Power of the Patience

Power of the Patience

 Hope you all had a great week. What I share each week in my classes and in this newsletter usually comes from what I am experiencing in my own life. Lately I have been practicing  connecting to the POWER of PATIENCE. In our culture, we are all very good at practicing impatience. The practice of patience is a bit more challenging.  

There are several avenues in my life where the practice of patience is necessary at the moment. As I continue to build a new life in a new state I am trying to cultivate patience in the journey of building a new community of yoga students. As I build KLARITY Mindsette through new connections here I am reminding myself that those connections take time to cultivate. Physically I am (trying) to practice patience as I continue healing (very slowly) from a nagging hamstring injury.

The practice of patience often extends past ourselves as we may have loved ones struggling through extremely drawn out challenges and “being patient” feels like a life sentence in suffering for everyone. So really the question isn’t “Should we practice patience?” but “How do we practice it?” 

In the body is one way to cultivate the patience of practice. Each day when we get on our mats we have the opportunity to be patient with our bodies. We know when we get frustrated, angry and push past our edge that we will likely suffer consequences. It’s the noticing what is causing the pain or discomfort and then meeting it with a bit of compassion that can help us be patient with whatever our body’s limitations are.

I shared these two quotes with my classes this week as they articulate the POWER of PATIENCE in different and equally powerful ways.

The first is a quote from Rumi; “Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.”

The second is a Haiku;
Patience, a lesson
In humility, allowing
Us time for growth…. 

Just like in the body, cultivating patience in the mind works largely the same way. It is the opportunity to FORESEE rather than wait and see. It is the opportunity to connect to humility and grow from that deeper understanding.

Patience starts with a true acknowledgment of the source of the suffering and then we need to go a bit deeper to explore the underlying emotions beneath that source. Most of the time that emotion is fear. Once we do that, meeting what we discover with compassion is a key part of the practice. I am wishing you all the POWER of PATIENCE this week as we practice together