faq: will yoga fix my problems?

short answer: yes, because you will see that there are no problems!

long answer:

What does it mean to come into yoga, into philosophy or psychology with the desire to fix? It means that we have the basic presumption that something is wrong, broken, in need of repair.

The word fix comes along with similar words, related ideas: to fixate, to afix. These are concepts of being stuck, attached and immobile. We become entangled, self-involved as we fixate on self-repair. We hold tightly, to be certain, to be safe, we plan and seek signs of progress.

What is the opposite approach? To come open to change, unattached and unencumbered by perceived shortcomings, lacks, gaps in need of repair. When we are not fixated, we are mobile, receptive to the actual changes we are experiencing rather than repairing the wounds we are sensitive to. We learn to work with a light touch, so we can feel more broadly, because we are certain that there is much we don’t know.

The initial benefit of working to fix is the single minded focus: the unidirectional drive forward. But with time, striving becomes contriving, and instead of welcoming all new sensations and expanding awareness, we become caught up, entangled in the doing, the proving, the accomplishing.

When we release the mindset of doing, of wanting to fix, then we are open minded to feeling what cannot be measured.

Rather than remembering our problems, the things we want to fix, we have the energy to feel what is new and different within us daily, and make decisions based on the fresh, rather than the stale. There is always the option to do what we have always done, which lightens our habits with the energy of conscious choice, and gives us the freedom to change those choices when the time is right.

We are liberated from our expectations of how progress should be paced, because there is no need for external measurement, no need to outsource what we can sense best from within. We trust and celebrate the new sensations as opportunities, as windows that we can widen and work through, following a natural, and unique path. There is no pressure to do what others do, when others do it.

This state shows us that ease, like mobility, is a high state. We have a broader perspective of what is around and within us, and realize that in the pursuit of perfection, we cannot presume that perfection is a static state. It is dynamic, as our work must be.