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OPEN MIND OPEN BODY Ideas for Your Yoga Practice |
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When to Drop the Method
"All the great masters say this, that one day you have to drop the method. And the sooner you drop it, the better. The moment you attain, the moment awareness is released in you, immediately drop the method". - Osho
Why is it so hard for many yoga students to develop a self-guided personal practice? I often hear from students who are reluctant to abandon the style of yoga, sequence of poses, or class that has been the catalyst for their yoga practice. Even if the practice has stopped delivering fresh insights, or even when the practice produces physical injuries.
We feel grateful to the practice and the teacher. We want to reconnect to that feeling we had in the beginning of the practice - the first time we really felt alive, or relaxed, or connected to something bigger than our everyday anxieties and distractions. We feel a sense of loyalty to the method or the teacher - or maybe just the need to believe we were right when we decided that this class, this teacher, this sequence, this method was the "best".
No matter where you started your yoga practice, there is always the possibly to go deeper with a self-guided personal practice. It is very hard to experience the true freedom of yoga if you are still trying to follow the rules that applied to you when you began your yoga practice. The rules can keep you focused on things that don't in the end really matter. But they give you endless opportunity for keeping busy, frustrated, striving, and suffering.
Beginners know nothing, and often start from the experience of extreme restriction or suffering. Anything helps. Everything helps. But once you have found that part of yourself that responds to yoga - that recognizes the sweetness of the practice and the possibilities - you have also found the part of you that can guide yourself in a personal practice. You have woken up that part of you that wants to breathe, move, and be moved.
The following story (adapted from Meditation: The First and Last Freedom, by Osho) makes the point well. Use it to give yourself the courage to try guiding yourself through a yoga practice, even as you continue to attend classes or follow sequences developed by others:
Five men passed through a village, carrying a boat on their heads. The boat was huge and heavy, and the men were struggling with each step. People in the village asked, "Why are you carrying that boat on land, when it is almost crushing you?"
The men answered, "We can not abandon this boat. This boat helped us to come to this land. Without it, we would never have made it here. We can never abandon this boat. We are indebted to this boat forever, so we will carry it forever."
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