My Most Valuable Teaching From the Last 10 Years

A few days ago I woke up feeling tight and achey all over. It felt like my head was being compressed and all the muscles down my back and into my hips were aching. I had been clenching my teeth in my sleep, my jaw was tight and everything just hurt.

Do you ever have days like this?

I tried distracting myself by looking at my phone. I knew that wasn't going to get me anywhere so I put it down and tried Vipassana meditation (body scanning, from the top of the head down to the tips of the toes, simply witnessing the sensations) and although it did help a little, everything still hurt.

Then I decided to try something I had never tried before.

I took my own yoga class.

Last month I taught four live yin yoga classes and recorded them. (You can find the recordings all on my blog under Yoga & Meditation).

I turned on the class and told myself I would be fully present. I'd do everything I said.

It was like being spoken to by my higher self.

And as I dropped back into my body I remembered:

Be with the difficulty

the physical discomfort

all the emotions

It's ok to feel this way.

I committed to full presence with myself. I let myself feel it all. I breathed. I cried. I found a softness underneath it all.

I realized, if I were to distill my most important teaching from the last ten years of teaching yoga and being a coach and guide to hundreds of people it would be:

Feel Your Pain

Don't try to run away from it. Or fix it. Or change it. Breathe with it. Go into it. Use it as an opportunity to become more intimate with yourself.

A teacher of mine, Marin Bach-Antonson once said, "The number one cause of suffering is resistance."

When we want ourselves to be different. Or someone else to be different. Or our current life circumstances to be different, we suffer.

What if we dropped it all and let ourselves, our lives and others be as they are?

But I know, I know... it's not so easy to actually put this way of being into practice. Especially not all the time.

What I love about yin yoga is it's a gentle way of practicing "Being with what is" through the physical body.

As we breathe with the discomfort and move into the pain, we expand our capacity to "be with what is" by simply being with the difficult physical sensations. We hold the poses longer. We allow a release. We begin to find a true, direct, cellular experience of acceptance.

And it's such a metaphor for real life...

When we cultivate this practice on our mat, we are able to meet our difficulties with more softness, compassion, trust.

We learn to let go of reactivity, resistance and the need to control.

So today, I invite you to dive into this 75 minute yin yoga practice with me.

With love,
Meredith