When you stumble…

This statement, etched in wood, greeted me ten years ago en route to my room as I walked through the kitchen of a Bed & Breakfast in Burlington, Vermont.

Maybe due to my love of dancing, or perhaps because I liked the optimism, this statement resonated. At the time, I had been practicing yoga for five years; it would be another six years till I undertook my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, began teaching, and fully appreciated the depth of the statement’s thought.

The physical practice of yoga consists of poses, also called asanas. As with any physical practice, when first starting out there is much stumbling as the body learns what to do, the brain deciphers where it needs to be in space, and the mind assimilates the ethos of the practice. For years, as I was learning poses, I would have inner conversations telling myself: I should have placed my right foot closer to the left, my balance is not very good because I cannot hold tree, I look awkward, my movements are clunky, I’m not sensing what my teacher is describing, blending breath with movement is impossible. These thoughts, and similar self-talk, were accurate; they were also intentional critical admonishments.

In the past five years my inner chitter chatter has changed. There is no more self-chastising. Rather, I have come to believe that a large part of the yoga is how I respond when I’ve unintentionally come out of a pose physically or mentally – how I physically fall out or how my attention wanes, and what I then internally say to myself to come back…

I am experiencing being in the pose.

Smile.

Bring my attention back to my breath.

With my breath I return to the present moment.

These are ways my stumbling becomes part of my yogic dance; a change from self-judgment to observation and acknowledgment. Yet the yoga is more than what happens on my mat. It has become how I take those experiences off the mat and into the world; my ever evolving dance!

(Thumbnail image is of me last summer, almost flopping and soon to be laughing, as I attempted Warrior 3 in front of the Vista House.)