Kriplau – Center for Yoga & Health – Article – I Don’t Wanna Do Yoga: Finding Your Way Around Resistance – by Valerie Reiss – Published: October 1, 2014
Facing the need to make changes is HARD. We show up in therapy knowing we want things to get better. The first impulse is often some version of, “if only [X environmental factor(s)] would change, my life would be all better.” Fairly quickly a boarder reality emerges…the common denominator to so much of my angst is me. So, we arrive at the big questions: “what internal changes (insight oriented) and external changes (behavior oriented) and focus questions (mindful oriented) changes can I make in order to feel better? Yet, once we have some clarity regarding any of those fix-its, we inevitably face the human aversion to actually making changes.
Valerie Reiss, a yoga instructor at Kripalu, in her post, I Don’t Wanna Do Yoga: Finding Your Way Around Resistance, reflects on how many yoga masters (ya’ know, those ‘enlightened’, disciplined people) struggle with resistance to yoga. It may be good to know that you are not alone in your experience of immediate gratification trumping long-term growth, wellness and integrity.
Yet, continuing to do as we have been doing isn’t working. Remember the proverb, “If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.” So, lean in to the resistance. It’s all about small changes.