Time to Feel your Inner Compass

One of my colleagues is taking a semester abroad, and so I am teaching some her classes while she is gone. In my attempt to get to know her students, I invited them to come chat with me after class and let me know what motivates them to do yoga.

One of them said, “Well, I just know myself better when I do yoga.”

Another said, “When I do the poses, I feel things in my body that I didn’t feel before. And, I feel feelings that I might not take the time to feel otherwise.”

Ah. What treasure.

I, myself, have valued my yoga journey because of how it helps me feel things inside. I believe that each of us has an inner compass. Some of us can read this compass through thinking, some through images that come to our minds, and some through how we feel inside.

Once, my teacher, Sandra Pleasants, suggested that we imagine a garden hose. If there are kinks in the hose, the water can’t flow. So, she said for us to get in triangle pose, then see if each arm and each leg felt like a garden hose flowing. Or were there kinks? What did we need to adjust to get the flow going? Sometimes it was to rotate a joint, soften a joint, engage a muscle, or breathe differently.

Similarly, when we find ourselves in situations in life, we can ask ourselves: are there kinks in the garden hose right now? Perhaps you can recall a time when you made an adjustment in your life and suddenly everything flowed better?

Yoga helps us practice feeling this flow on a more and more subtle level, so that eventually, hopefully… whether in a yoga pose, a work decision, or family communication … we can be in touch with it, and it can guide our actions whenever we need.