Happy Yoga: Thoughts

I recently unearthed a book from my shelves that I started to read long ago, Happy Yoga: Seven Reasons Why There's Nothing to Worry About, by Steve Ross. My yoga teacher had read from this book in class when it was new a few years ago. From her chosen excerpts, it sounded like something I'd like to read for myself. I was new to yoga and although I was practicing nearly every day, I wanted to delve deeper, to knock some of the gleam off my shiny newbie coat. I wanted to learn more.

I had started yoga about three weeks before I met the first man I ever fell in "love" with, a man who also happened to be the father of a small child. My life got very busy very quickly. Although I kept doing yoga, the book Happy Yoga fell to the periphery, then one day got placed on the shelf, spine out, bookmark in place.

Life went on, the relationship ended, yoga itself even had to be placed on the back burner for reasons I'll get to in another post, I started working, I stopped working and tried to pick up yoga again, I started working again and forgot about yoga, I stopped working, I picked up yoga again... I started writing, and one morning, half awake, my thoughts fluttering around from dream to reality, I thought of this book.

I didn't even know if I still had it, but there it was on the bookshelf, a little bit dusty, and the bookmark was still in it. I started reading it from the beginning and found many truths in the first chapter that were familiar to me yet yielded an interesting sensation, like using a muscle group that had been neglected for some time.

Then I got to the last page of chapter one, and found that my bookmark was on the very next page, the start of chapter two, entitled, "Reason Two: You Can Have True Love." Interesting that I stopped there, I thought, seeing as how, the first go-round, I had been telling myself that I was in love, and receiving the same information from "Paul," my boyfriend. Why did I not continue to read this chapter?

The first few lines on the page might give me the answer to this question:

Have you ever met someone, fallen completely in love, and then after the "honeymoon" period (however long that lasts--two days or five years), you start to notice they're not perfection on earth?... The initial feeling of ecstatic oneness with another being as a result of falling in love--and I don't mean to sound cynical, because I'm not--does wear off. 

Whaaaa....? You mean the warm fuzziness doesn't last forever? I think I must have read those words and just shut the book. That sentiment was a hard truth indeed for someone falling in love for the very first, really real, time. I was stubborn, and extremely hardheaded to boot. I was determined that my "honeymoon" would be the type to last at least five years, if not superhuman-ly longer.

I know now that there's nothing wrong with the honeymoon ending. It's ok, really. I wasn't immature or naive before, I just was working under the assumption that when the initial glow wore off, the man would run. Chalk it up to the sum total of all my previous experience.

So, having learned something which may or may not prove to be useful in the future, I was able to read the whole chapter this time. As I read, I found more and more of those truths which were not so familiar to me, but could have helped me in my relationship immensely. For example,

Expecting someone to complete you is not love, it is expecting someone to complete you. Expecting someone to satisfy you and make you happy is not love, it is expecting someone to satisfy you and make you happy. 

Those words are so simple yet had never occurred to me in that way before. Hello! Anyone home?
{Yes, I am here, now.}

Oh God! Why couldn't I just have read this one chapter back then? I don't know if I would have been able to hear the truth. But I can hear it now. I may not have been present in yoga class during this intermission, I may not have been doing physical asanas, or yoga poses, but I have been practicing yoga all the same. I'm nicer, even on bad days, less competitive, more understanding of others' shortcomings, and less separate.

I think Happy Yoga may be the best self-help book I've ever read. I'm only on chapter two and I already feel more enlightened.