Not Practicing Is Practicing
Sometimes I like to point out that not doing yoga is
the same as doing yoga, although I hope people don't
get the wrong idea and think I am saying it's the same
whether you practice or not. What I mean is simply
that every time you come back to yoga practice, you
see the effect of not having done it for a while. So in a
way you learn more by coming back to it than you
would by just keeping it up.
Of course, this is only true if you notice things such
as how still your body feels, how hard it is to hold a
posture, how impatient the mind becomes, how it
resists staying on the breath. These things are really
hard not to notice when you are down on the floor
holding on to your knee as you draw your head up
toward it. They are much harder to be aware of when
it's life itself that we are talking about rather than
yoga. But the same principle applies. Yoga and life
are different ways of saying the same thing.
Forgetting or neglecting to be mindful can teach you
a lot more than just being mindful all the time.
Fortunately, most of us don't have to worry on that
score, since our tendencies toward mindlessness are
so robust. It is in the coming back to mindfulness that
seeing lies.