LIVE AN HONORABLE LIFE
OCTOBER 31, 2010. During some Yoga class you will hear these words from your teacher, "honor your body" or "honor yourself." But what does that mean exactly? When I went to military school during high school years I had a very well-defined idea of honor because of the honor code that was part of the school's commitments. Then in college I was in a sorority and we too made a serious pledge to an honor code of sisterhood.
As we mature no one is giving us a written honor code and we have to define and refine it for ourselves. Time on the mat is where I practice honoring what I think and feel and how my actions are a result of that. Do I make sensitive adjustments? Am I respectful of myself when I'm tired? How do I appreciate and thank myself for trying my best? Am I consistent in integrating the practice in my body? Am I reverential towards the blessing it is to move and breath? Come to think of it, isn't to honor part of what Namaste means? So when it comes down to it, am I living my Namaste? And in honoring myself and do I honor, respect, appreciate all those I meet? If you are practicing yoga you are holding yourself gently and aspiring to live an honorable life. You are Dignified and Noble. Bring that today as you love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia
"Though it may be difficult to find the words for what you feel,
May you find ease in that awkwardness until gradually from beneath the gravel of stuttered sounds the pure flow of you emerges.
Be gentle with yourself,
Learn to integrate the negative,
Harnessing its force
To cross the boundaries
That would confine you.
Love the life of your mind
Furnishing it ever with new thought
So that your countenance glows
With the joy of being alive.
Be vigilant
And true to an inner honor
That will not allow
Anger or resentment
To make you captive
Always have the courage
To change, welcoming those voices
That call you beyond yourself
Beyond your work and action
Remain faithful to your heart,
For you to deepen and grow
Into a person of dignity and nobility."
By John Donohue