Thr gifts of yoga are many and various, but for me one of thoe most important is that no matter how long we have been practsising, and not matter how old we are, whether we are healthy and full of beans, or fatigued or even unwell, there is a way to continue practising, developing and learning.
I met a lovely man recently on retreat in Samos who told me how much he regretted not sticking with yoga when he first came to it when he was younger. Now 50, he has committed to his practice with a trusted teacher. I have another student who picked up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita when she was 16 years old and was deeply moved by it, now in her fifties and dealing with an intractable autoimmune disease, she wonders why she didn’t find her way t0 yoga back then, but waited almost 40 years to begin.
It seems to me that our yoga practice begins when we first come to it, whether we committed to daily practice or not. Yoga is a seed that once planted can lie dormant for years, until the right combination of warmth, environment and attention cause it to germinate and grow.
Similarly, I meet students who used to have a dedicated yoga practice, but who fell off the yoga wagon somehow and have only just returned to it. There’s a kind of frustration in these students, they often express how they wish they had carried on, or wonder why they stopped when they know how much good yoga brings to life and limb.
It’s the same thing exactly, the yoga might be dormant within you, but it lives there still. All you have to do is shine some light on it, tend to it a little, water it regularly and it will begin to bloom within you once more.
If you have been away from regular practice and are regretting that fact, the worst thing you can do is to beat yourself up about it. Try to accept it as being your unique path in yoga, try rolling out your mat for ten minutes, moving gently, breathing more consciously. Make some room for yourself to water that seed, which grows in the sunlight of kind care, not the shadow of self-reproach.