Staying with your yoga practice

by Jessie Jewell

I often think about things my teacher Kim shared with me.

He noted that often people come to yoga classes for about two years and then leave. His theory was that at about the two-year mark, things start to get real. Inner awareness deepens and the ego often revolts.

Yoga practice may include mystical experiences along with feelings of joy, peace, and wonder. That’s part of why we love it. But it also includes noticing the limits of our body and breath, the ways we push ourselves too hard or hold ourselves back, and feelings of restlessness and discontent.

Kim also compared yoga practice to the thread that holds the beads of a mala together. The beads represent the changing circumstances of our lives. The thread is the practice we hold onto.

When we show up day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime and grow the practice to include postures, pranayama, and meditation, we begin to see both our strengths and weaknesses more clearly. We discover ways that we push away what we need to accept and ways we cling to what we need to let go of.

Over the twenty-seven years I’ve practiced yoga, I’ve had friendships begin and end, gotten married and almost divorced, had two children and two miscarriages, bought and sold homes, moved cross country—twice—and had jobs that went well and others that went poorly. In other words, I’ve been living a human life with as much integrity as I could given what I knew at the time. Just like you.

Through all of it, I’ve held on to the thread of yoga practice. Sometimes loosely, sometimes fiercely. My practice has ranged from one breath in a day to six classes in a week, from one sun salutation to hours of home practice.

What helps us stay through both the peace and the discontent? For me, it’s a commitment to the soul’s journey. I long for deep conversations with the conscious universe and want to discover what limits the conversation and what allows it to flow freely. The conversation begins with every practice and makes the effort worthwhile. And every once in a very long while, I get a glimpse of the Cosmic Wow.

Hanging onto the thread is the practice.

What can you do today to hang onto the thread? And if you’ve let go, what will help you pick it up again?