 Are you Curious? Do you consider yourself curious? I hope you answered YES! Curiosity is what turns getting up in the morning from a mere act of starting a new day to Wow! Yikes! HolySmokes! If you believe nothing is permanent and everything is changing (you included) then each approaching minute, hour, day is a surprise. Can we approach it with a sense of wonder? It is the unknown which fuels our curious nature. Our ever curious Albert Einstein wrote: "The important thing is not to stop questioning. . . One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." Samuel Johnson offered that "Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind." Mediation asks us to look at ourselves with a sense of curiosity (don't forget to add in a huge dose of compassion). Curiosity can be thought of as adopting a beginners' mind. In Zen master Suzuki Roshi's book, Beginners' Mind, he writes: "I think of beginner's mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. 'I wonder what this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?' Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgement, just asking 'what is it?'." This can be applied to all areas of life. Instead of approaching difficult situations or disagreements with confusion or even anger, try adopting a curiosity about the situation. This opens the mind up to other solutions and possibilities. OK, let's all be curious. What do ya say. I'd like to start an additional column to my newsletter to address our common or not so common curiosities. We could call this a Q&A, but I won't be providing the A. It will be more an O. Not that O, my Opinion. So, we'll call it Q&O. The field of yoga and its accoutrements is too complex to suggest that anyone has the answers. So, I will attempt to address various questions with the responses that may be based on my personal experience, the experience of others, random research, ancient wisdom, Western science, my gut feelings, or whatever I want to write. The answers will be brief, maybe just a few sentences. But keep in mind, like the Buddha said, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. " So, to get the ball rolling, please send me some questions. Don't be shy, we can talk about body movement (downward dog and flying eagle) as well as body sounds (farts and varts). I'm looking forward to this! Here is the first one. A: I didn't have time for lunch and yoga class starts in 45 minutes. I'm super hungry and getting a bit lightheaded. I don't want to skip class. Do I eat? Everyone says I shouldn't eat at least 2 hours before class. What should I do? O: Eat. Make it light and easily digestible. Liquid is good--maybe a smoothie, cup of soup, chocolate milk. If you haven't eaten, you may also be dehydrated, so a liquid snack can be helpful. Oh, and skip the meat, doughnuts, fries, potato chips, and candy bars. They take lots of energy to digest and you need that energy for your 45th chaturanga, right?
(1) Recycled from 2/27/10.
CORRECTION - Last week, a typo misstated my hours of Yoga Alliance registration. It should have been 500 hours. I am a 500-RYT (registered yoga teacher). Did you want to read some of my past columns? You can right here. |
