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Bikram yoga, compassion, mental health, mindfulness, yoga, yoga accommodation, yoga adjustment, yoga every body, Yoga Holiday With Paul, Yoga With Paul
As a yoga teacher part of my job is to ensure yoga is accessible to anyone who wants to participate. This means accommodating yogis of different ages, experience levels, health backgrounds and so forth.
Accommodations, or adjustments, are fundamental to yoga. To offer accommodations, I have to be alert to people’s needs — are they struggling with a particular posture? Do they have pain or stiffness? Do they seem engaged or are they struggling? What is their mood?
These questions apply to more than just yoga classes. In daily life, we interact with people all the time, whether family, friends, colleagues or strangers. Too often, we are totally absorbed in our own immediate concerns and don’t take time to think about the other person’s state of mind.
This can lead to frustration and conflict. Maybe a co-worker doesn’t finish a task and we have to pick up the slack. Maybe our partner forgets something we asked them to remember. Maybe a friend does something we find inconsiderate.
Our instinctive response when we feel obstructed or undervalued by others is to get upset. We might sulk, argue or get back at them by being indifferent or inconsiderate in return.
Accommodation is the key to breaking this cycle of interpersonal frustration.
What if, next time you feel yourself start to get annoyed, you ask yourself ‘does this person need accommodation?’ This requires stepping outside of your own immediate needs and finding out if they are tired, stressed, worried or in some kind of pain (physical or emotional).
When we understand where a person is, we can choose to accommodate them. We can relax our expectations and demands and offer them grace and compassion instead.
People need to be heard, seen, cared about, understood. They need it in yoga, they need it during the commute, they need it when they’re walking down the street, or cooking dinner, working, shopping, or raising a family.
We all have private stresses and strains. When we feel acknowledged it eases the burden and creates space in the situation for empathy and harmony. It can change the whole energy of an encounter or day.
Accommodating each other’s needs and differences is about more than ‘tolerance’. It’s about warmly embracing and supporting one another so we can live better lives.