Cycles

Our lives move in cycles, both big and small. Years pass with the seasons changing: spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, and winter back to spring. Every year we repeat the cycle. We have cycles in the natural world and cycles that we humans have created. Our weekly calendars, for example. There are a couple of cycles I'd like to focus on specifically for the moment, though. Both are important to remember in the context of our yoga practice.

The first is the cycle of waxing and waning practice. There are times when we just, for one of many reasons, fall away from our practice. If we're talking physical practice it might be due to physical injury. For some of the other parts of our practice we might get discouraged or simply forget. Perhaps we've set up a rigid schedule for ourselves and it no longer serves us. I'll tell you that every time I pledge to get up two hours earlier and do X, Y, and Z it just doesn't stick!

The "cycle" part of this comes when we realize that we're missing our practice. The benefits we were enjoying are no longer there. We have lost flexibility--perhaps in our bodies, our minds, or both--that we realize was giving us tools to move through our lives in helpful ways. So we recommit, or nudge our schedules and structures so that we begin again. We'll go for a while. Maybe even forever, but more often there will come another time or another circumstance that brings us away from our practice. And the cycle continues.

This reminds me very much of the structure of meditation. I've written before that meditation is not about stilling the thoughts entirely but about watching thoughts go by. When we find we've drifted into thinking, we notice and gently move ourselves back to an attentive state. It's a cycle: attention, distraction, realization, attention and so on. We can remember that realizing we have drifted away into thought is simply another opportunity to come back to attention and awareness.

In the same way, rather than beating ourselves up about having drifted from other parts of our practice, we can offer ourselves some grace when we realize what's happened. Then we simply come back. The practice will always be there when we are ready for it, even if it looks very different every time you approach it. That makes sense, because we are always growing and changing so why would we expect our practice not to do the same?

This brings me to that most intimate and immediate of cycles in our practice: our breath. The inhales and exhales are ever-changing, and in this way are ever the same. We start again every single time we breathe, over and over. It can be a constant reminder that what goes around comes around. When we focus on our breath, our awareness must be in the present. Thankfully our breath will continue if our awareness drifts away from it but it will always be there when we're ready to go back. Just like our practice as a whole.

Three blue arrows spinning in a cycle