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Despite the lingering temperatures reminding us of the ever-warming summers, Fall is technically upon us. It’s that funny in-between place really. Where it’s not yet fully sweater weather, but the feet get cold a bit quicker. The mornings are lazier, foggier, but the birds haven’t quite given up on their summer songs. Change is amidst us, in that way that can be a bit unsettling, a bit surprising, and a bit hard to plan for.
I’ll be honest, I’m not a super fan of Change. Or maybe it would be better to say, I’m not a fan of change that I am not leading. While I’m not a super fan, I do have a deep respect for it and have learned in my past several decades that Change is, in fact, inevitable and should not surprise me when it happens.
I’m experiencing change right now that feels a bit more acute, a bit more unexpected and a bit more profound than I was expecting. That’s the nature of change, after all. It might not be a surprise, but whoa, it shocks.
Yoga is what saves me when I encounter these times of change. Whether it be a change of season, change of relationship, change of job - our ability to ebb and flow with the change is directly related to our ability to see past ourselves. Past the ways we might personally be impacted, and beyond to the bigger picture. Because our dharma in life is not directly related to a season, or a place, or a person. Our work is beyond the tangible, and when we get too directly attached to something tangible, the universe has a way of course-correcting.
Yoga teaches us how to connect our mind, body and spirit and then also how to connect to the part of ourselves that is pure and unattached. Connecting so that you can disconnect, as it were. I am not the change in the weather, I am simply amidst the weather changing. I am not what I feel, I am a soul having a human experience, of which feelings are a part. It gets a little tougher when we begin to attach to identities and places external to us. I teach at this school, therefore I am a teacher… I work at this auto-body shop, therefore I am a mechanic. But then what happens when the school hires somebody else, or the auto-body shop closes? The teacher is still a teacher whose dharma is to teach. The mechanic still understands how to evaluate an engine without the shop. The places, the environment, that which is external to us can not serve as our identity unless we attach to it.
This, for me, is my yoga practice. Connecting with what is internal so as not to attach to that which is external.