Day 134 – Hands down, Rolf explains the Sutras in an accessible and realistic way. He encapsulates and instills us with the simplicity of the Sutras’ road map: “The four aims of life are the arenas in which we enact our return to the self. The eight limbs of yoga are the day-to-day choices and actions that we can take, within those arenas to connect to self. See and understand the purusartha and eight limbs as two, but practice them as one.”
When I was a young and new aerobics instructor, my boss at the time came to my class to critique me and I was angry and defensive and nervous to be put on the spot. She gave me the best advice ever, which was to put the energy and enthusiasm and comfort of the weight-training portion of the aerobics class into my cardio. In other words, she taught me to show the same kind of intensity, fore-thought, and passion in the areas I felt weak and uncomfortable.
Rolf’s advice harkens back to this experience; he writes: “Carry a sense of the big picture into your day-to-day actions, and maintain a sense of the particulars in your vision of the whole.” I think when I started to create themes in my yoga classes, this was sort of what I was doing. I learn a lot from teaching that informs my life.
Rolf also puts it in yoga terms: “Where do you practice nonviolence? We enact it in our dharma, our relationship to ourselves; we enact it in our artha, our relastionships with others; we enact it in our kama, our attitude; and we enact it in our moksa, our relationship to the universe. How do we practice artha, the practice of abundant living? We apply the eight limbs of yoga to our daily affairs.”
Yoga class is living yoga; aerobics class is living yoga; teaching school is living yoga; and living day-to-day is living yoga.
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