Environmental Distractions

If you have ever taken one of my yoga classes, it didn't take you long to figure out that the environment I teach in is huge to me.  Little distractions, such as someone snapping their Yoga mat when they come in late vs. quietly rolling it out, or the air/heat kicking on or off, people talking (yelling) in the hall, etc. etc....  make me crazy!  The past few weeks as I have ventured into some new teaching environments, I have truly been bombarded with "environmental distractions" I will call them.  First in my church Yoga class, the space is limited and the kick off night we had 48 women!  We overflowed (like that I used that word?) into the foyer and every person on campus decided to walk by.  I want bore you with every detail of every class....but let's just say every environment I taught in offered new challenges....cold rooms, groups talking next door and then the new Zumba class next door at the Y took the Cake.  How do you breath to Zumba beats?   Cold & loud are my Yoga pet peeves and it seemed everywhere I went to teach was just that.....Cold & Loud!  I was about to throw in my Yoga towel, when God gave me a new perspective. 

One of my quiet time readings last week was entitled "In ME..... peace." John 16:33
Paganini, the great Italian violinist, once stepped onstage only to discover there was something wrong with his violin, just as the audience was ending their applause.  He looked at the instrument for a moment and suddenly realized it was not his best and most valuable one.  Momentarily, he felt paralyzed, but he quickly turned to his audience telling them their had been some kind of mistake and he did not have his own violin.  He stepped back behind the curtain, and discovered someone had stolen his and left an inferior one in it's place.  After remaining behind the curtain for a moment, Paganini stepped on stage again to speak to the audience.  He said, "Ladies and gentlemen I will now demonstrate to you that music is not in the instrument but in the soul."  Then he played as never before, and beautiful music flowed from that inferior instrument until the audience was so enraptured that their enthusiastic applause nearly lifted the ceiling off the concert hall.  He had indeed demonstrated that his music was in his soul.  (by: Charles Francis Richardson)

My reading continued saying:  Dear tested and tried believer, it is your mission to walk onto your stage of this world in order to reveal to all of heaven and earth that "your music" of  life lies not in your circumstances or external things but in your own soul.   I hear you Father......Yoga IS an expression of my soul.  And, when I teach....I express not the external circumstances but the internal.  He said to me loud and clear, "teach from your soul....tune into the spirit within you as you teach not the environmental distractions that Satan sends.  He'd like nothing more then for you to throw in your towel.   Don't let him win!"

And so, For Today...."I teach from my soul, NOT my circumstances."