A Non-Reactive Mind

In tragic news, it turns out that my favorite Ali is no longer teaching the Friday lunch class.

Sad face.

Because of this, I decided to go to a morning class today instead, and last night set my alarm for the 6AM practice. I woke up to use the restroom in the middle of the night, decided 5:40 AM was just way too early to get up, and reset it for 6:40. Then, my body naturally woke me up at 5:30, and I ended up at the early class anyway.

I'm so weird.

And I'm so glad I went. Because the instructor ended up talking about a lot of the same ideas I just discussed in my post a couple days ago. She started class by talking about how we should all try to be non-reactive today, and let the little things affect us less. If something happens, we should try to relax and sink into the event, instead of fighting against it and responding to it instantly. Like I said in my post, I let the small things stress me out and get me flustered, and cultivating a non-reactive mind is a really great goal for me, in yoga and in life. Contentment is what I seek.

Especially after yesterday. I was just so restless all day yesterday. I couldn't get comfortable in my chair. I kept getting up and walking around. I wasn't content doing anything, writing, working, thinking, listening to music. I wanted to go home, I wanted to go to yoga, I wanted to anything but be at work, but I bet you no matter what I did I wouldn't have been content doing that either. Everything was just wrong.

After this morning's class, I did a little Internetting, and came across this page, which was just perfect for this day:

"Try this experiment for one day: See every moment as a “perfect situation.” This moment is the absolute best thing that could happen right now. It was uniquely designed for you to learn from. This sounds simple, but way of seeing runs contrary to the habit pattern of the mind.

Most of the time, the mind makes things wrong. The judgmental mind is rarely content with things how they are. It always wants Reality to be different. If Reality changes the way the mind wants it, the satisfaction is brief. The mind latches on to something else that is wrong and it wants that to be different. This mental action of always looking for what is wrong creates an inner conflict and the spaciousness of the mind is lost."

Isn't that just SO FUCKING RIGHT?

Seriously.

I'm holding on to that.

So, yay for super early yoga, and yay for my internal alarm clock getting me to class when I needed to be there for my mental health.

Yay for knowledge.

Yay.