Love, Yoga and the Joy of Being Interrupted
Hi Everyone,
Happy Friday! As February draws closer towards March, and we transition from the theme of love to something different, there continues to be so many things that remind us that love is all around us. An adjustment in our perspective can clear the lenses of fear and feeling small to love and being bigger and more radiant than we think we are. The next blog is from Rachel L. Dellinger. She literally changes her perspective doing headstands.
Rachel is a high school science teacher in Florida. She discovered Lesley’s yoga videos in 2018. She expresses so much gratitude to Lesley for introducing her to the Ashtanga practice. Though Rachel has been practicing yoga since her teens in the 80’s, the Ashtanga tradition is what she mostly practices now.
In her response to the question as to how long she holds a headstand, she replied:
I was not sure how long I could hold a headstand, but you made me curious, so I actually timed myself this morning: 2 minutes freestanding, another minute with the wall to help. Not too impressive, but it was fun to find out, so thanks for asking.
Highly impressive to me. Great work.
Enjoy her blog…
Love, Yoga, and the Joy of Being Interrupted
by Rachel L. Dellinger
I am watching a TikTok video while standing on my head. My 12-year old daughter is holding her My 12-year old daughter is holding her phone 10 inches from my face, courteously rotating the screen upside down so I can see someone dressed as Slenderman dance to “Material Girl” right-side up.
“See Mom, it’s not the one from the 80s.”
She told me about this new song last night, and I now understand that even though it has the same name, it bears not the remotest resemblance to the one Madonna sang. It feels weird to laugh while I am upside down. I wobble a little, overcompensate, and come out of the pose ungracefully. My daughter skips away, leaving me in child’s pose to contemplate the evidence she provided. I am still smiling. There was a time when being interrupted while I was doing yoga would have made me angry enough to say something harsh to my children. Or my husband. Or even the dog. But doing yoga has changed my perspective on many things. I now realize that while there is indeed wisdom in scheduling time alone to concentrate fully on my practice, there is also a certain joy in being interrupted.
Yoga Is an Individual Practice…or Is It?
On the internet, you can find advice on how to keep from being distracted while doing yoga. Bloggers offer a plethora of techniques ranging from proclaiming a certain time each day as nonnegotiable, to putting a “do not disturb” sign on your bedroom, to splurging on a babysitter. No doubt, these listicles have proven helpful to more than one frustrated would-be yogi who cannot so much as put on her yoga pants without someone knocking on the bathroom door or yelling, “Mom!” But is the underlying assumption in these words of wisdom—that your family is somehow preventing you from doing yoga—an accurate one?
The tone of these articles leaves me feeling unsettled. By glorifying solitude, they imply that female yogis with children are the exception rather than the norm, and that women in families must compensate for the suboptimal conditions in which they must practice. Like some employers and landlords I’ve dealt with over the years, the authors make me feel like having a family is a type of deviant behavior I should be ashamed of. Treating male or single yogis as the standard--and mothers with children as “other”--not only conforms to the very definition of sexism, but flies in the face of the egalitarian ideals that most members of the wider yoga community embrace.
Interruptions Are Part of Yoga, Too
Although we may romanticize the archetypal image of an ascetic practicing yoga alone in the forest, most spiritual traditions encourage togetherness. For example, the Sahaj Marg yoga tradition discourages monasticism because adherents consider family life to be the only way to learn patience and compassion. Traditional Jews and Muslims have always expected their rabbis and imams to be married, and even celibate Buddhist monks strive toward a collective consciousness with brothers and sisters in their sanghas. No matter how secular or sacred of a yoga tradition you follow, you do not require solitude to practice it any more than a Christian needs an empty church to pray in.
As modern yoga practitioners, we can embrace the cultural circumstances that make up our daily lives by letting go of what we think would be the ideal time and place to do our asanas. While the yoga studio downtown where everything is quiet during sivasana is a wonderful place to visit, my true home is here: where my teenage sons are practicing their trombone solos, my daughter is dripping pink hair dye across the living room floor, and my dog is licking my toes. This is my family, this is my life, and my yoga practice happens in the midst of it all.
The joy of yoga and the love of family are not mutually exclusive. No matter how complicated your living circumstances may be, there is no guarantee that they will continue beyond today. Now is the best time to tell your family that you love them and today contains the ideal circumstances to do yoga.
Do not wait.
❤️
Here is a tutorial by Lesley on headstand:
Lesley Fightmaster in sirsasana.