The Living Practice

The last 6 days were spent on a family style vacation through Barcelona and Rome with my husband, my best friend, her husband, and their 6-month old baby. We ate a lot of food, drank a good amount of wine, and walked through old parts of these epic cities laughing, telling jokes, and singing songs to the baby.I took a pause from routine, from work, from structure to savor moments and create memories. In the past, old Marina would’ve needed so much time to recover from a pause like this. 

My inner critic would create a story about how undisciplined I had been. How I should’ve gotten up early to do yoga. How I shouldn’t have had that glass or wine or that extra spoonful of dessert. I would have felt a need to make up for what I thought was lost time. 

The truth was that for many year I approached my yoga practice as something to be gained. The only way to ever be a true yoga was to suffer, and if I didn’t give up any “guilty” pleasures, then my efforts would be a waste. For a long time, the value and the quality of my practice was measured by the amount of time spent doing what I believed externally represented Yoga (asana & meditation practice). So if I was enjoying a delicious meal, laughing with friends, staring at the air whilst  feeling the sun hit my skin, then I wasn’t really practicing Yoga. 

Of course this was all a lie. A lie that I manufactured and reinforced to keep me striving for a false sense of happiness and peace outside of myself. Recently I  sat to consider what is my definition of Yoga? What does it mean for me to practice yoga?  

For me, practicing Yoga means bringing together all the parts of myself. Calling back home the rejected, embarrassed, or unworthy parts of my self. Embracing the parts of my self that I still find ugly or foreign. Being with my self, as I am, in every moment. I am constantly evolving, and my practices, my Yoga is in a constant state of evolution. 

So whether I am student in a yoga class, meditating in nature, or enjoying my gelato in a piazza in Rome, I am there, as I am. Not feeling as if I shouldn’t eat the cake, have the wine, sleep an extra hour,  because I didn’t practice, meditate, journal etc.  Not punishing myself or making promises to a false future version of self. Not expecting any reward for what I have deemed as good behavior. Just being. Present and aware of my feelings, my actions, and my reactions. 

Welcoming every second of my life as a  living, breathing, alive experience of Yoga.