P’s and Q’s, A Yoga Reset for The Taking

“Yoga practice hits the reset button from the inside," one of my teachers said. And she was right about that.

Reading time: 2 minutes

When we do yoga for a few years, we turn more attentive to the things that are done and what is left undone. It’s awareness, and with yoga it improves. Sometimes, a new awareness arrives unexpectedly, and we learn that when it comes to ourselves, we have other fish to fry - like our ego and self-centeredness. I remember that someone wrote, "We go to church once a week to take us away from our selfish selves for an hour."

We may go for an hour . . . a little less or more, and in that liminal time, yoga's reset is different; it takes us not away from our selfishness, but deeper into it. There, when we finally become still, and take up courage to look closer, we realize it's our time for an internal reset. That, then, becomes lifetime work, reset by small degree that in time becomes a deep change agent.

It begins almost imperceptibly when we pay better attention to our habits: we may start drinking more water and less alcohol, make better food choices, crave silence, and abhor useless chatter, and we might begin to think more about our impact on the Earth. If we keep traveling the yoga path these become permanent changes.

Then, our alliances grow in ways we may not expect; the family we identify with grows and takes on a rainbow hue. An internal question registers anew: how can we be against anyone when they are in our family? When this expanded definition of shared humanity takes root in us, it’s entirely normal that our interests change and we don't care about our "team" because the most important change agent in the game of life is us. None but ourselves can change our mind, Bob Marley wrote. This leads us to change ourselves so that we are better people to ourselves and others. Read again, both to ourselves and others.

When our internal reset prioritizes important things: family, health, love, our connections to energies beyond ourselves, and self-care, the material things fade into backdrops to abundant life. Who really cares what the temperature is - in or out of the yoga room - when an indomitable will has worked its way into our bodies, minds, and spirits, a will that's built a fortress against the trivial.

Yoga is a martial art of the soul, and its heated engagements reset body and soul by the hatha of breath, the force of will, and a convocation of the inner winds (vayus). And when we are shaped by yoga’s tapas we shift like lava and our practice unfolds as a slow but sure truthforce for change.

It’s a change written in an ancient body, mind, and spirit blueprint. Every move outward turns the worm of transformation inward, and every move inward deepens the yogis care quotient and outward step. It’s a building of quotients that matter: intelligence quotient, emotional quotient, and hospitality quotient.

We morph in and out of ancient postures, like heated stones, only to begin again like the child in repose, learning anew and resetting ourselves on a new path, proudly taking baby steps forward. “Yoga practice hits the reset button from the inside," one of my teachers said. And she was right about that.