Patience

So one thing about yoga, and doing it seriously is it requires something that is known as patience. I have a relative amount of patience, to work in my field patience is required as the children I work with need time, to learn and process and practice practice practice until they succeed in our goal. However out of the special needs world, I wouldn't call myself patient at all. I want things fast, I move fast, I eat fast and generally slow environments bore me. I have dreams of travelling, having more money and a more successful profession, and I want it all now. I finish one big project and then want the next. So the past 8 months I have learnt about the 8 limbs, about how to be un harming to myself, to not have greed and this is disturbed all through the lack of patience. That said, since my immersion I have changed a lot, things don't frustrate me as easily, I take time to just observe, chill and enjoy the moment and I've been very patient with my practice. But patience has to be learnt. You have to meditate your way through to achieve patience. Last week my mysore practice really challenged my patience and the effects of it. I will admit, I've been exploring other practices and classes and not been able to make it four times a week to mysore each morning, and its been very noticable. I went through a phase of advancing each and every day, and even though I don't move on further through the series I'm ok, because I get stuck at supta kurmasana (wrapping my legs behind my head with my arms bound behind my back.) I'm fine with taing my time with this as I know my body needs time to open up. I'm not naturally flexible and I have always been ok, with the slow progression. However last week saw a near breakthrough, a half headstand (ardh sirhasan) to then be followed by a complete fail, toppling and nearly landing on someones face when the poor girl next to me was resting. Embarrassed I was actually far from, but then in it creeped, frustration. Totally threw off my final asana's in practice, unsettled my rest and critiqued myself with constant evaluation. The Ashtanga was testing me and I failed, I was inpatient. I was greedy as I wanted to get it. I was harming as I was angry with myself for not getting it. Now I know this is the challenge, I know I have to work on it, but each day I need understand me, and understand how such things effect not just me but those I know. If I'm hard on myself, my body language changes, my health and my spirit changes which can bring down the mood of others. This is way more than a physical challenge, but a mental one too, but I have to remember to not work too hard on it, because then the impatience happens again, then the circle is created. I have to allow it to come naturally to allow it to become me!
Wish me luck

Namaste

Supta Kurmasana - The place where I start to close my practice as I'm no where near here yet. But maybe one day! (Please note as I can't do this, this is not my picture, and I found it online through a  search engine, she makes it look so easy)