Stories

We tell stories. All the time. This is me. This is not me. I'm like this. I'm like that. This will happen. I hope things turn out like this. Yoga teaches us to calm the story-teller. To be in the moment without judgment, regret, anticipation.

But even within the practice itself, we tell stories. I can do this pose. I can't do that pose. If only I can put my leg here, I will be a better yogi. This is too hard. This is too easy. Why does the instructor keep talking?

Over the course of the Easter week-end, I was confronted again and again that stories I tell, very often they have no reality. In other words, real life and events intrude and things don't turn out as you think or hope they would. Nothing major or life changing: I did not suddenly discover I'm adopted, or that my mother has been stealing my money. But still, these little contradictions remind me that I still have a way to go to bring my Yoga practice off my mat and into my everyday life. That one of its tenets is to stop telling stories, to not cling to well-worned ways of thinking or feeling or doing, to mistake desire for truth.