Expansion and Contraction
I was talking to another yoga teacher the other day, and we were kind of discussing how hard it is to run a yoga studio, particularly because students tend to be a fickle bunch and switch yoga schools every few months. Makes it hard to pay studio rent.

Well, I thought about that vexing problem, mainly because I dream about having my own studio, and what would I do if all my students up and left me.... but the reality is that to learn yoga, to learn about yourself, sstudents have to leave and expand. It's not that you never come back to your favorite teacher, but sometimes you kind of reach a plateau and you need a new teacher to show you the same thing in a different light.... and then you get it. Sometimes it takes 10 years before the light goes off in your head, but it doesnt mean you dont keep slogging along, learning and expanding.

There is a concept in yoga about expansion and contraction. You should always be expanding -- and the best way to do this is to stretch yourself to your personal edge... physically, mentally and emotionally. If you do this on your mat, you feel brave that you survived, and you can take this confidence out into the world... you can be expansive in your life. If you are too afraid to try a new pose, or stretch into a pose you think you cant do, then you contract. Once, I was in a yoga class and the teacher told her class "make yourself big enough to receive God. God does not fit in small containers" and that affected me deeply. It means you have to grow to your full capacity, your full size. You have to step up and take your place. But, if you contract yourself, you make yourself small in your life. You dull your own brilliant light. And it follows that if you are with people who want to hold you back, then they are trying to make you small, to reduce your light.

So yoga is about expansion and learning. Every day even your most basic asana changes. Your body changes. There is much to observe and learn from those subtle changes. Just be mindful.

Yoga is about making yourself big. Not clinging to fear that you cant do a pose, or clinging to the idea that students will always stay in your class. Students flow back and forth like ocean waves and they go learn and they expand and they find out that there is joy in doing that pose that seemed impossible.

( and then they come back to my class and bring all their friends.! -- Just putting that out into the Universe : ) )