Author: pmcrose

In yoga, we use a mat, blankets, blocks, straps possibly bolsters… even a chair or the wall to support our practice.

Regular yoga and/or meditation can be this for our lives–an amazing system of life support!

We build our meditation posture and yoga poses from the ground up.

Find and receive the support that is being given to you.

Lift up from this connectedness.

Offer this support to the world–

rock solid!

Contentment is the most solid foundation from which to grow.

Similarly, in yoga we use props like blocks, the wall, and straps to provide solid support to stretch and expand a little bit further or deeper or to release more into poses.

In our daily life, we can use the present moment as it is as the solid foundation from which to step into the next.

Like a swirl of dust settling, our thoughts slow and settle as we bring breath to mind to poses or asanas in yoga.

A slower mind with fewer thoughts is clearer, more peaceful, less agitated and active with thoughts, but still fully alert and alive.

Like wiping the dust off a chalkboard or clearing the algae from a pond, we gain clarity and ease.

All in the midst of bringing breath to mind to asana,

yoga happens!

We are used to ourselves as we think we are.

Meditation and yoga are a rehabituation and realignment to something greater than we think.

I have meditated a long time, and yet stillness surprises me showing up seemingly out of nowhere, tapping me on the shoulder like an unexpected friend, surprising me with a visit.

Anything that carries you into silence is a meditation.

When we focus on something and become lost in it, we taste this silence. It is a meditation.

In a sunrise or sunset, we feel the peace. It’s a meditation.

In joy and laughter, we lose ourselves, maybe just for a moment. It’s a meditation.

We have all trusted silence. We have all meditated.

Silence speaks volumes in its own quiet ways.

Through our meditation practice, we hone our listening skills and learn to go to this place of concentration again and again–to this place of one-pointed absorption.

We practice becoming absorbed in silence!

We are accustomed to the mind as a busy and helpful beacon we constantly are listening to.

This habitual attachment to thought that we instinctively trust and rely on can be difficult to drop or detach from in meditation.

It takes time and practice to trust a quieter mind, to drop the incessant chatter we rely on and are used to.

At first we must grow accustomed to and venture, maybe at first tiptoeing, into thoughtless space.

It is not unusual to believe or become attached to our thoughts as who we are. Who am I then if I drop thought?

It takes practice to trust the quiet of stillness. Like any new relationship, it takes commitment over time to develop.

It takes practice.

That’s why is is called a meditation practice!*

*For easy steps to beginning and maintaining a regular meditation practice, click here.

As you practice your yoga and/or meditation and your breath slows, deepens, and steadies, trust it and let it carry you.

Give up to its rhythm and allow yourself to be swept away into deeper and deeper peace.

Let the rhythm just…

We often get lost in our thoughts, in our mind’s reveries.

In meditation and yoga, we can get lost in silence.