I love the Olympics! It is just so amazing to me to watch these athletes do just amazing things with their bodies. Since I’ve been doing yoga, though, my appreciation has much more turned to what the are doing with their minds. As an example, I was watching the preliminary round of competition for the men’s high bar in gymnastics. Both an American and Chinese where attempting to do one of those seriously tough release, flip, twist and re-grab moves. Well, in each of their routines they missed this same “element” and fell flat on their face on the mat. What happens when you miss and fall off the high bar is you have 30 seconds to get yourself together and get back up and keep going. Not only that, if you want to get credit for the crazy thing that made you fall off the bar in the first place, you need to do it again. What was amazing to me is both of these guys got back up and did the element again to perfection. Unbelievable.
So, the question is, why did they fall off and why were they able to get back on? I think it’s clear that it’s all mental. They fell off because they lost their mental focus, they were able to get back up and do it perfect because they got their focus back.
In the yoga practice that quest for mental focus is what it’s all about. We are taking what is going on physically in the asana and trying to line up our minds in the same moment as our bodies. In the Olympics the reward for this kind of focus is a gold medal. In yoga the reward for this focus is we are able to be in the present moment and see our true self, our true light, our goodness. Truly a gift more valuable than gold.