Pose of the Moment

In class, it’s hard not to anticipate what’s coming next. Especially when you have moved on to the second side of the vinyasa. You know which poses are coming next and the transitions your instructor uses to get there. The words are familiar and so are the movements and your muscles are itching to get there.

Inevitably there is a pose in the vinyasa you aren’t looking forward to; a pose you dread. For me, it’s often chair pose. I recognize it’s benefit and it definitely warms me up for class, but when I know it’s coming, I feel anxious just thinking about it. We may be three poses away in our flow, but I feel it coming. My thighs shake with the anticipation in warrior when they are not event tired.

This is particularly a problem in Bikram classes, where each class is the same series of 26 postures. It’s hard not to jump ahead. I see the more stressed out group of my classmates often skipping ahead from the relaxation poses in the transition to get to the next big pose. I have also seen instructors struggle with this, urging students to settle down; wait for the sound of their voice before moving towards the next posture, enjoy the benefits of relaxing as well as working out. But nevertheless, someone is always itching to move forward and be one step ahead of the pose.

I find myself doing this throughout the day. Thinking ahead to the next three things on my plate and feeling anxious about their approach. Wondering how I will ever sit through a two-hour meeting or have a difficult conversation that is already on the books. I couldn’t count the hours I have wasted worried about these things that are three steps ahead in my future.

Today, sitting down to a meeting scheduled to last for four hours, I found myself doing the same thing. Thinking about the lengths of time stretching in front of me and how I would ever get through them. All the talking through each bullet I had to do; all the explaining and discussion it would take to achieve our end result. And then I heard the small voice of my instructor in the back of my mind, “Focus on the pose at hand. You will get to the next one when it is time.”

All I really had to do was think about what was going on right then. What we were talking about right then. Yeah, there was a considerable length of time stretching out in front of us; but the only thing that really had to do with me was what was happening around me right then.

Living in constant anticipation of the next thing is like not really living at all. It's like missing all the little pieces that lead up to the whole. When I find myself thinking forward to a day's worth of work, anxiety building in my mind and distracting me from the moment, it is an intense sense of relief to redirect my mind to exactly what I am doing at that moment; to focus on the pose at hand knowing that I will eventually get to all the rest.