On the Mat, Off the Mat

Off the mat / Philosophy

An Introduction to the Yamas in thought and pose – Part 3

In week three, I discussed Asteya which is interpreted as non-stealing – but it can also be the idea of abundance. Usually, stealing happens because of a “lack of”. By resonating to abundance and believing we already have enough or that there is enough of everything in the universe, we guide ourselves to a state of not feeling like we lack anything. We can also consider stealing in the sense that we steal from our future self by not applying ourselves fully to each moment. We rob ourselves of future success by not committing to ourselves to achieve now what we really want or we hold back and don’t realize our full potential. Procrastination is definitely one aspect of this. On this day we did standing poses which can be quite tiring and demanding but I wanted to illustrate that if you approach something from a different angle, often you find you can handle it differently. We did several standing poses and then we did them again but this time, I put the poses into a flow sequence, adapting Surya Namaskar (salute to the sun) to let the students come into the standing poses from a different direction. This different approach seemed to bring a new energy to their poses – giving a new abundance to achieve more than what they thought they were capable of.

Think about this and see what there is in your life that, if approached differently, might cause less stress and help you achieve more of what you want in life.

Namaste
Rahle