A Plug for Fluid Intention in Yoga Class

Now, come back to the intention that you set in the beginning of class.

Shit. How often does that sentence catch you off guard, thinking about that woman across the room who doesn't like you, wondering whether the farmer’s market next door sells fresh eggs, or blowing that tiny ant off of your mat? What was my intention?

In the busy world we create for ourselves, we strive for peace and transformation in our hour-long once-a-week yoga class. Why can’t that transformation take a different form from the one we felt when we looked out into the ocean after a week-long yoga retreat?

My intention had been to focus on my breath and to take that focus into my work that afternoon. I felt disappointed that the awareness of my breath didn’t last longer than the first two minutes of class. Then again, I hadn’t just been thinking about that woman across the room, I had been asking for the compassion to forgive her. I hadn’t just been planning out my breakfast, I had been taking in the smell of grilled cheese or whatever it was wafting across the garden-turned-studio. I hadn’t just been blowing off the ant…ok, maybe I had been.

Just then, as I continued to not focus on my breath but analyze my thought process from that morning, my awareness of my breath came back, deeper than it had been all day. It lasted right up until I started to draft this piece in my head.

Nevertheless, it was a reminder that those thoughts had meaning, that maybe I had to set them free, or dust them off my mat if you will, before I could find my breath underneath.

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In a world in which our high expectations often leak onto our yoga mat, acceptance of the fluidity of our intention may be a good place to start in that search for breath.