Yoga thoughts…

A few months ago, during my yoga class, my teacher talked about a philosophy that kind of threw me for a loop. This was before I started my blog, so I didn’t write about it then…you all know I can’t have a thought without writing these days…and since I have no new thoughts today (outside of sorting girl scout cookies and what’s for dinner), I thought I would try to bring some of those lost yogi thoughts back to my conscious mind. Now, I don’t know what any of these philosophies were CALLED, because I was doing yoga, not taking notes. So don’t ask me.

But…here it is…a lot of yoga, the philosophy, is about removing the pain from life. Living a life without pain, without suffering. If you want to stop causing pain, then the answer is to stop. What that meant to me was that if I want to stop causing myself pain, I should be kinder to myself. Stop beating myself up over mistakes made, goals left unaccomplished, things like that. Cut me some slack. And, if we carry this one step further, we can stop causing pain to those we love by being kinder to them. We don’t have to torture ourselves about it, mire ourselves in shame and grief, just stop doing whatever it is that we do to cause them pain. If everyone could do this somehow, if we could ALL stop causing each other so much pain, be kinder to each other, to other nations, to our planet, to our beloved families, everyone. We could alleviate a LOT of the suffering that goes on in this world.

Maybe this is the time when the poets can say it better than I can.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson