Tag Archives: balance

“What Do You Practice?”

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“What Do You Practice?”
Cheri Harvey, January 29, 2018
Last week, I came across a video on Facebook and I want to share the video and the message with you today.
In this video, this young boy asks a profound question: “What do you practice?”
Note: OK, I found out today that this little boy is repeating the teachings of Prem Rawat, and from watching a video of Prem Rawat speaking about this, I learned that he based and created this teaching from a story he heard while in China. So, I’ll post links to all three videos below. :-)
I’ll summarize what he says here, but check out the videos via the links below.
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[What do you practice? Because whatever you practice, you’ll become very good at it!
 
Do you practice joy in your life? 
Do you practice peace in your life? 
Do you practice happiness in your life? 
If you do, you’ll get very good at it!
 
Or do you practice complaining? If you practice complaining, you’ll get very good at it. So good at it, that you’ll find fault with everything, like you are the expert on things you know nothing about!
 
Or do you practice anger? Because if you practice anger, you’ll become very good at it. So good at it, that the most trivial things will make you angry. 
 
Or do you practice worry? Because if you practice worry, you’ll become very good at it. So good at it, that everything will worry you.
 
So, if it is a matter of practice, let us practice peace, joy, happiness…. Imagine the rewards!]
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So, may I (Cheri) suggest that we practice happiness, kindness, love, mercy, grace, peace, enthusiasm, etc. because if we practice any of those things, we will get really good at them!
This is also how our yoga practice works. It is a practice! And whatever we practice, we will become good at it.
We practice balance.
We practice flexibility.
We practice strength.
We practice alignment.
We practice breathing and meditation to calm us.
And by practicing these things, we will become good at them.
So good at them, that we will experience balance, flexibility, strength, alignment, stress-reduction, etc. in our daily lives.
Yoga is not only about what you do in class on your yoga mat. It is about what that practice produces in your daily life that you live out!
—
Here are the links to the videos:
Prem Rawat (background to story): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmOFWiwfP1s
** Prem Rawat (same segment as what the little boy repeated): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udbvSl2r-3E
I hope this question “What do you practice?” will really cause each of us to notice and inspect what we practice every day and that we will make the necessary adjustments to practice the things that will have the greatest rewards for ourselves and those in our lives.

Yoga Is A Balancing Act

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In last week’s classes, we focused on balance. Yoga is a great tool to increase your balance and restore your balance it if it’s gotten away from you.

When I first started taking yoga classes, my balance was way off. I had always had really good balance. Anytime I’d go through a parking lot, I’d turn the sidewalk edges and cement parking stop thingies into my personal “balance beams” and boogie on across them with a big grin and no problem. However, it got to where I could not balance! Ugh! How frustrating! After taking yoga classes for a while, I noticed that my balance was back and I could have fun on my parking lot “balance beams” again! Whoohoo!

One of the cool things about yoga is that what you do in class translates to your life. So, as I was learning balancing poses in class, it was building balance back into my body, mind and life!! Yeeeehaaaaw y’all!!

I now use balancing poses as a barometer for my life. If I’m all wobbly, it tells me my life is a bit (or a lot) out of balance, so I need to practice my yoga more to bring all of me back into balance. And you know what? It works every time!

Yoga builds balance in so many ways – here are just a few:

  • The standing poses create balance between the grounding you get through your feet, legs and hips… and the lengthening upward of the spine, head  and arms.
  • The one-legged balancing poses create stability and strength to keep you stable and aware as you walk, stand, run, etc.
  • Doing poses on both sides of your body brings balance to the right and left sides of your body, since one side tends to be more dominant and sometimes one side is tighter than the other.
  • Yoga also helps balance the two hemispheres of your brain – yeah, this is your brain on yoga!
  • Your nervous system is balanced between the sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight mode) and parasympathetic nervous system (relax response) which is great since in our stressed out lives, we can easily get stuck in the fight-or-flight mode.

I could go on and on about the balancing benefits of yoga, but for now, just begin or continue your practice of poses, breathing and meditation and increase or restore balance in your body, mind and spirit – your whole life!!

Copyright 2012, Cheri Harvey, Yoga For Real, LLC., www.yogaforreal.com.