The Beauty of Listening

Listen (via ky_olsen)

I spent this past weekend in a meditation workshop with a small group of fellow yoga teachers with whom I’ve been studying asana and philosophy for many years. We engaged in multiple meditations with breaks to write notes and share information. The act of setting aside a weekend to do this created a space within which our minds were able to become quiet. Within the quiet, we learned more about ourselves than most of us had imagined. The repetition of meditate-write-discuss created a familiar rhythm that made it increasingly easy to hear what was being said to us within our meditations. We emerged from the weekend inspired, exhausted, invigorated, and amazed.

If we want to know ourselves better, we need to become quiet and listen. When we are quiet, we are better able to hear what our bodies imply, our minds indicate, and our hearts gravitate toward. Cultivating this type of self-knowledge offers us a richer experience of the world around us. The outer world becomes a mirror that reflects back to us our beauty, our complexity, and our infinite capacity for transformation.

Some people develop their ability to listen through ongoing kinetic movement such as running or swimming. Others find it through physical stillness, such as sitting in meditation, and many through practices that play with the pulsation between movement and stillness – yoga, basketball, music, drawing, dance. All of these activities create a framework within which people can focus on themselves in a clearer, deeper way. Through the repetition of one of these particular practices, we become better acquainted with our motivational peaks and valleys. We learn about our abilities to grow and change, where we get stuck, and how to become creative within a given structure. In yoga we constantly talk about how to take what we learn off of the mat and into the street. What we learn about ourselves in our practice is applicable to every aspect of our lives.

What practice offers you clarity and quiet so that you can best listen to your body, heart, and mind?

How can you embrace this practice as a daily or weekly commitment so that you are inspired and amazed by your very self?