Yoga today: Your wish is my command

The most amazing things happen unasked, like you receive a gift personalized to your very needs. Outside the raucous of communication, someone asks and someone gives without so much as leaving a sound byte in the air. How does this happen?

In our yoga class, traditional Hatha yoga sits along side a modern genteel approach: Modify the pose; Find what your body will allow today; Move do not stay stuck. Such is the language that informs us again and again that “less is more in yoga.” This means that the feeblest of our twists and extensions can leave us feeling invigorated, if only we center our attention to the concept of “ahimsa,” non violence(Do not beat a performance out of your body. Cherish what it can already do today).

This incredible language that weaves the heart, mind, body, and soul of every class, belongs to the intuitive strengths of our yoga teacher, Rafael. This intuitive strength leaves us with that incredible gift exactly tailored to our personal wish. In other words, we receive the kind of class we want for that day.

That single transforming pose enters our practice as if an invisible guiding hand had steered our wish toward fulfillment automatically, magically, without fanfare.

That happened today.I walked in class with an innate need to stretch my lower back, especially that left hip which had borne some sharp pain the previous evening. And what pose should we start off with?–Piegon pose, Bridge pose, variations of the Bow pose and other transitional forms of leg/hip stretches. In the middle of the class I realized the working wonder of this Yoga magic: changing, healing, cleansing one part at a time, one student at a time, one wish at a time. My wish was its command.

That’s how this Yoga gives, fulfills. One can only wonder: How does it happen?