Our New Ritual

Though I had trouble accessing the Nevrin article, I do know a ritual is considered a solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions in a specified order. Knowing this, I realize every yoga practice up to this point is a “ritual.” Performing actions with the intent of reaching some higher ground. It is now known to me that yoga is a ritual to completeness. Every movement has the intent of reaching a new pinnacle of realization in the yoga world. Realization of the mind and all it possesses, the body and each muscle, and the world as I am just a small speck on a large rock. A ritual does not always need to be as great of an action as yoga, it could even be as small as going for a run, but it is something that needs to be carried out on a daily basis to get the full effect. 

I guess… once I realized that more things in my life are considered rituals I had a different view on each action. Though it's small I realized I had rituals before every lacrosse game in high school and even now too. I always have my lucky red bandana with me on the mountain and I make sure to put my hair in two braids for optimal luck. I guess some could call this superstition, but I think it's a ritual. This series of steps in a specified order before I perform an action. All this time, and I didnt even realize it was something I was doing. This carried over into my yoga thoughts this week. I was especially conscious about my movements which caused the nature of my yoga class to change completely. The actions I was performing were based on the idea of a ritual. Though I believed this would intensify the class, I somehow felt relieved. I no longer had this perception that I needed to complete each and every position to the highest degree. I had this overwhelming sense of relief to do only what I could do, and that was fine… as long as I was trying. The nature o fmy practice space was changed for the better, along with the nature of my mind. I was performing a series of actions solely to reach a better understanding of yoga, not to be the best at yoga, but to do it for me and only me. 

This week I was lucky. I decided I wanted to practice on the beach again because that was one of the highlights of my week before. This time, I convinced my friend to meet me at the pier at 6am, sure enough, puffy eyed and all, we were on the beach stretching while the sun came up. It was a cold, quiet and calm morning all around. We didnt talk much because we were so engrossed in trying to perform “restorative yoga for tight neck and shoulders.” He and I are both active people and like to joke that we have the backs of 80 year old women with arthritis. Let me tell you, this yoga HURT. We both could only do so much, but that was more than enough. Our teacher, a woman who defied the laws of physics in her shoulders, made sure to express not to overextend the muscles because it is easy to get hurt oing these exercises. We used our own body weight to stretch everything from our wrists down to our lower back. It was great because we used this as our warm up before heading out into the surf. Usually, we will sit for a few minutes before putting wetsuits on and stretch to warm up, anothe ritual I did not relaize I was doing until I wrote this. I think we both understood that we need to do this more often because we felt great out in the water. Sometimes when I am paddling out, my lower back can cramp up from stressing to keep my head off the board and paddle forward, and that did not happen even once this time. Our stretches beforehand forced us to feel every muscle in our body pull in each direction. We have both agreed our new “normal” is exactly this. I am excited to add this to my list of accomplishments each week, my new ritual.