Sunday, April 11, 2010

Relationship Yoga

In yoga, the idea is to tune into your body and become aware of where your edge is right now. Your edge is the place where you can feel that you’re opening up and becoming more flexible, but not where you’ve gone so far that you’re pushing into pain. Even if you’ve been practicing 65 years, in every position you can always find your edge. Your edge won’t be the same as it was yesterday, it won’t be the same tomorrow, and it’s not the same as that of the person next to you.

Once you’ve found your edge, you breathe into it. As you continue to breathe into and relax that area, you begin to open up from the inside.

To expand in your relationships, as in yoga, learn to play where your edge is right now. Trying to improve our relationships by approaching them from the outside involves compromise, negotiation, and even battles of will. By approaching them from the inside, we can stretch them slowly, expand them from the inside out.

The essence of transformation in yoga is the internal process through which the external is stretched and sculpted. So is the essence of transformation in relationship.