What's in a Name?

Photo from the Yoga Journal site

What do you call this pose? This pose where you're lunging while your back knee is on the floor, with the shin and foot on the wall pointing straight up, your back may even be flat to the wall and arms stretching up it. What do you call it?

In our kula here in Richmond there's a little running joke about this pose. (yoga journal calls it King Arthur's pose by the way). One of the teachers, and the first to introduce me to this pose, calls it The Dreaded Thigh Stretch. Then a student who comes in for visits from Missouri shared that in her kula they call it Torture Pose. Those names DO in fact sum up the experience of being in that position for any length of time.

But the joke about the pose is that in my class we call it by the name given by one of the students: New Legs Pose. New Legs. Now doesn't that just seem much more inviting and worth it than Torture Pose?

Part of the Highest vision of Anusara is to look for the Good. And it is truly to look for the Absolute Good... but that starts with the small stuff. Like instead of grimacing and revving up for torture before attempting a challenging (and sometimes painful) pose, smile and look forward to the outcome. I always feel like I have new legs after King Arthur's pose. If we look for the good in the small stuff, it just becomes a habit and we start to see the good in the bigger more complicated moments of "Torture" in our lives." It's at least worth considering.

The end of the running joke in our kula is that once you do this pose fairies come skipping out of your rear and dancing all around the room because we're just so happy to have New Legs.

Or not.

Contemplation: What have I purposefully or mindlessly labeled as "bad" (or some variation of bad) that I could go back and re-name to possibly shift my experience of it? (a pose, a person, a place, a job... anything) Search for the power of the words and see how they shift your experience.