AY:A2

On getting it moving.

Your practice is a speed train.

That train has come to a stop.

This is good. You don’t want to jump on a barreling train – i.e., do a practice of the same duration and intensity as before. You built your mind, musculature and nerves up to that. Before.

Your system remembers all that. But right now what it needs is the memory of that first day.

This is your second first day, same and different from the first. Just step inside the train.

Find a seat. A space in the mind. And also a physical space.

This is stepping onto the train. Into the mind, onto the mat, into that corner of the kitchen or wherever you’ll make body shapes in time.

Have a look around, maybe take a few asanas, rest consciously. Feeling it, with no physical expectations and five minutes of diamond clear intention – this is a serious practice.

You’re not being compulsive and don’t have anything to prove. Just opening up and curious. Being with the fear if it is there.

This is a moment for curiosity, courage and self study. Releasing any sense of entitlement to results. That’s what this yoga is. Honestly facing this moment. And it’s intuitive, because of that past self – that dear friend – who set this foundation to which you are returning.

No need now for committing willpower, concentration, or calories. Zero epiphanies required. Just find a seat for a few days at predictable times.

Practice is effort towards stability. That’s how you design it. One step at a time.

Set a tiny rhythm.

Little practices at predictable intervals. Like the same time of morning, MWF. Then maybe round out the ritual if and as the system responds well. The cumulative effects of a morning breath practice show up within days, but deeper effects can take years. Profound inner balance and peace are possible, but that is out there on the horizon two years down the track. The taste of it comes today.

The next step after the first week is to go back to the bespoke guide from your foundations course. Every day after class for two months, you got a personalized written review of our practice design and discussion topics for the week. I made that catalogue for one reason: so you can have it now. It was always intended for this future self. You know a lot.

Print out emails in a handbook or make a folder. Then read Week One and let all the bells ring.

Maybe take that Week 1 practice for two weeks or three. The train’s pulling out of the station…

After a month of steadying, people tend to find that they get it. They do know now, how to practice. Whereas they did not know in the first run of Week One.

There is no need to stoke this engine, but it is probably going to stoke itself if you keep stability as the intention. Effort towards stability.

Stability through rhythm, of all things.

Getting inertia on your side means not having to think much, or wrangle internally, to find the forward movement and the spinal fluidity and the big breath. And self knowledge, and actual luminosity.

Trains are fun. Nothing but nothing wrong with that.

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