Dedicating Your Yoga

Photo by E.S. Curtis 1908

Sometimes at the beginning of a yoga class, I will suggest to my students that, during quiet sitting as class begins, they create a dedication for their practice, offering their practice to a quality they would like to develop, to a particular person, or to themselves.

"Everyone thinks yoga is so physical, but it's really very mental," Judith Lasater once said in a workshop.  Whenever we practice yoga, whenever we take our seat, whenever we close our eyes, the mind is there.  That is why dedication and intention are so important; it is mind yoga.

Dedicating your practice clears away the cobwebs of confusion that can reign in our minds for much of the day.  I sometimes literally see an empty room or an open plain or the clear blue sky in my mind when I first sit down to practice.  It is so easy to be swept away in the detritus of the mind; the voices of the culture, the echoes of our parents, something someone said to us at work that day.  When you take your seat at the beginning of a practice, your first and most important step is to remember your own goodness, and to remember that you are enough.  What a huge difference in the yoga practice when we start from this foundation, instead of the small mind screaming its opinions.  "We must lose weight!  We must get more muscular, flexible, toned!  We must become more holy so we will be loved!"

Entering a yoga practice from the small mind is already contracted.  No matter how persistently you stretch your hamstrings with this attitude, it will make no difference in the level of love and happiness in your life.  As far as I know, the Dalai Lama cannot perform Eka Pada Rajakapotanasana, yet he is an example of love and expansiveness for all of us.

I know that hatha yoga purifies this body, and in turn allows me to be less confused, more sane, and less distracted by the dullness I feel when my body is toxic and sluggish.  Giving hatha yoga to my body is like rubbing the dirt off a beautiful gem, so that it can shine more brilliantly.  I can literally see this in the eyes of students after a good practice, and I can see it in students as they change over time, becoming softer in their faces, more confident in their bodies, and more balanced in their relationship with themselves.

Setting intention, offering dedication is a sacred act, and I encourage you to courageously bring this into your practice.  The very fact that we exist in these bodies is miraculous.  When we clear the space, create an intention, and dedicate the fruits of our practice, there is such a lightening of the heart.  This is your own hugely generous and limitless, inexhaustible true self answering your call.