The stomach bug stuck crept back, and stuck with me, so I decided to take the day off.
The day 159 meditation talks about preliminaries to asana practice. There are basically two words of advice here. First, set your intention. This is something that we get told all the time at the start of Bikram practice. Second, Gates says you can do this with a simple short prayer. The prayer will help acknowledge your place in the universe. He uses either "Thy will be done." or "Thank you for bringing me here."
I've taken recently to doing something similar before the long savansana after standing series. But when we are told to "set your intention," I mostly just stare blankly at myself in the mirror. The pause and short word of thanks after standing series has worked really well for me. And this is not much different and has almost zero cost. So I will definitely be giving this a try. I'm kind of amazed that I hadn't thought of this before.
2 comments:
Hi Duffy! Thanks for the reminder. I used to always "set my intention" at the beginning of class, the teachers used to say it and remind us. Lately they haven't and I've forgotten to do so. I also pause after standing series, catch my eyes in the mirror, fold my hands into prayer and do a tiny little bow to acknowledge the hard work I did in the standing series. I know it probably looks wierd to others, but if I have a tough standing series and I thank my body anyway, it is a refreshing and nice thing to do for myself!
I will try to remember to set my intention tonight.....thank you!
I've had several teachers who ask us to pause and acknowledge how hard we worked in standing series before grabbing the water or hitting the floor. I think that I will try to do this mentally from now on even if the teacher doesn't say it.
Thanks, Duffy, for continuing w/ the meditations. I kind of stopped going through the book cause my time constraints got the best of me. But I really enjoy reading them here and getting your perspective.
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