Be Here Now

Children are wonderful teachers. 

If you would like to learn something about life, look to your child. 

Just last week I watched my child prepare for, accept and recover brilliantly from a simple (although certainly uncomfortable) surgery. I also watched myself deal with each of those stages of her experience - often with much less grace than she. 

We know that children are exceptionally strong. 

But the true teaching of this last week is to live more in the present moment. My daughter was able to take each experience just as it came and accept it as it was. Even in her most vulnerable states, she was living in the present. Hours before the surgery she was playing as if blissfully unaware of what was to come, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t know.

I have learned (along with most adult people) over time - and through experience - to disconnect from NOW. I obsess about the past and the future as part of a learned habit. In fact, it is so habitual that usually it feels like the present moment doesn’t even exist. Familiar? 

But as I watched my child closely these last days I’ve seen her living from her heart. And it seems that the heart lives in the present moment - as opposed to the brain which is always tied up stories.

All of this leads me back to one of the first philosophical teachings that I received about yoga:  the Sanskrit word Atha, the first word in a simple Sutra (phrase) that suggests yoga emerges from and leads us back to the timeless. All there is, is NOW. 

Just another reminder that children are natural yogis :)