Your Neighbor’s Story

Antonio — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:35:17 +0000

For those of you follow me regularly on Twitter or Facebook, you know that for me, yoga is the “zen” part in zen daddio. I was first introduced to yoga 6 years ago at the UMass Center for Mindfullness training I participated in. Specifically the stress reduction course they offer which is fantastic. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I began to engage in a more serious and committed yoga practice, at a studio, with excellent teachers. In the year that I have been on this personal yogic journey of moving meditation, the transformation to both my body, mind and spirit have been significant and tangible. So needless to say, yoga plays an important part in my personal and at times professional life. The style of yoga I practice is called Vinyasa which is a flow yoga that is usually practiced in a heated room, usually between 92 and 98 degrees and has you moving and flowing from one posture to the next, using your breath as the core of the practice.

So today involved a variety of Sunday morning rituals one of which included attending a 10 am class with one of my favorite instructors, Shawn Shaw of Metrowest Yoga in Westborough, MA. Shawn is one of those teachers who infuses into her teaching a way for you to connect your practice to your daily life. Today she made a statement during class that stuck with me. She said “Those of you who are paying attention to the person in front of you or behind you and trying to make their practice your own, need to remember that your neighbor has his or her own story to tell.” Think about it. The person next to me has a story inside them that only they know. It might be an injury, a tramatic experience, a personal goal, triumph or victory. But it is their story to tell. For those of us who study and practice yoga, it would be misguided of us to try and make their yoga practice our own. So, the take away lesson is that for students of yoga, you should make your yoga practice your OWN practice.

Now think about this for a moment. How often to you hear people in schools say “Did you hear what they are doing over at Xyz Academy?” or “Such&Such Day School has this new program in _________, we should really look into that for our school.” It’s common. It happens all the time. How quick was your school to set up a Facebook or Twitter because the school across town did it? Or rush into a new 1 to 1 laptop, service learning or multicultural education initative because they had heard about some other school having achieved some success because of their journey in a new and exciting direction? So let’s stop there and let me take you back to my yoga metaphor. Vinyasa yoga is a breathing exercise, which incorporates a style of breathing called Ujjayi breathing, and requires that you take deep and long breathes in and out of your noise, making an ocean sound while you inhale and exhale. It is said that Ujjayi breathing is a balancing and calming breath, and having experienced it, I for one can attest to its calming power.

In looking back at my last post, I am sure it may have appeared that I was on mission to wake schools up. A rant so to speak to bring attention to the need for schools to stop talking and start doing. And I was and still am. So the point of this Sunday afternoon’s post/reflection? Schools should consider taking a deep, long, cleansing and calming institutional breath, and remember that they cannot and should not try to replicate their “neighbor’s” story. They should instead, realize that they have their own journey to make and that the end result will be an amazing story of their own, unique, personal and very much rooted in who they are.

Antonio Viva » Random Musings

Your Neighbor’s Story

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