Coming into Aliveness

Why do we practice? It is a question to consider when you bring yourself to the mat each day (or not as the case may be!) The answer, for me, has changed over the years. At first, I continued to practice because it felt good. I persisted because I wanted to get better at it, take on more advanced poses, build my stamina and strength. I wanted to look like my yoga teachers, elegant, long limbed, slim. During pregnancy and then the mothering of a young child, when any time to myself was rare and precious, I practiced when I could just to maintain what I had established and still because it felt good. And I was making new friends in my yoga classes. Recently the reason I practice has changed again as I have been able to devote more and more of myself to practice. Now my practice comes from the longing to turn inward, to still the fluctuations of my wandering mind, to find a still point in the swirl of life. I practice now to find what is unchanging within me (in us all), to strengthen and deepen that most intimate of connections with myself and through this to be connected more clearly and deeply with others. It is in that place of stillness I become open to and aware of my aliveness..through my practice I come into aliveness.