This photo is from about ten years ago, and yes, there’s my actual, original hair color. And this is me with Erich Schiffmann, still my favorite of all the “big” yoga teachers. He’s the real deal to the core. A gentle bear of a man who is brilliant and funny.
This yoga retreat with him took place in Yellow Springs, OH, now under an hour from where Craig and I live (and I can’t wait to take him there because that town is adorbs).
Okay… enough background stuff…
The whole retreat with him, we listened to dharma talks, meditated, and did downdog and child’s pose.
That was it… downdog and child’s pose over and over and over… it was WONDERFUL.
To focus on those postures alone was enough.
Because with a good teacher, one posture contains the entirety of yoga.
And to really get to know yourself inside one posture? That’s the entirety of yoga.
How much we distract ourselves with newness… even in yoga.
It reminds me of Butoh, actually… taking our time to notice the most micro of details. Going SO SLOWLY that we can’t help but run into our own crap.
And lately, as I listen to Sadhguru on my walks, he is constantly saying the same thing. He mocks American yoga with its obsession with SO MANY POSES.
KNOW ONE POSE, he says, that’s all you need.
As a teacher, I feel the pull to constantly be changing things up, but that comes from how we’re taught that everything is supposed to be endlessly entertaining.
In the meantime, we are turning our spiritual physical practices into yet another mode of consumption. More, more, more.
As we feel like less, less, less.
Nothing will fill an emptiness of that kind.
Slowing down. Paying attention. Limiting our intake.
We can finally truly come into contact with our wounded parts, and then we just might have the patience to sit with them.