• "FIND THE JOY WITHIN"

Listen

Listen

Listen 1000 652 JOY IS NOT OPTIONAL

Here we go yo, here we go yo.
So what so what so what’s the scenario? – A Tribe Called Quest

I started this year without a list. I didn’t know what I wanted to focus on at the stroke of midnight and the beginning of a new calendar year. It was a change of pace for me, someone always working towards something at all times, looking outward.  It was a strange sensation to sit with not knowing.  If you have a practice of listening but don’t know what you want, what do you do?

PRATYAHARA is the 5th limb of yoga discipline. It literally means to draw toward the opposite.  To sit with something and not comment on it, to go against the grain and be with what is, is so simple and yet profoundly difficult.  I love the way B.K.S Iyengar speaks of it in Light on Life, paraphrasing here, ” this almost impossible, almost unstoppable impulse demonstrates how we almost always go out to meet things”.  He goes on to say, “The yogic purpose of pratyahara is to make the mind SHUT UP so we can concentrate.”   Seems I skipped a step there.
The answers are within if we sit,  get quiet, and listen.