YOGA IS SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS!
OCTOBER 15TH, 2010 In simple words, Yoga is the science of happiness. We walk in stressed out, upset, negative and we leave the practice lighter, refreshed, more positive, in a nutshell, happier! I can't say that even after all these years, over 7,500 hours of teaching, and gosh who knows how many hours of practice that I fully understand the alchemy. It's like magic.
What I do get on some level both intellectual and emotional is that walking in we are like the decorator crab: collecting all these issues, stories, dramas and if we don't let something go we will literally suffocate under the weight of it all. Maybe we'll still be walking around but we certainly won't be happily human which is our birthright. The decorator crab does that: it collects all the stuff it finds and keeps putting it on its back until it can no longer swim to the surface and dies under the weight. The work we do on the mat is about personal growth. It is making space so we can is let go of what is negative.
Every day we have a chance to either have our lives serve as a WARNING or an EXAMPLE to others. The decorator crab is our warning. Let's learn something from it. The opinions or judgments we have of external stuff are just that - they do not impede our ability to remain happy. Happiness is an inside job. And the person responsible for being happy is YOU. Yoga teaches self-responsibilty, non-judgment and seriously radical self-acceptance by accepting the full spectrum of who we are (anger, worry, fear). The mat is a truth serum that helps us realize the truth and allows us to clear the space for living a more joyful life. And that life is moving forward, with us or without us.
"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing" — W. B. Yeats
Yoga gets us UNSTUCK and then we can't help but grow and evolve. We not longer hold ourselves back from those things that crash our internal hard drive. And we leave the mat remembering how happy we really are. We start to celebrate the best parts of ourselves. And that, is why yoga is the science of happiness. Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia