Standing on Your Own Two Feet

Daily Reflection
Today I wish to pass down a teaching that I learned from my teacher Swami Pranananda. This is a teaching that she learned from her guru Goswami Kriyananda. I think it is an important teaching and one that we spend our entire lives learning how to do. These teachers have called it "The Great Yoga Asana" and if you wish to listen to the entire lecture, you can find it here: http://www.yogakriya.org/

The teaching is about learning to stand on our own two feet. The lecture discusses the way we learn to stand on our feet as babies and how this process continues on through adulthood. It reminded me of what I teach my students about critical thinking. It is during college that many of my students are asked to share, for the first time, their own opinions on a topic and they learn how to investigate these topics critically. In yoga, we learn to investigate our minds in this same way. We ask questions, we reflect and we think critically about who we are and how we got there. We analyze ourselves and our lives in order to live more harmoniously and compassionately. We learn to think on our own rather than to conform and try to fit in.

Today in your journal I want you to reflect on what these words mean to you. When you saw the title of this post "Standing on Your Own Two Feet", what did you think about? What does it mean to stand on your own two feet? Do you feel that you are? How has this process been for you - easy, difficult, both? Do you feel that you could stand on your own two feet in more situations than you do?

Swami K