“If you come to the yoga mat expecting freedom from your emotions, you’ll never be free, just disappointed. Freedom comes when you can fully be with your emotions, watch them, and then let them go.” ~ Mona Anand, Senior ISHTA Yoga Teacher
Mona taught our asana practice on Sunday. It was a heavy back bending day, and by their nature, back bends induce strong emotions concentrated in the area around the heart. Ideally, we hope to feel those emotions and then release them. That latter bit is the tricky part that eludes us all too often. We come to our yoga mat as if it is a refuge, an escape, when truthfully our mat is a mirror. And perhaps a mirror that amplifies the good, the bad, and the ugly. What we live, we bring to the mat.
Mona encouraged us to be with our emotions, all of them, and then find the courage and strength to let them go without judgement. She asked us to soften so that we can release. We sometimes take our feelings and wrap them around us, holding tight to their skirt strings even though we long to be free from them. As it turns out freedom if often scarier than retracing our familiar patterns. Our familiar patterns give us something to work on. Once we’re free, then what will we do?
That’s the real unknown.
Christa Avampato 