Service
“Nothing liberates our greatness like the desire to help, the desire to serve,” author Marianne Williamson has been quoted as saying, We at Being Yoga couldn’t agree with her more. We believe that “serving” is a tool that benefits both the “server” and the “served.” Indeed, we believe that there are great rewards for serving. We also believe that a committed Yoga practice is a powerful way to serve. Please read on to explore our theme of the month, “service,” and its connection to yoga:
It’s quite obvious how we yogis perform a physical service to ourselves when practicing yoga. We all know that through our practice we gain physical strength, flexibility and balance, which, in turn, keep us fit and feeling out best.
Most of us, however, are surprised when we discover how well served we are psychologically and spiritually through yoga. Yoga helps us to de-stress and to quiet our overly-active minds, which, as Donna Farhi (author of Bringing Yoga to Life) says “makes available to us a new and altogether different view of reality.”
Ms. Farhi goes on to say that through finding inner stillness, we unleash “The energy that we have been using to maintain the boundaries of the mind,” and, therefore, bring about the “unbinding of consciousness,” or the opening of awareness. This new awareness opens our minds—and our hearts—and brings about an expansion in ourselves that we then begin to extend to others.
When we are extended outward, and are not turned inward (obsessed with the noisy interior world of our self-centered minds), we begin to connect with others. We begin to have the interest, and the energy, to focus with compassion on the well being of the people that surround us. (We can, of course, begin practicing compassion for others in the Yoga studio by being mindful of good yoga etiquette. It is indeed a service to extend courteous and thoughtful behavior to all our fellow students, thus helping them along the path of finding their own freedom in body and mind.) Our inclination to serve others becomes more and more of a natural impulse which brings along with it a sense of fulfillment and joy found only through service.
It is with this understanding of how Yoga not only helps us individually, but also moves us into an expanded state of compassion towards others that we can begin to view our Yoga practice as an important service. By practicing regularly, we are contributing not only to our own health and well being, but to the well being and extension of an entire community moving in a positive direction. As Paramahansa Yogananda has stated, “Your soul is a beacon of power. You can expand that power from within and give light and health and understanding to others.”