Boy am I sore

Pain. Lately in my yoga practice I have been experiencing what I can only call pain. It feels similar to what I felt-- though not as intense or debilitating-- as when I was lifting weights. My hamstrings let me know that they are here even when I am at rest. This pain in my body has its counterpart in other places; my soul, my mind. Usually when confronted with pain or discomfort the response is to expel it, to get rid of it in someway. But, I began practicing yoga because I was uncomfortable, so where can I run now? If all is one, then I have to see this pain as something else, not as something that "isn't me" that I need to get rid of, but as something that IS me that needs to be investigated. "Anguish is a recognition that the path has opened." As Michael Stone says in The Inner Tradition of Yoga The cure begins with love, "this is not a personal love in the sense of new-age sensitivity or empathetic technique but rather the impersonal force that heals by extending itself to the most interrupted, broken, and ruined parts of ourselves" (19). We do this by embracing and breathing into those places that cause us discomfort waiting for them to complete the process of opening up and even letting go. Yoga practice requires "not a theological commitment but rather an interest in one's discontent and how to bring it to an end" (20).