Recommit

Welcome back.  It has been awhile since I last posted here.  But I'm writing now.

Since I completed my 360 (+5) days of Adho Mukha Svanasana last January, my yoga path, my practice, and my relationship with my body have changed.  I'd like to say for the better, but that isn't true. I've been following my yoga path halfheartedly. Like a 10-year-old child who must go on a 3-mile day hike with her parents, my practice has been prone to a lot of stops and starts, grumbling and complaining at times, and then, in the next moment, enthusiastically racing ahead, eager to see what lies ahead. I've lacked direction and focus, and other things have often preoccupied my mind. My inconsistent practice has resulted in diminished attention to and appreciation of my body: its needs and wants, its strengths and weaknesses, its beauty and impermanence. 

Everyday offers us an opportunity to start new, to recommit to paths and relationships from which we've wandered and strayed. This January, I am recommitting to my yoga path, my practice, and my body.  I recommit so that I may regain direction and focus in line with my highest intentions and aspirations, calmness and clarity in my mind, and awe and respect for my body.

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me...and I'm feeling good."*

I am not, however, recommitting to a yoga asana every single day of 2012, like I did in 2010.  Instead I commit to getting on my yoga mat to practice six days a week for a minimum of 30 minutes. I made this adjustment to my original yoga 360 vision because I want this yoga practice to be a sustainable practice for the rest of my life. Given life's inevitable twists and turns, it will not be possible on some days for me to get on my mat.  My commitment to my practice needs to provide a degree of flexibility for busy days, or days when my body simply needs rest.  If I force myself to the mat on days when I'm seriously strapped for time or when I feel like crap, then my practice becomes a chore and a burden rather than a gift of love and kindness. I know this is true because I experienced this perception shift during several chaotic times during my 2010 yoga challenge.

Of course, we yoginis and yogis practice off the mat in other ways every single day, by exercising good moral conduct in our social interactions others and attending to our personal physical, mental, and spiritual care and development (i.e. the yamas and niyamas of Patanjali's Eight-fold Path), or via breathing exercises, meditation, or study.  Therefore I actually will be practicing every day this year.  We are always practicing, in one way or another.

Along with my daily practice, my yoga journey in 2012 also includes my enrollment in an Anusara Yoga Teacher Training program.  I don't necessarily envision a whole new career in the yoga biz for myself, but I would like to develop the skills and gain the knowledge necessary to more responsibly and helpfully share yoga with others.  I imagine that my posts this year may often reflect what I am learning in teacher training.

When I embarked down this road before, I asked, "What does the starting point of a circle look like upon return, after you've traveled around its entire circumference? Does the planet look or feel any different after undergoing a full rotation?" I wondered what kind of inner and outer changes I would observe in myself over the year.  I pose those questions again.  I also am curious about how this new journey will be similar, and dissimilar, to my experience in 2010.  Finally, I want to know if I can continue to sustain and grow this practice.  Will this new variation provoke a commitment that lasts well beyond this calendar year and the foreseeable future?

And so I start anew.

Namaste. 

*Feeling Good lyrics by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, 1965.