“Mind over matter or it doesn’t matter” was the quote in yoga today. We were reminded in savasana on our stomach to keep our gaze within the edge of our towel. This keeps the focus inward. Where your eyes look, your mind will follow. By keeping the gaze within the towel, we exercise mind control over the monkey mind that wants to dart around the room, but more importantly, we train our mind to establish boundaries.
Establishing boundaries inside of the studio gives us the mental cues we need to establish them outside the studio. Before almost a solid year of Bikram yoga, (10 mos now), I lived totally by reacting to the world outside of me. I ran around my life incessantly trying to pick up the blocks that fell off the shelf and was constantly rearranging them until I could find the right order. I operated my life like I was on the Price Is Right. Since yoga, I have discovered the peacefulness of living with life and energy coming from within me, instead of at me. Each day the towel’s edge reminds me to keep the focus within and maintain the boundary of not letting life whack at me haphazardly. It’s daily conditioning to develop involuntary mind control to quiet and be still when life comes at you hard. It reminds me of “In everything, by prayer and supplication….”, where I stop, and converse with God before lashing out.
I cringe, now, at the end of my six month journey, at the person I was last year. I handled all highly emotional situations frantically, resorting to crying and shaking and trying to find stability by controlling what others did and said. I didn’t see this back then. It horrifies me now to know that’s how I must have appeared to others. I feel if I had started the yoga a year prior to losing my mom, as soon as I retired, I could have handled both of those situations with much more self-control and grace. But that was then, what’s done is done, I am learning and moving on.
And so, as another day goes by, the towel’s edge teaches mind control, boundaries, self-respect, and grace to manage one’s life, and….I have written.
