yoga hang up

i was practicing yoga last night and i had a thought...

i find that i'm unnecessarily difficult with myself when it comes to how my practice should "look." i get discouraged that i'm not practicing correctly when i don't have a sequence planned or when i'm not listening to audio instruction or a dvd or something.

i forget sometimes that it's not necessarily about what's pretty or what's graceful. my goal for my practice tonight is to go into it without a sequence planned and without dvd or mp3 instruction and just do what feels right. i'm not going to care if my transitions between poses are the "right" ones. if i'm doing tree pose and feel inclined to practice cobra next, i'm not going to care if I should've done a standing forward bend, downward dog and plank beforehand. 

i think i get so caught up in thinking about those things when i practice that i lose some of the personal benefits of just going with the flow and being present at that moment, on my mat.

a note about meditation - i've been giving this a shot here and there and it's sometimes really difficult for me. i'm fidgety and my mind goes 100 miles a minute. to the same point as the rest of this post - i'm going to meditate for a bit after my yoga tonight and not worry about all the thoughts that are running through my head. i tend to think i should be completely devoid of thoughts and that's not the point. i need to have those thoughts and then let them go. i need to not have emotional reactions from them or dwell on them. they show up - and then they pass.

i've also found it helpful to listen to meditative music on my mp3 player while i meditate. it seems to help me focus inward and it drowns out everything else that's going on around me.