A morning class, followed by a cancellation... :-(
Oh well, Hari OM. Things may come and things may go, but in the end, it all works out. Right?
Anyhoo, I spent the day with the kids and found myself with a few social and yoga observations... now we all hear those stories and those researchers with statistics about "Kids these days", you know, "they have no respect"... and it always seems to be getting worse... but funny, alot of behaviors seem to be getting worse.
I find myself listening to people or hearing about people who are just plain angry. Road Rage, different kinds of violence, dependencies on behavioural drugs, self medications of one sort or another... the list goes on...
but where does that leave our kids? sometimes raised by good people with very little time or energy? perhaps they feel that with the little energy that they have, their kids ought to listen to them? perhaps sometimes even, the anger that we hear about so often through different mediums is reflected in / onto our children?
i don't want to oversimplify. of course children these days have a vast number of new forces acting on them. whether it's new electronic media wired to get them to have fits of seratonin when they use them and when they are not using them they go into withdrawal... some kids have nutritional issues... alot of kids, actually, from what i've observed... alot of these pressures and many others, not mentioned, have the kids acting a little beligerently... but here's where i get to part of my point...
kids are mirrors. they reflect what they see and how we interact with them. if we constantly order them around or act in anger towards others around them, how do we think they are going to interact with others? they often ape what they see... and if they are not well exercised or well fed (for whatever their constitution requires) then how could they ever exhibit patience with us?
but yet they do! that's part of the miracle of kids... you see, western culture is very different from eastern culture on this... in the west, we expect our kids to respect us... some types of eastern cultures believe that kids can be lifetimes older and wiser then their parents.
see, today, i found myself whatching Maya:
kids bodies can be amazing can't they? Maya practices her headstands and backbends all day... she practices them both consciously and unconciously...i'll try and get a picture of her doing her headstands for a later post... but all kids do this and all they need is a little encouragement.
Ethan, for example, has amazing hip flexibility... when i do a post on hips, you can be sure i'll post a picture of that...
anyway, i suppose the whole point of the post today was that we have so much to learn from our children. and i know that that's kind of cliche to say, but it's not just in their innocence, although, that can be part of it... it's also about experience; experiencing the body and the moment, being open to laughter and change. be happy in the simple...
and how can we better serve our children? by slowing down. by giving them better apes to follow. BY NEVER BEING REACTIONARY... reaction does not serve us... it perpetuates drama and energy drains. we complain about being low on energy and we look to others to feed us. this is a trap. especially with our children. we use reason to justify. children are emotive and feeling... and reason is a social fabrication... children are acting closely to their intuition and biology...
we cannot continue to blame our children for the way they act and grow... yoga helps us work through our tensions, our stresses, our imbalences towards strength and balance...
i'll get into all of that stuff later. promise.
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