Early in my yoga journey I wasn’t finding much success. I was taking classes at a local gym in a dance studio filled with limber women. One day we did a pose called “Crow” and my success at it was worse than any other pose. In the pose you balance on your hands while your knees are near your armpits. I think I might have smashed my face into the mat in my boisterous, impatient attempts. Over the next few years I attempted the pose several times in various classes. I sweated a lot, which made my knees slip off my arms, and I came crashing to the floor. One day I was in a class where we were attempting the pose when the teacher said, “Don’t try to get your feet off the ground. Just work slowly and patiently with the balance of the body even while the feet are on the ground. It may take a while, but just be patient and breathe. Success may take a few lifetimes.”

The correlation of my attempts at the pose and the daily successes and failures of my life was a slap in the face. How much energy do  I spend in fits, expecting immediate success, trying to push my feet off the ground, overheating and making the situation worse, when what I should be focusing on is creating the balance in the situation, and slowly eroding away the obstacles to progress.

Take a look at a video of the Crow Pose on my YouTube Channel.