“You, just as you are, and your life here, right now, are all there is and all you need to know….”
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:30 pm (Yoga, Quotes)
“You, just as you are, and your life here, right now, are all there is and all you need to know. You don’t have to do anything special. Mostly, you have to be open to meeting face to face, and even dancing with, the truth that pertains to your life right now. You have to find a way to collect your fractured pieces, examine them, and then accept them as part of who you are. Spiritual practice is about transformation, but it’s also, and more importantly, about working with what is. –Angel Kyodo Williams
I came to the practice of asana with a curvature in my spine. Thousands of hours of my life have been devoted to struggling with the effects of this. On the mat, my lower back became a battleground. I fought and lost, fought and lost. My efforts to heal myself often ended in debilitating back spasms. Over time, though, I began to respect my back. I marveled at its ability to bend backward and forward, to recover from tremendously painful injuries. Eventually I started to befriend my back, and even to see it as something to be admired. I began focusing on what it could do. As this attitude developed, the need to change my back, to fight my reality, lessened and gradually disappeared. The curvature in my back is gone, and I can’t remember exactly when it went away, because when it did, I no longer cared.”
(from Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates)
