The common saying, “A watched pot never boils” applies to yoga practice as well. Sometimes we are too impatient to “accomplish” certain poses that it seems to take forever or never happen!
I heard an analogy on the importance of regular and consistent practice. If you fill a pot of water and turn on the stove to boil the water, but a couple minutes later, you turn it off and leave to do something else. You return after a while, turn on the stove to boil the water. A couple of minutes later, you turn it off and leave to do something else. Again you return after a while, turn on the stove to boil the water. Then (you guessed it) after a couple of minutes, you repeat the same thing. The water never boils.
When we first start practicing yoga, we are happy about how good it makes us feel after a practice session but there are some difficult poses that may take a long time to accomplish. Then we become distracted by another interesting activity. We stop practicing yoga and engage in the other activity. Months later we return to yoga and find it difficult all over again. We then repeat the same pattern, with each returning practice feeling like starting over. We don’t make progress. The water never boils. The same boiling water analogy has universal application to many things we do. We sometimes lack patience. We think too much about how fast we are progressing, and not enough about listening from our heart and to our body.
I watched the movie “Ramen Girl” last night, a B movie about a girl trying to learn how to cook ramen from a master ramen chef in Tokyo. She has learned all the technique of putting together the ingredients of making the “perfect” broth, but the master dumped her broth in the drain each time. Even though the broth seemed perfect, it did not taste it, because he said she was using too much of her head to cook, and not enough of her heart! The broth was bland. It reminded me of the importance of practicing a pose from the heart, so that the pose doesn’t just look beautiful without feeling, but may look plain yet from deep within the heart. A broth cooked with love.
Namaste,
Clarie
