Often when fewer students show up, Karen will ask if it's OK to do a gentle class, a class where poses are restorative rather than uber challenging. Rarely is there a protest or complaint in response to this suggestion. It's easy to understand why.
Our lives are chock full of "doing". We have homes, families, gardens, careers, volunteer commitments; we shop, we drive, we cook and clean up, we pay bills, and chauffeur children. We plan and organize and keep all the balls in the air every single day from the time we get out of bed in the morning until we fall back into it at night. I've found retirement makes some difference in the content of my schedule, but often the schedule is just as full.
A yoga class that allows us to put down the burden of doing and just "be" is a welcome respite. I find every yoga class, gentle or challenging, lets me quiet my mind as I focus on the poses and my breath, but a gentle, restorative class also lets me quiet my body.
Karen often admonishes us to "slow way down" in moving through our poses. This is good advice about life too. The rush of busyness becomes the norm and we forget how to relax. Going slowly feels antithetical to getting everything done we have to do! Hurry, hurry, hurry is usually our inner mantra.
My husband and I had a conversation just this week about the trickiness of finding balance in our lives -- time alone, time for fitness, time for family, time for meditation, yoga, for yard work and housework and friends and ... well, you know. I find most days fly by, whether they are "busy" or whether I've been able to take time for quiet. But I know that slowing down at least puts me in a place of mindfulness so that balance is easier to recognize.
Today I was up at 6:00 a.m. to greet my 18 month granddaughter who is spending the day with us. I went to Yoga and then to a strength training class while "grandpa" hung out with our girl. Then I was home to some housework, more childcare while my husband ran his errands, took a few moments for this blog post, and soon will gear up for our other granddaughter to arrive after school and both will spend the night. The balance between child-centered energy, sometimes joyful and sometimes chaotic, hopefully will be struck by my yoga and fitness classes and trying to keep a lid on the entropy all around us that little ones can create. Tomorrow afternoon I imagine more balance will come when I spend a quiet few hours reading! Through it all my goal is to slow way down, to stop anticipating what will come next and just be in the moment of what is.
Slowing down is a restorative practice no matter what's going on in our lives. And that's a good thing.
Namaste, donnajurene
Photo Credit: pixabay.com
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