Let's Get Physical
Over the past decade and a half of practice, I have come again and again to yoga classes tired
and burdened and lacking, but something always happens, almost despite my weakness or my resistance.
Your are not what you believed you were, I told myself that night as I walked home from my first yoga
class in my tight jeans and sweaty sweater-and I have learned and relearned that lesson routinely, for
years now.There always comes that one holy moment, usually somewhere in the middle of the class, when I
suddently find that I have shed my pain and failings, that I have shed my heavy human mind, and that I have
metamporphosed for just an instant into something else: an eagle, a cat, a crane, a dolphin, a child.
And then I go home again in my own skin to take another stab at living, and to try to do it better. And things
are better, so much better.
Excerpted from Yoga Journal's March 2010 issue, by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.
Ann Harriet Buck's solution to getting what she calls "unstuck" -focus on word contrasts.
If you have been sitting, stand.
If you have been standing, sit.
If you have been traveling, stay home.
If you have been home, travel.
If you have been teaching, learn.
If you have been learning, teach.
If you have been talking, listen.
If you have been listening, talk.