Motivation

[Guest guest]

I am recovering from a shoulder injury and my

practise was beginning to be pretty fluid again when my

old nemesis, the left knee, acted up again.

<br><br>So, now I have two injuries to worry about: Shoulder

that disclocates when doing the vinyasa and a knee

that I cannot straighten.<br><br>And Gurujis workshop

starts next week.<br><br>What keeps YOU going in times

like this? Do you ever think of quitting? What is this

strange conviction that keeps urging you to once more

inch yourself up from the abyss of injury and

metaphorically teeter on that edge yet again?<br><br>I cannot

answer these questions. Not to myself nor to my worried

friends and relatives.

[Guest guest]

cynxir,<br>Sorry to hear about your injuries. I

truely believe that a lot of our injuries have their

origin in the mind. Sometimes just resting from your

asana practice (which I agree can be hard to do) gives

us a chance to see our injury in another, more

positive light. <br>Our bodies are transitory

anyway.<br>If I were you, I would skip practice while Gurujii

was here and maybe hang out to talk to everyone

afterwards. That way you still pick up the energy and delight

in others?<br>It sounds like something in your body

is wanting you to step back awhile.<br>twochant

[Guest guest]

Over the last six months my practise has also

been difficult due to an injured knee and a lower back

problem. It has been hard but I beleive I've learned

several lessons:<br><br>(1) My doctor told me to rest

these injuries or at least only do simple exercises

that did not cause any pain. Of course I knew better

and continued to do as much of primary as I could.

After several weeks as the problems became worse I was

pretty much forced to follow my doctors advice --

surprise, a week of complete rest went a long way towards

healing the injuries.<br><br>(2) I remember reading a

quote from Confucious or Mencius that said something

like: "When Heaven is going to grant a high office it

first causes a man to exert his sinews and bones, it

confounds all his undertakings, it attempts to break his

will in every possible way..." When I'm facing hard

times I always keep this in mind -- you only grow when

you face problems and it is often the way you face

the problem that counts most.<br><br>Also I remember

reading a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh saying that walking

on water is not the true miracle, walking on earth

is a miracle and you should take special notice of

every step, I only started to really appreciate the

miracle of simply walking when I suffered the knee

injury, so in a way the injury gave me the gift of

appreciating just being able to walk.

[Guest guest]

rootlock, I had a similar experience with a hand

injury over the summer. The result of stupidly tripoding

the fingers on jump-ups. I stopped the tripoding and

kept practicing thinking I would work thru it... it

got worse until I simply couldn’t go on. A couple of

weeks of rest and daily hand massages with lavender oil

the hand is back on the mat.

[Guest guest]

"Arjuna said:<br>O Keshava, how do you describe

that man whose mentality is stable, whose

concentration is fixed? What should the man whose thought is

settled say? How should he sit? How should he

walk?<br>The Lord said:<br>Partha, when he abandons every

desire lodged in the mind, by himself content within the

self, then he is called a man of stable

mentality.<br>He is called a holy man, settled in thought, whose

mind is not disturbed in the midst of sorrows, who has

lost the desire for pleasures, whose passion, fear,

and anger have disappeared.<br>His mentality is

stabilized who feels no desire for anything, for getting

this or that good or evil, and who neither rejoices in

nor loathes anything." - The Bhagavad Gita (II,

54-57).<br><br>"The man sitting apart, disinterested, unmoved by the

constituents(*), saying to himself, 'It is the constituents that

are operating,' who stands firm and does not waver,

to whom pain and pleasure are the same, who is

self-possessed, to whom a clod of earth, a stone, and a piece of

gold come alike, to whom the pleasant and unpleasant

and blame and praise are equal, who is constant, who

is indifferent to honour and dishonour, impartial

towards friendly or hostile factions, and who has

renounced all undertakings, is said to have gone beyond the

constituents." - The Bhagavad Gita (XIV, 23-25). (*) the 3

constituents arising out of material nature, i.e. purity,

passion, and darkness.<br><br><br>Of course, you might

say, it's easy for someone who, like me, never

suffered any injury through his practice so far, to quote

the wise gospels of the Bhagavad Gita. However, I

would like to remind here that yoga is not just about

doing the postures. It's also about cultivating a

certain mental attidude. This implies among other things

that you should be indifferent to whatever might

happen to you, be it luck or misfortune, pleasure or

pain, so to neither rejoice in nor to loathe anything.

Actually, it is the times when you don't have luck, and you

don't feel well, that are the litmus test of how

seriously you are ready to apply the teachings of yoga in

your daily life. Cultivating a yogic mind also implies

to practise non-attachment towards the actions. In

your case this means that if your injuries are

serious, you should slow down in your daily practice and,

if necessary, even abandon it altogether for a

while, until you may have recovered completely. To keep

fit you could do other things that are less harmful

to your joints, like swimming for example - it's

still summer time after all, even in Finland, isn't it?

Besides, since you do have the unique luck to have access

to a very good shala where you live in Helsinki:

what do your teachers say?<br><br>Also, do go to

Guruji's workshop, never mind how unfit you are. Remember

that not everyone has the opportunity to see Sri Jois

on his visit to Europe. (I myself will be neither in

London nor in Finland during that time.) Don't let your

ego dominate your practice through trying to do

better than your actual circumstances allow. Keep in

mind that an ego-dominated practice (orientated

towards competeting against others), always leads to

injury, and further injury, sooner or later. Good luck!

[Guest guest]

Great post Shiny. Thank you.

[Guest guest]

Awful glad that I am not the only one who finds

the impending workshop creating a bit of stress. So

now I've got to try to clear my mind and really

approach it with the right attitude, right? I'm sure he

has seen injuries before...

[Guest guest]

I agree with elegant homunculus. That is a GREAT post. Thank you.