Focus On One Banana

In my personal yoga practice, I struggle most with savasana (pronounced sha-va-sana), corpse pose at the very end of the practice. The time is meant for soaking up the benefits of your practice by relaxing and focusing on your breath. I usually spend the whole five minutes grappling with "monkey mind," where your mind is like a monkey, your thoughts are a ton of bananas in front of him. He is so excited about all the bananas, he cannot grab just one. Instead, he grabs two, takes a bite out of each of them before discarding one and grabbing another. Monkey mind.

I cannot focus on my breath but instead jump from my grocery list, to a blog post, to a sequence that I want to write for my class (I teach yoga too), to identifying my monkey mind. My mantra, instead of something yogic and profound, like om, has become focus on one banana. 

Inhale.

Focus on one banana. 

Exhale.

Focus on one banana. 

I'm a planner. When this blog post goes live, it'll be over two weeks since I've written these words. I cast out into the future often, scheduling, budgeting time and money. It's not a bad thing. But it's also not the purpose of savasana. I'm working on setting to the now-ness of those five minutes.

Inhale.

Focus on one banana. 

Exhale.

Focus on one banana. 

-Madelyn

(random unrelated pictures because I don't usually take pictures during my practice (cause I'm focusing :P) and also because I didn't have any bananas.)