Day 108 – This reading enters the part of the book on asanas. Rolf describes: “In yoga, the first real setback has the potential to be the last, unless we are willing to persevere with patience.”
I love this reading because it about the healing aspect of yoga. After all, most of us practice asanas before all the limbs of yoga. Most of my students care not or are unaware of the spiritual aspect. In this reading, Rolf describes how when we persevere, the practice is healing in the very way we need. It provides wholeness, but not, he warns, without the bumps in the road.
Whether it be in the form of the “yoga vitamin,” as Iyenkgar calls faith, or whether it is healing “by degrees,” in Shakespeare’s words, or even whether we have good and bad days as Rolf describes (which vastly describes my situation), there is always movement–testimony to the fact that healing will happen. I don’t like to think of healing happening so slowly, but the fact is that’s the fact. Healing has its own time. Some of us travel this path haphazardly, I suppose, and go down side paths that lead no where, only to return to the mat again and again. Rolf concludes: “As we learn to celebrate these moments [the degrees in which we move forward], we refine our appreciation for subtlety and learn to appreciate growth in those around us as well.”
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