challenges often encourage you to try a pose you wouldn’t typically include your own practice, or maybe it asks you to focus on a pose that is typically mindlessly flowed through. For example, today’s posture is Upward Facing Dog. I visit that in every vinyasa, but the challenge asks me to really bring awareness to it. These challenges don’t require you to have a perfect asana, but they do call for intention and attention to a single pose. 5) Nourishes self-confidence. I’m not a huge fan of selfies, or really anything with my face in it. These Instagram challenges aren’t necessarily calling for incredible photography or beautiful models. The focus is on the challenge itself. This allows me to step back from my self-judgment and join the rest of the community in sharing their pictures without the focus needing to be on how we look. After all, it’s getting on your mat that’s important! Want to join me and become part of my little accountability community for this challenge? Comment on this post and follow me @ginamyoga so we can support each other! “Each day you are leading by example. Whether you realize it or not or whether it's positive or negative, you are influencing those around you.” - Rob Liano (the Rock Star Success Coach)  I had loosely dedicated 2015 towards personal growth and my contribution to community through service, giving space for that aim to unfold as it naturally will. Lately I had been feeling pretty frustrated because my day to day didn’t seem all that much different than it had a year ago. There's been no tangible gain or any big ticket item I can check off society's list of "Things I Need to Be Successful". Like so many others, my self-critic was telling me I am inadequate, I’m not trying hard enough, I should quit now. Sound familiar? When our self-critics/egos call the shots on how we feel, they are feeding it in from our society: Success is measured by what we have and what we have done. Fortunately, I don't truly believe that I could possibly measure my success by markers on an arbitrary list. Our culture certainly thinks we should, but do YOU really believe that our accomplishments measure our quality? Do you believe that our leaps and bounds are more qualifying than the small, steady steps? While my ego has had a field day trying to convince me I have not accomplished enough, in reality, I’ve been super busy taking small steps and guiding my intentions toward the bigger picture. I’ve been going through an online workshop on becoming a productive and peaceful CEO with The Yogipreneur (you can do it, too!), I’m signed up for a 7 Week Immersion focusing on finding my purpose and contribution to my community at Yoga Home, and I’ve completed an application for another Vinyasa Teacher Training with Beyond Asana. In fact, I’ve got my entire 2015 pretty well filled with activities that not only nurture my own growth, but that lead me towards opportunities to practice seva and enrich my community. So why am I so hard on myself? Our culture presses importance on RESULTS. Everything is measured in what we have accomplished, and that often doesn’t give us much credit for the progress we’ve made towards those big aspirations, for all the intermediary accomplishments. It’s really easy to get down on yourself when you realize you haven’t yet reached your final target. We all do it: Some epicly awesome idea comes up and we plan out how amazing it’s going to be to when its big and alive. Some time goes by and it hasn’t reached fruition and we feel like we’ve failed. Our inner critics won’t let us down easy. This comes up in our asana practice as well, especially in a challenging pose. As class progresses you’ve gone through all the necessary opening and strengthening. You approach that peak pose filled with hope and excitement, and…nope. Not today. Sure you aren’t going to throw a fit in class, but it’s likely that your striving ego has a few words to say about how you “should have” been able to do it, you “could have” tried harder. But really, didn’t you try? No matter how small a change it is, aren’t you walking away a bit wiser? Too often we fail to see the process as a success and we only judge ourselves for not reaching that distant point we call the goal. When was the last time you genuinely congratulated yourself on your attempts, your good and honest intention towards the goal? Now it is true that good intentions do not necessarily lead to progress, but without that intention to start, you aren’t likely to get moving. Imagine your downward facing dog. Our picture perfect down dog has an elongated spine, sit bones pressed high and heels down to the mat. Just because your heels don’t make it down doesn’t mean it’s wrong – you can still reap the benefits by intending your heels down as the sit bones press high. It takes time and practice to stretch the backs of the legs to allow that extension. Align your actions to your intentions and celebrate each step along that course. To nurture progress in life, we need to set our intentions towards growth and then align our path with making progress. PROGRESS - not immediate results. Striving for the end result without acknowledging the small victories leads to suffering. That act of creating and following mindful, meaningful, and intentional steps releases us from the expectation of needing that goal to be realized immediately. Instead we can see each small achievement along the path as progress, which it totally is! Celebrate your growth, whether you've run a marathon or simply stepped out your door. |
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