Weekly Letter: Through the Eyes of Unknowing

Twenty years ago, after taking my first yoga class, I would try to practice in my apartment alone on my own. Pulling from memory things I remembered from class and feeling like I never had enough to do. I wished I knew the names of things and if only I knew what something was called, might I be able to pull it forward into my practice at home.

At the time, yoga books and information online for yoga wasn’t as available as it is now (if only I started contributing then!), so I would use what I could find-which wasn’t much. And then go to the classes I could and try to memorize everything I could while I was there.

Now as a teacher, I’m a bit envious of that person. She wasn’t flooded with information, bias and more Sanskrit than she ever dreamed of knowing. She had a beginner’s mind and that was a beautiful gift she took as a limitation.

Through the eyes of the unknowing, there is only possibility. It’s by naming something do you begin to create a paradigm around it and shape it with rules (and expectations). Only by pulling yourself back, can you find that yoga magic again. By allowing yourself to stop putting yourself into the practice with all your aches and pains, but allow yourself to sit in the middle of the practice and move from inside of it. To live in the awe of what’s possible and return to the vastness of the beginner’s mind.