Yoga Is For Everybody? Not Quite...

This 2-minute quiz shows you if yoga is for you. Or what you should do instead.

Why We Should Envy Dogs

Happiness | Lifestyle

Confessions of a Yogi – A weekly column by Jamie Silverstein.

Some days I really love my life.  I feel the flow.  I smile.  I chat with people.  Teaching yoga feels more like a glorious witnessing than my day job.  The world brings me free samples and 'yes'es.  Some days are bliss.  And, then there are the other days.  The 'dog' days if you will.

Dog days for me are not the lazy days but the days that I feel my mind barking. And, I, too often, bark back.

'Why has that person not gotten back to me?'

'Did you really need to ask me that in front of them?'

I feed my puppy mind with growly frustration and incomprehension.  Or, worse bite.  And, yet, I know enough about myself to know that I perpetuate BOTH of the glorious and 'dog' perceptions of my days.  

Yogic philosophy tells us through ours perpetual same actions or samskaras we create our reality and our karmic destiny.  We both kindle and evoke our own futures.  This is why our asana practice can be SO powerful.  We can change our destiny one breath at a time, by mindfully questioning our habituated self-identification in the flow.

Why was it that you 'could not' hold a tree pose?

What was it you thought you 'could not change'?

Simply:  Yoga can help us (re)habituate our beliefs, ultimately inviting us to change our actions.

Consider this situation:  You are working on your taxes.  Your dog is barking at your knee because it wants love.  Your dog does not know you are on a deadline.  It's a dog.  You have a choice.  You can bark back.  You can get frustrated.  You can continue your habit of 'tasks before moments'.

Or, you can remember it's a dog.

When we remember that we are not the center of the universe but, rather, a piece of it, we can stop barking.  That's when the habits change.  Because habits are samskara – literally 'same' + 'action'.

A dog just wants to be pet.  The sun just wants to shine.  And, you….

What if you remembered that you were part of the magic too?

*A cosmic hug to ZZ for inspiration!

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