A DelhiPlanet Health And Wellness Exclusive, In Association With Queen Yogini Kristin McGee
In daily life there are many occasions where people just don’t know what to do in spite of receiving clear instructions. This happens because many a times we aren’t just listening and are occupied with other thoughts or are doing something else. Just like writing and speaking, listening is also a very essential component of effective communication. People can avoid many problems and communicate very effectively if they just listen well. In today’s article Kristin will share her knowledge on how important it is to listen effectively and how yoga can help enhance that.
Sometime back when I was teaching my 12:30 yoga class at Clay and I gave the instruction “step your left foot forward and drop your right heel to the ground, lift up to warrior 1“, many students looked around for someone to make the first move so they could follow. Some of the students stepped their right foot forward instead and the rest of them were still in dog pose daydreaming! It made me realize just how much we’ve lost the art of listening.
We’ve become such a visual society and become lazy as far as how we learn. I remember taking a trapeze class down on the West Side Highway with my niece when she came to visit from Idaho. I learned very quickly that if you don’t listen and do exactly what they tell you to do when they tell you to do it, you’re screwed! My 12-year-old niece was a pro at it — she just listened and followed instructions. I wonder if we start to doubt ourselves as we age or if we get complacent and believe that hearing things is enough to get by instead of listening closely and absorbing things with our whole being. I think a lot of miscommunication in relationships could be solved if people truly listened to each other.
Yoga once again to the rescue. It is one of the few places where the teacher doesn’t do any demonstrating, but instead speaks the class through the poses and allows the students to experience the process. It is a wonderful way to redevelop all of our senses, especially our ears and truly listen. Once we give into listening we automatically are present and can no longer predict what will come next or get lost in what already happened. That is why music can make us feel so good — it puts us immediately in the moment and allows us to listen and experience things on a whole new level.
Note: The above has been published by DelhiPlanet in association with and with explicit permission from Kristin Mcgee. Any reproduction without proper approval and acknowledgment is prohibited.
