“Fill your bowl to the brim, and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife, and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security, and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work then step back. The only path to serenity.”
– Lao Tzu
Last Saturday I taught a workshop on Optimising Energy with the lovely & tremendously knowledgable Tracy Land. It was a fab morning of energy enhancing yoga & nutrition (check out future workshops we have coming up)! It struck me how much energy we expend on striving…striving to be something other than what we are; striving to hold on to things we have no power over; striving to attain things (material or otherwise), people, love… That constant ‘if only’ mantra so many of us carry with us – “if only I was…., if only I could…, if only I had…”
…If only, if only, if only…
No wonder we’re exhausted!
Yoga shows me, time and time again, to step back – that the practice – this practice is enough; to trust in it; to trust in my students and to trust in myself, that each of us is finding (and living) our own path to our own truth.
This isn’t an abmonishment of ambition or motivation at all. Nor an excuse to be lazy! But a call to bring ourselves fully to each task, each challenge, each moment, and then allow things to be. So, on the mat (for example) we fully extend our arms to the degree we can extend our arms; we engage our core as much as we can engage our core; we bring the mind to experiencing the moment as much as is possible….whatever the pose might be asking of us on the mat, or whatever life may be throwing at us off of the mat. Doing what we can, committing fully and truthfully (whatever that looks like for each of us) and then letting go. Allowing whatever comes next to unfold.
This is what I mean when I say ‘let the postures do the work’ – so often there is no need to strive; striving is what interupts the flow….it makes us tight and resistant. Take the pose, the practice, commit fully and let go.
Do your work and then step back.
from my heart to yours,
xoxo lucyogini