Tadasana

Tadasana - Standing Mountain Pose

Asana can be translated to mean "take your seat".  Obviously, you're not seated in this & many other poses in this practice.

"Take your seat".  It means get comfortable.  Settle in.  Not just into the pose, but into your body.  Get in sync with your breath & your energy.  In Tadasana, become the embodiment of a moutain.  Deeply rooted in the earth & in the moment.  Solid, grounded, steady & reaching for the sky.

Such a simple pose, when you look at it from the outside.  Yet there's so much going in when you bring your attention & energy fully into the moment & into just what you are doing.

Try it.  Try standing in Mountain Pose for 5 minutes.  It's unexpectedly challenging - again, if you are fully present & committed to bringing all of your energy & attention into the moment.  You start to notice the sensations in your legs & arms change.  You notice how much your mind wants to wander.  You notice your breath.  You notice the air on your body & how the ground feel beneath your feet.

Everything you do can be Mountain Pose.  Washing dishes, brushing your teeth, folding the laundry.  Simple actions, everyday actions.  But when you bring your energy & attention into your breath & into the moment, it changes everything.  You can really notice what you are doing & how it feels.  It's a shift - a different way of doing things.  It becomes a practice of meditation - it's yoga off the mat.

Live a Life Less Ordinary

 
"live a life less ordinary, live a life extraordinary...."

I love this line.  It's the opening song in a Curious George movie my son loves - I love the movie too.

I sang this line (off key) to my husband the other day & he laughed at me.

I don't actually know why he laughed.  Maybe because I can't sing.  Maybe because from the outside our life looks anything but extraordinary.

My husband works in Boston & we live in CT, which means we're often apart for the better part of the week.

We're in our 40s & we live with my mother.

We drive two beat up, old cars.

Not exactly what a lot of people would call extraordinary.

But it is to me.  Our life is extraordinary.

We love each other - a lot.  We love to spend time together - working in the garden, grocery shopping, doing not so extraordinary things. We love my mom.  We love our son & our grumpy dog.  We love that my Mom watches our son when we are "working".  We love living very close to our extended family.  We love not needing a lots of stuff or money to be happy.  And we love that we let our dreams drive the choices we make, rather than public opinion or even practicality.

To me, this is extraordinary.

 I've seen a lot of unhappy, unloved & unloving people in my life.  People who care too much about what others think.  People who worry too much about the past or the future & miss out on the joy of the present.

Sure, there are things that we wish we're different.  But we do our best to enjoy the things that are.

It's extraordinary that out of all the people in world, we found each other.  Extraordinary that my mother is so generous.  Extraordinary that our son is so amazing.

Live a life less ordinary.