Cultivated and Wild

I strongly recommend practicing postural yoga with a keen awareness and development of appropriate and proper alignment. Alignment may be practiced within the physical body itself to create balanced integration and expansion and thus to allow safe opening within the body. It may also be practiced between the various layers of you (body, breath, mind, and heart) to create a sensation of harmony and wholeness. This is the cultivated aspect of your practice, like the tended rows of vegetables.

It is important to also keep a free and untended side to your practice so that cultivation, alignment, propriety, and organization do not get out of control. This can simply be space and openness in your mind so that learning and growth have an opportunity to spontaneously occur. There is nothing you need to do to cultivate fruits in this aspect of your practice; simply allow them some space and see what happens. This is the wild side of your practice, like the slope above my garden where some berry plants took root. I’m not sure yet what they are, but I hope they are edible once they ripen!

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