Scripture
If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
Matthew 6:30–33 The Message
Spiritual Focus
“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.” Saint Frances de Sales
Devotion
A yogi and friend of Yogadevotion, Micheal Westbrock was among the first of our guest teachers to encourage our instructors along the path of spiritual satisfaction. Like most Westerners practicing yoga, we began our journey through the physical practice of the discipline. We were all so anxious to do everything right: correct foot placement, correct head and neck alignment, correct breath pattern. We asked many questions of Micheal and most often got the same response: “How does it feel?” Finally, after hearing the same response over and over again, it dawned on us that doing everything right wouldn’t provide us with the satisfaction we were looking for if we couldn’t connect that with how we felt (in other words, with the pose’s feeling right)! Satisfaction came when we were able to exercise enough patience to just BE in our bodies, to feel and connect with that which was within us.
Micheal was one of the first to affirm for us that from its inception the practice of yoga was intended as one way to connect with the divine, with the Holy Spirit within us. At the time it was not intuitive for us as Western yoga practitioners to listen to our body and breath in order to connect to the internal teacher, God’s Spirit within.
Yoga and faith practices often share an unnecessary felt need to “fuss” over the particulars, when what we really need is the reminder that we already have within us God’s promise and presence. We pray that, both in our faith journey and in our yoga practice, we will achieve a greater sense of God and, as in this week’s Scripture passage, hear him say “Relax. I’ve got this!” We have nothing to fear; our every human concern is being met by the Spirit, and we are promised spiritual satisfaction! In order to connect to the Holy Spirit we don’t need to do anything beyond stepping into our breath and body, relaxing, and simply BEing.
Breath Prayer
Inhale I Am
Exhale Satisfied
Focus Pose: Standing Forward Fold, uttanasana, is a lovely pose in which to simply BE. The pose is known to calm the body and mind and is one of those I practice every night before retiring to bed. Come into the pose on an exhalation with knees bent, belly on your thighs. As your hamstrings release, your legs may straighten, but keep your knees soft. Let your eye gaze settle back between your legs so that your head and neck hangs loose. Relax. You’ve got this! It is especially calming when practiced with a sinking breath of prolonged exhalation. Come into the pose and apply a count to your breath—lengthening the exhalation with each breath cycle. One way to do this is to double your exhalation relative to your inhalation. Start by inhaling to the count of two and exhaling to the count of four. Next, inhale for a count of three and exhale for a count of six. If the ability is available to you, inhale for four counts and exhale for eight. With each exhalation “sink” deeper into the pose, stop fussing, and relax. BE satisfied.
