om spirit
L
ike most of the people in the world I have a love/hate
relationship with the navigation system I use whilst driving.
I love her (yes – I’ve given her a gender) because most
of the time she does her job pretty well. I tell her where I
want to go and most of the time she gets me there.
So what’s to hate? Well, first of all unless I’m 100% specific about
exactly where I want to get to, she does a terrible job at guessing
what I actually meant. One letter wrong in a postcode and I’m in
Chelmsford not Cheltenham.
Also sometimes I just want to get there. I actually don’t care if
the most straightforward route is going to take two minutes longer.
I’m fairly confident that spending two extra minutes in the car will
not have a massively negative impact on my life right now, but
nevertheless she insists on taking me on a road trip which sees me
negotiating teeny tiny tracks, complicated right turns and a labyrinth
of one-way roads.Set an intention
Ironically I have taken a somewhat circuitous route to reach my
point; unless we are clear about where we want to go and how we
want to get there, life/the universe/your sat-nav is going to make
an assumption about how you want to get there. (Just a little aside- my autocorrect just tried to change sat-nav to Satan which come
to think of it may be more appropriate.)
At the beginning of every class I ask my students to set their
intention for their practice. We take a moment of quiet and I ask
them to consider three things;
Putting the ‘I’ in intention (or why resolutions are rubbish). By Meg Jackson
I is for
n How do you want to feel as you move through your asana?
n What do you need the practice to do for you today?
n How do you want to feel when you step off the mat and go back
out into the world?For me, this is the equivalent of setting your own internal sat-
nav for your practice. And this is just one of the wonderful things
about asana; whilst everyone in the room is moving through the
same poses, ultimately it is the responsibility of each individual
to determine their own experience. Want to feel invigorated and
energised? Ok. You can. Need to be super focused and mindful?
Sure. No problem. Craving a sense of being grounded and strong?
If you want it, you’ve got it.
Sounds simple, right? It is. Mostly. But as with many things in
this all-kinds-of ace world of yoga, there’s a caveat. When we set
our intention we can’t become attached to it as the only possible
positive outcome from the time we’re going to spend on the mat.
Maybe we think that we need to come out of the practice feeling
like we can take on the world and their mother, but what we actually
need is to find a sense of stillness and calm amidst the fluidity and
turmoil of moving.
In my mind, I see this as the equivalent of our yogic sat-nav
deciding that maybe we need to take the scenic route to get to
where we think we need to go. One day we will get to our ultimate
destination of unshakeable inner peace (or whatever the reason is
that you take to your sticky mat) but we need to take in a few sights
and experiences before we get there. (You’re probably not quite