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Have you ever had a hangnail?  What about a pimple?  A splinter? 

This weekend I broke a nail. Tragic!!  Oooh the pain, the challenge, the distraction! Yeah, I know its not that big a deal. But at the time it hurt.  But to add insult to injury as life has a sense of humor, long past being a teenager I still get pimples.  Terrible stuff. And that too, if I let it, creates a little drama inside my head.  But enough about me, what about you?   Do you lets little things like pimples, broken nails, splinters fully absorb all your attention?

It's funny that way isn't it?  Here are these small inconveniences and yet we can get totally distracted where everything else seems to lose significance. All we think about is that one small thing!

One of my favorite writings puts it like this, "Negative emotions are like splinters. They pierce our consciousness grab hold of our minds and consume our thoughts to the point that we can lose sight of our desire for contentment compassion and deeper awareness. Most of us can recall the times we have felt hurt or angered by harsh words or actions of others and how we have held on to our pain processing it over and over in our minds like a never ending one sided argument.  We often hold on to these emotional splinters for weeks months and even years.  Holding onto negative thoughts always increases our pain, causing us to be distracted, dysfunctional and even depressed."

So what are your emotional broken nails? Do you have emotional splinters overriding your life right now?  I'll tell you day 1 of broken nail my mind kept going back to it, I saw this was a problem and by day 2 I was already able to retrain my mind to be more present, by day 3 I only thought about my broken nail 4 times, by day 4 I only let it absorb my attention twice.  You see yoga is for the mind.  There is an answer to our emotional hangnails.  Just like getting a splinter out of the body, once we decide we don't want to replay the negative or hurtful thoughts over and over can we begin to heal.  

And yoga does heal.  It has healed me, it has healed hundreds of students I've seen through the years, it has healed the teacher trainees I've had the privilege of working with for 9 sessions.  Yoga can offer you healing too.  This philosophy comes from the Yoga Sutras, Chapter 2.33 Pratipaksha Bhavana.  Where when we are faced with something hurtful we cultivate an elevated attitude, we move our mind away from the petty distraction and dramas. In other words WE DO NOT FREAK OUT.  Do not Panic.  All the stuff that is flying around outside us we call life is just external agitation.  Yoga helps us to quiet the mind through concentrated focus on breath, movement, sensation to move away from the external pimples and to the place deep inside our hearts where peace always exists.  Where there is no drama.

This comes as a result in great part simply by bringing awareness to the small stuff and often just laughing at ourselves and our humanness and what silly creatures we are.  We learn to shift from a splinter to the important experiences of loving ourselves, loving others, living honestly and with total commitment to our overall happiness.  

"Any of us in deep hurt know that shifting our feelings is much easier said than done. We actually become pyschologically and nuerologically habituated to sharp toxic emotions to that point we we often find ourselves over-responding making the tiniest splinter of perceived negative experience feel like shrapnel piercing our hearts. As we perpetuate this response it becomes such an ingrained habit that we often feel unable to control our behavior."  So  the firs step to healing your emotional broken nails is to know it is possible to change the habits of your mind.  Every yoga class you experience will help you do that.  And through this process of practice "we can transform our splinters to salve, anger into compassion, hate into love, fear into courage and yes even pain into joy!" Love yourself, love your day, love your life!  Silvia

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OCTOBER 28, 2009: At the start of practice tonight I passed around my i-Phone so you could see a photo of this great sign in Italian countryside where there are a million arrows pointing to all these various roads…that all point to the center of the sing to arrive in Torricella.  Apparently all roads lead to Torricella, all roads lead to our center.  Yes no matter what exact asana/poses we do ultimately all spiritual practice is meant to bring us back to our center. 

We often arrive to class totally fragmented and sometime just plain freaking out.  We have been poked and prodded and pulling in a large number of direction all day physically and our attentions have been scattered in thousands of ways.  No wonder we feel a bit awkward and disconnected in our own bodies?!  But by the end of the practice we move from this disembodied state to one of embodiment and grace. 

We practice the poses to shift away from that feeling of having all our parts be separate to a state of wholeness.  You know where everything works together and appreciates the other .Eventually at the end we not only have this feeling of grace within our movements and breath but it allows us to open our hearts to others and in that way we leave ready to embrace the love and kindness that others are ready to offer us.  We see the beauty in all other beings only as much as we feel connected to our own greatness.

We see this demonstration of connectedness in nature.  We breath out carbon dioxide, the clouds produce rain, the trees take in our exudation and give us oxygen, the sun gives us all light.  Each part of the whole is vitally important.  Just like we could not have done the class tonight without each and every person as part of our circle.  It wouldn’t have worked without you!  The yoga helps us feel like the loose ends of our life are not just random challenges we are doing battle with but they are just threads in a grander tapestry and even the difficult moments are important to the whole state of our embodiment. 

May this practice bring you back to your center time and time again so you can see clearly how you touch every living being by your existence now and beyond!  Love to you all. 1,008 humble bows, Silvia