"It's Okay to Feel Bad"

Just a few tidbits from the second last weekend of Teacher Training at Downward Dog.

With Ron Reid off and away to India, we have Diane Bruni for our last 2 weeks. It's been fascinating to see how they approach the practice so differently, but at the same time, focus on the same things. It's brilliant - Ron comes from a place of technicality and logic - almost like a science. Diane is more organic and macroscopic in her view. We get the reward: not only is the material reinforced between the two of them, there's the beauty of seeing how anything can be approached from infinite angles.

Our Sunday afternoon training typically starts slow, as our bellies are still teeming from lunch. This week was no exception, so Diane veered away from the program to just "talk yoga". My ears always perk up when this happens, 'cause often this is where the real insight lies.

25 years of practice adds up to an opinion worth listening too.

The rest of us are lying on the floor, Diane's sitting in the middle of the room, perched on a block, and she just starts to talk...

"It's okay to feel bad when you're doing a lot of yoga. I believe any path of healing involves some suffering along the way. Yoga is a self-transformative process, and you have to realize that there's gonna be times when you don't feel good.

So much stuff gets buried in our bodies, and here you are, opening these places... and you'll find buried thoughts and emotions, they start to bubble up to the surface...

I think this is the number one reason people quit doing yoga. Sure, at the beginning, they're all gung ho - they have lots of energy, the practice makes them feel great, they're improving... but then, you start peeling back the layers, and these buried things start to come out - and that's when they get uncomfortable.

It's scary, these emotions coming up, and they don't want to go deeper. So instead, they stop. And that's when the excuses start to come out: I'm too busy at work, I've been feeling slightly sick, it's too expensive, I'll get back into it once blah blah blah... but for 95% of people, I think that it's because they're scared.

Now you guys (referring to us), will sooner or later experience one of these times, where you get emotional, or angry, or you just feel off - you know something's wrong. Can you stay and feel what you feel? Can you not back away? Don't hold it in - let it go. Cry. And then there, it's gone. And you feel better.

I'm a firm believer in that we're not given anything that we're not ready to deal with.

Otherwise it'd still be buried within you"

Wow.

j