Process is Everything!

I moved to the suburbs and in doing so assumed a very long commute. To make it bearable I have been listening to lots of music and am hooked on live performance podcasts offered through KEXP. They have an awesome selection and in the middle of each performance there is a brief interview with the band or artist. (I am sort of addicted to the performances by Yaesayer and Beach House.) Listening to these interviews I was struck when I heard a similar sentiment expressed by two different bands. Both musical acts had slowly achieved notoriety and both noted that they deeply valued this gradual development. That within the process were important insights and crucial teachings that they required as they gained “fame” and success.
I’ve heard similar stories before but it’s beneficial to hear again and again. I love being reminded that the process is really where it’s at, that process is everything. I personally have a propensity to want to skip ahead, to bypass big steps and to get to the end point or the goal. But this is pure folly, for we are never done, never finished. Our lives and all that we undertake are a series of processes whether we like it or not. Even after we die (not considering what happens to the soul!!!!???) our physical bodies continue to be in process and create in effect on the environment.
These ideas are such fun to apply in a yoga class and are particularly effective within the Anusara method because the Universal Principles of Alignment are applied systematically, always following a krama or a process. Each UPA is essential and leads to the next, skipping one can be at the most perilous and at the least out of integrity. The first principal of alignment is Open to Grace and in this context I think of it as receiving wherever you are in your process, allowing yourself to be right where you are. In a yoga practice that sometimes means you have to accept discomfort, challenge, awkward positions and places and sometimes one gets to revel in their accomplishments, in the strength they have generated through dedication and practice, or an opening in the mind, heart or body after a time of focused study. And there are, of course, so many other stages and steps to savor. The second principle is Muscle Energy where we actively engage in whatever point in our process we find ourselves; we concentrate our energy into that place and use it to move to the next stage. Without ME we wouldn’t have the power or the support to apply Inner Spiral or Expanding Spiral. Expanding Spiral creates the space to apply Outer Spiral or Contracting Spiral. With all of these steps deeply established you then make an offering and extend out with Organic Energy, which is what expands the entire process so that we can start again. Each step is necessary and builds on the one before it developing a movement that is robust, supported, exciting, momentous, etc. The pattern repeats over and over – I have been moving through this specific sequence, applying the principles hundreds of times in my practice almost daily for several years now, and the process is continuously refined and ever changing. This focus on process is not to present some sysiphisian vision, we accept that we are engaged in multiple processes and always will be but those processes develop, grow and expand. And the great process, the project that is our lives does the same if we step into it with presence and courage, drawing on the lessons of yoga, for yoga is nothing if it is isolated to the limited territory of our mats.