Asanas and Other Things

Where do you go when you hang around in your asanas? Are you killing time in your poses with your mind jumping about? Perhaps your mind is ticking off the seconds, hoping the tune will change any minute, and yet another asana will treat you to a dopamine-rush buffet satisfying a need for constant options. Can you remain firmly planted in your body and connected to your breath, feeling the challenge of gravity and the waves of inhalation and exhalation helping you discern the nuances of your body speaking?

When you hold a pose for any duration is your mind darting from place to place looking for a way out? Alternatively, it could be moving over an internal and external landscape, responding to tiny fluctuations of energy and turning them into aha's that awaken your practice. Or perhaps you count off the seconds of a clock ticking in your head, hoping you will be awarded a grand prize for holding a pose for an immeasurable, perfect record?  You might want to stop killing time in your practice.

Every pose is an infinite place to study your relationship with being. Every posture could become an incredible timeless stance delivering you to the magic sweet spot. You could even slip into the eureka of  koans like the one Ganga created, Yoga doesn't take time, it gives time, exploring with ease one inhalation flowing sweetly into the exhalation that follows. You can learn to hold your poses with aplomb savoring each unique breath that will not come this way again--and wasting not a precious drop, of this thing called time.

A Few Expressions of Time
Time is all we've got
No time like the present
Killing time
Time is of the essence
Time waits for no one
Time after time (that may just be a lyric)
Wasting time
Time flies