Undisciplined Yoga / What It Feels Like To Be A Tree

Thank you, robin andrea and tara, for inspiring this post with your comments on my previous post.

For me, there is no discipline and no joining involved with yoga because I choose the poses I do, and I do them at home.  I'm a thoroughly undisciplined person who is not a joiner, and I don't do well with authority figures -- even yoga teachers that I am grateful for.

After the initial period of taking yoga classes, it has suited me best to practice alone at home in the way I want to practice yoga.  That's what has worked for me for nearly 30 years.  Rebellion dogs my every step.

Doing a series of yoga poses just feels good to me.  I can experience what it feels like to be a mountain and a tree and an eagle and a frog.  I can experience what liking myself feels like.  I can experience what being relaxed feels like.   And then there is the corpse pose, the oddest pose of all.  When I rest in that pose, I experience how alive I am.

As I experience it, the process of doing yoga poses is like preparing and eating a good meal or a taking a good long walk or taking photographs or reading a book or taking a hot bath or working on a post for my blog.

My perception is that the Buddha chose a single yoga pose, the lotus pose, and stuck with that one for his practice of of meditation.  He didn't do it as a discipline.  He did it because his experience was that it worked for him.  I don't have to do my chosen poses if I don't feel like doing them, but I miss them if I don't do them for awhile.

Here are some of my previous posts on yoga.

It is occurring to me that although I am not disciplined when it comes to yoga, I am enthusiastic.