Ever been bored in yoga? I have.
Yoga is a mirror, it reflects us back to ourselves.
It teaches us something about ourselves-
What I can tolerate today and what I can’t.
Whats comfortable and what am I forcing?
What are my habits and tendencies, can I unshackle from them?
What keeps cropping up in my mind?
How do I feel if something isnt how I want or expect?
Am I placing the outcome of how I feel on other people, the class, the teacher?
Can I manage my own expectations and be responsible for my own experience?
All these enquiries being us to the self: self responsibility, self enquiry, self reliance, self reflection.
Unlike the beautiful imagery used to market yogas studios, poses and peripheral things, yoga actually asks us to look at the darker more ugly and uncomfortable parts of ourselves and get to the why.
Not to nail a flow or perfect a pose but to find the pause. To drag the heavy refrigerator out and stare at the mess and muck behind it.
When we become still a normal response of the distractions being removed is to feel agitated and unsettled, often followed by boredom.
We are products of a busy and stimulated world and when we remove the input we almost glitch on what the output should be.
Instead of rushing through, stay in it. The modern self care message of ‘I am enough’ can only ever begin when we learn to say ‘enough’ to the ceaseless input and distractions.
Build the courage to begin and to be imperfect in pursuit of the pause.
Why am I bored right now?
Why can’t l be with myself right now?
Why am I so anxious to move on the next thing?
Why do I hate this feeling so much?
When I sit with that boredom, can I get to what’s underneath it?
Choose the discomfort over building the resentment.
If we are never bored, we can’t grow.
Space, stillness and silence are where we flourish, where our thoughts are processed and creativity blooms.
Where we address our comfort and discomforts, our satisfactions and distractions.
So yoga boredom, is it the new black? Who knows but it could be the sign you are on the right track.
