Yoga : Doorway to the Cosmos

The various limbs of Yoga are the keys to unlocking the doorway to our own divinity. Because they offer ways for us to come back into alignment with the grand cosmic puzzle.. of which we are a single but very important piece.

Some people like to say “threads of tapestry”…. Or “limbs of a body”… or “members of a family”. We’re all saying the same thing. And that Thing (the cosmos, God, consciousness) would be entirely incomplete without us.

Yes, folks. Hear this now. Yoga IS (and always has been) a spiritual practice .. even if it doesn’t always feel like it. Each person reading this knows that their relationship to their Yoga practice is very different than their relationship to other physical movements they engage in or other reflective habits you have.

It’s different than how you feel when you go to CrossFit or .. Pilates or .. dance or .. your run club or .. a team sport you play, or .. your therapists office. Yoga just feels different on the body and mind when you do it… AND after you’re done. And you’ve watched the effects of it spread into other areas of your life.

Right?

Even as you read this, just nod your head yes if you’ve had that realization at any point in your yoga tenure.

It’s those moments when you go… ‘hm.. I didn’t react to that situation the way I normally would have.’ You noticed that you didn’t get angry; you didn’t have a panic attack; you didn’t instinctively shut down. Whatever your typical response to the daily frustrations of life or perhaps an adversarial confrontation… you didn’t do the thing. And that… caused you to pause.

Anybody? Let me see those hands Yeah, because, me too. Hi.

For me, it was anxiety. I used to have a really high anxiety baseline. I was super super high strung. I just got upset about everything. Everything hit a button, a chord, ‘the electric fence’ (so to speak). I reacted with startle and anger and frustration to almost every situation. It was horrible. I didn’t want to be like that. I hated how it felt. And…. It was just there. I couldn’t (seemingly) change it. And I hated myself for it because I saw how negatively it impacted the relationships I had and those I hoped to have.

I, sadly wasn’t given the skills early on in life to deal with this, unravel this, talk and communicate about all the things I was feeling and so they just lived inside. And I tried to control them, and sometime I did, but a lot of the time I didn’t. And in my younger adult years, the way I coped when I was tired of controlling them was by drinking and partying. Drinking and partying.. and cigarettes.. and weed. I used each of these as an escape from what I didn’t want to feel.