Yoga in One Syllable

As I’ve been planning and writing The Yoga Brain it’s given me pause to reflect about beginnings and endings. We seem to get quite excited by the idea of something new, yet as humans we often find endings difficult to accept.

But you can’t have a beginning without an ending, or an end without a beginning – spring only arrives at the passing of winter, and only with the end of spring does summer come – so there is often a bitter-sweet mix of emotion that surrounds periods of change in our lives.

Beginnings signal the possibility of something new, but with that excitement can come more than a dash of trepidation. An ending, on the other hand, means leaving behind the comfort of knowing who we think we are and the place we’ve created for ourselves in this world.

Even if we don’t necessarily like the situation we’re in, the sheer familiarity of it can seem better than the unknown and uncharted – better the devil you know, and all that. Thus an ending can be both saddening and fearful.

Yet, like a lizard or a snake, there are times when we need to shed our present skin in order to continue our natural growth. As we evolve in our understanding of ourselves we need to remember that a fundamental part of us will always remain the same: a lizard losing its skin doesn’t emerge as a possum. Amidst all the beginnings and endings that leave us with a mixture of emotions from fear to excitement, nothing occurs to prevent us from being ourselves.

So as we watch and participate in all the beginnings and endings that swirl in and out of our lives we can take both comfort and strength knowing that fundamentally we will remain the same person. And each story and lesson that comes our way can only help us to come to a greater understanding of our core nature.

Image by mikebogle