Practice is the best of all instructors.
-Publilius Syrus
Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.
-Epictetus
I feel like I finally have some notion of what Practice actually means, or at least what it means to me.
Sure, I’ve been to practice. Soccer practice, piano practice, flute practice (that didn’t last so long, constant congestion leads to lightheadedness…fyi). I’ve practiced sewing, patternmaking, knitting, painting, drawing. I’ve practiced baking, roasting, sauteing, pureeing. Eating and drinking for sure. Lots of reading and writing too. Driving and even and a bit of golf.
I had taken yoga classes off and on at the gym for years. I have a DVD, I even got a mother baby DVD when I was pregnant. It was hard. Doing it on my own was like WHATEVER, it’s dark out, I don’t need to get out of bed, I have the DVD, I can do it whenever. But I didn’t do it at all. Ok well maybe the abs part for like 20 minutes, and for the next 3 days I hurt so much I could not inhale deeply or bend to the left or right, or even pick up my bag. Has that ever happened to you?
I signed up for Family Yoga at a local yoga studio. Once a week my daughter and I would show up and do yoga together. It was awesome. I could bend and fold and breathe, the teacher even focused the kiddos when necessary so the moms could just practice yoga instead of keeping one eye on our yoga buddy. She learned about 45 minutes of self discipline, practicing her bending, folding, twisting and breathing, and about how good it made her feel. It made me feel good too.
I eventually cancelled my gym membership and signed on for a year at a new yoga studio. I now practice yoga regularly, a few times every single week. And I’ve come to realize some things about practice.
Practice does make “perfect” (perfect is a relative term of course, different for each of us). Practice helps to realize things fully, for example, I could not bend over because of a bulging disk in my lower back. But after practicing bending (in yoga), I can bend over. Gardening is officially back on the list of regular activities.
By gardening daily, my thumb has gotten greener (it has been sort of grey in the past). Practicing gardening has increased my understanding of the earth and seasons, even the moon, as well as plants in general, bugs too, especially slugs. I think I’ve found their favorite food. (It’s everything I plant…)
Practice definitely improves, well, everything, I’ve found. It also makes room for other things. An experienced “practicer” helped me realize that practicing makes the space I need to grow, expand. It gives me room to process and digest. It’s from this new space that new ideas emerge and understandings flow.
I’m pretty excited about this new space I’ve found.
Recent Comments