Which area do you require more practice in:

A) Working hard and striving to accomplish more?
B) Resting and graciously appreciating what you have already achieved?

Do you find yourself:

A) Disappointed with your accomplishments?
B) Acknowledging that your current position is exactly where you should be?

Are you:

A) Influenced by the actions of those around you, even if they aren't suitable for your current circumstances?
B) Capable of attentively listening to your body and heart, and following their guidance?

If your responses leaned towards A for those questions, welcome to the club! Our society is really good at promoting perpetual improvement and conformity (keeping up with the Joneses, as the saying goes). Current western yoga culture seems to advocate the same "strive for more, improve constantly" message to enthusiastic yoga practitioners. Yoga challenges, flow videos, and boasting about yoga achievements inundate social media and mainstream advertising. As yoga has transformed into an industry, it has drifted away from an essential aspect of the practice: providing a framework that encourages us to approach life differently and to seek opportunities to serve consciousness.

Lately, my teacher has been discussing the cultivation of a non-acquisitional mind. This aligns with the concept of non-attachment, a fundamental principle to incorporate into our practice. Non-attachment and a non-aquisitional mindset are what will lead us towards moksha, or liberation from suffering. Striving to work harder, accumulate more possessions, or do more sun salutations and handstands, will not.

When I hear a yoga teacher urging me to push harder, do more, go further, I can't help but wonder why I needed to pay someone to tell me to do the things my neuroses are already pushing me to do at no charge!

Consider why you chose to practice yoga. If it is to practice a different way of being, because how you approach things is not giving you what you want, consider not doing your yoga practice the way you do the rest of your life. If you are looking to find a different approach, practice that new approach while you practice your asana,  your meditation and your self study.

It's easy to overlook the tendency to carry habits of "do more, work harder, get more" into your yoga practice. If you suspect you're doing so, slow down, examine how you're engaging with your practice, and dare to approach it differently. After all, the risk is minimal, and the rewards are significant!

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, which is a day we spend opening our hearts to our loved ones. Are you ready this year to open your heart to yourself?
You've all probably heard the expression about putting on your oxygen mask first so that you can help others more effectively during an emergency. Consider the wisdom of that instruction. And then consider the wisdom of opening to your own heart before you can effectively open to others.
One of the reasons that we tend not to want to go into the spaces of the heart is because we think there is pain and grief in the heart. But this is simply not true. All of that stuff is actually in your mind. The heart is a vast open space where there's no differentiation. Pain arises from differentiation—when we don't have what we want, or we have what we don't want. That polarity causes us pain. If there is no polarity, there is no pain and suffering. I would like to suggest that we suffer more when we are just hanging around the outer surface of the heart, not willing to jump in because our mind tells us there is sadness, grief, and pain. The closer we get to the rim, the louder our minds get. When we are willing to go into battle with these projections of the mind, look them straight in the eye and see that they are just paper tigers placed around the heart as "protectors," we will be able to fall into the vast space of the heart and be free of those projections. When you have done this, authentically, a few times (we have all done this “falling in” many times already—perhaps without acknowledgment and understanding of where we have been, but yes, you have been there!) and you see the beauty that is here, you see the unification that is here, you see really that everything is here, you won't need to give somebody a piece of candy to convince them that you see them and you appreciate and love them.
Don't get me wrong, candy is nice, and I am certainly taking donations! But just consider the everlasting gift of opening to your heart space to yourself first, stepping in, and then just leaving the door open so others can come along with you.
Nobody's going to follow you if you aren’t willing to go there yourself.