The PRACTICE of Life

I had an epiphany on New Year’s Day while doing yoga.  It was a new routine that I had found on YouTube, a restorative/meditative session, but I was having trouble synchronizing the breathing of a distance runner to the instructions on the video.  At one point, I realized my shoulders were tensing and my jaw was stiff.  It was supposed to be a calming, relaxing experience, but instead I was so anxious about doing it perfectly, I was instead stressed.

It was silly in so many ways, but mostly because yoga isn’t a competitive experience but a practice.  The goal of practicing yoga is to deepen poses, and the way to deepen poses is to work on the mindfulness, the breathing, the transition and holding of poses…in other words, practice!  The entire point of the exercise is not to be perfect out of the box.

Then I started thinking about other aspects of my life where I’m struggling to solve issues or just don’t know how to fix something….and it hits me:  everything in life should be seen as a practice.  Just like yoga.  People aren’t born naturally knowing how to cook, how to write, how to do their jobs, even doing their heair….the ability comes with putting the time and energy into it, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes.  Even establishing good habits comes with practice, not discipline.

The practice of yoga.  The practice of cooking.  The practice of life.

This year, I want to focus on treating my life as a daily practice, rather than expecting perfection.  I need to be less hard on myself when I’m less than perfect or make a mistake, seeing that instead as part of the process of learning and growing.

That perspective completely changes my resolution-making.  Instead of having specific goals, I just want to practice the things that will make my life happier and better.  Yoga, and it’s meditative/mindfulness powers, is one.  Cooking, journaling, blogging, and running are all things that will help clear my mind from the daily stresses of life.  And hopefully, by the end of the year, I hope that I’m better at all these things, as well as others, by practicing.