So, here we are now in the northern hemisphere witnessing nature fully undressed in winter darkness. In the depth of this dark season we usually jump at the chance to change something about our life and so resolve to give/take something up. Our resolutions, mostly, change nothing. Why?
If we hold true to nature’s rythms, we follow her example – store the abundance of the previous season, shed the unnecessary and hunker down for a period of restoration and being while we review our energy reserves and how we’ve lived this past year.
For most of us humans, shedding the unnecessary doesn’t happen easily and so the good intentions of the new year are sabotaged by a deeper, darker force within us. The unncessary are those things we are usually unconscious of – the hand-me-down beliefs from childhood or even past lives (if you believe in reincarnation) that have become the foundation of our way of showing up in the world.
Your beliefs have been around for so long, you live as if what you’ve been told about who you are and what you are capable of are true without question. These same beliefs create your biology, according to Dr. Bruce Lipton. Of course, the ancient Rishis knew this a few millenia before Dr. Lipton!
Yoga practice – and I’m talking about the full works here not a pose or two of mere stretching looking glam on some sunny mountain top – is at the same time nourishing yet deeply purifying. Starting with the body, by shaking up the cells which have stored your beliefs until eventually, with regular practise, the limiting beliefs are dislodged. You feel relieved. Fresh, free, confident and relaxed knowing who you really are.
When you finally know who you are, your time becomes precious and you develop an ability to see things more clearly and become discerning about what you do with it. Yoga teachings keeps you on track, or if you’ve veered far off track, like a homing device, it will bring you back to yourself.
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