Really Listening

A few days ago One of the instructors suggested that the yoga practice helps you learn to really listen to people.  It is an active pursuit to try to turn off that automatic reply function that is in my brain.  Someone can just start talking and I am already thinking of the next thing to say, waiting for them to finish so I can jab in there.  We are all like that.  However how much real listening are we doing while we are busy going over our next interjection.

So the theory is even know the pattern of Yoga movements becomes so familiar that you can push forward to the next pose you are supposed to stop and listen to the instructor not pushing ahead.  Just waiting for them to speak the next instructions, listening and then reacting.  This is hard to do but is an active practice and really cool once you start doing it.

Now doing that in real life is so much harder.  Even if I manager to be pretty good at it for a few minutes I slip back into automatic mode. So I am trying to take the time to really listen.  This is so hard in our fast pace multitasking worlds. We are rewarded for being able to do many things at once and do them well.  We are rewarded for speed of reaction and quick thinking.  Yet this practice is telling me to slow it down.

Day 20: was a special day.  I got a massage from a friend of my Judy .  It was so wonderful.  I did Hot Yoga in the morning and then did some work.  My friend Sarah stopped by and we took the polar plunge into our, newly opened for the season, above ground pool.  Water was about 68'f.  She wanted to do it because her hips and back was sore and she was fantasizing about cooling off her joints in the water.   It was hard to jump in, however it felt wonderful.  We hung out in the water for about 30 minutes, really cooling the abused muscles.

I headed to Judy's for the massage I had been saving up for a few months.  She gave me a two hour massage which was outrageously good.  She really understood my hip issues and got to the root of it.  That was one major deep tissue massage.   I took a bath later that night to finish it off.  My hips felt abused but surprisingly fantastic.

Day 21: Woke up feeling great and poor Joel, my youngest son, was sick.  I stayed home with him and then did the 4:00 pm as my husband was able to work from home for an afternoon meeting.  So I was feeling rested and limber when I hit the mat.  I was even cocky if the truth must be told.  I figured I would nail this out.  The first few poses I was super flexible.  The massage had really worked some stuff up, as I was feeling all top of the world.  I realized I was not paying attention to the instructor. I was so 'not listening  that I realized that I actually doing the wrong movement all together. I was doing a back-bend instead of a side stretch.

So I giggled to myself, fixed it up, and went on.  Still convinced that somehow I was nailing it home.  I was super powered.  Then about 15 minutes later I realized I had done it again.  I was not listening.  I was facing the wrong way on a side plank.  So I decided to just lay in corpse pose and feel the energy in my body.  I just lay there and listened internally until I felt calm and rested.  Then I went on and listened to the rest of the practice and finished strong.