The other day a student was remarking how he doesn't want to "waste" his class pass on days when he doesn't feel up to an asana practice by coming to class anyway. This got me thinking about idealization of our practice and the need to evaluate everything as "good" or "bad."

I didn't press the "why" of his remark, so the following are strictly my ponderings. What if the idea of practicing when we aren't in the mood is somehow rejecting reality? Rejecting where we are at today, physically, emotionally, etc... If we idealize what a yoga practice "should" be, we miss out on the juiciness! It becomes a challenge to practice despite a feeling of resistance or tiredness, or just not being in the mood. It makes the practice more real and alive to find freedom in the discipline of daily practice. And I don't necessarily mean daily asana practice... although it could be... moreso I mean daily awareness practice, whether that is asana, meditation, other movement practices, or deep breathing especially when stress arises. The yoga (in it's fullest sense of the word) practice becomes so much bigger than the sum of the individual practices when it becomes a way of life, something regular enough to grow from being something we pepper our lives with to a habit to something as necessary as food and water.