Day 11 - Defense
“Since yoga is an individual practice, the duality is our body and mind. Yesterday we attacked our body going deeper in to poses. Today we are going to work on the defenses our mind creates.”
- Andy Hrovat
What You Can Control
Over the next 21 days the focus of this class will cover the 5 areas you can control in combat, yoga and life.
Yourself - Day 1-4
Your Environment - Day 5-8
Your Attack - Day 9-12
Your Situation Day 13-16
Your Finish Day 17-21
Our Focus Today Is Defense
“When the strategy calls the purpose of defense is to shut down your opponent. Refuse them the opportunity to attack and if they do minimize the damage it can create.”
-Andy Hrovat
Combat
Usually if the strategy calls to take a defensive position it means you have already accumulated some points and have built a lead. When life doesn’t call for taking risks it is still an important skill to understand how to protect what you already have.
Think about something you are protecting and defending at the moment? What about this makes you want to defend and hold on to what you already have instead of letting go of it or build upon it.
Yoga
The duality of the individual is the body and mind. When we set out to attack it is our minds that put up the most defenses. Our minds tell us to turn back, give up and that we aren’t enough. Yoga provides many opportunities to take notice when our minds are putting up defenses and limiting our full expression.
Your challenge is to start taking notice in practice when your mind is shutting you down and not allowing us to attack to our full potential.
Life
Playing defense in life is not about giving up but rather using your energy wisely. Not everything deserves our full attention and although we might not be able to shut down every attack against us, we can get better at defending and minimize the damage that can be done against us.
In life this relates to dieting very well. Most of the time we are on autopilot when it comes to our diets. Instead of attacking the diet and bettering ourselves we try to just minimize the damage of what we consume does to us.
The challenge here is to make a list of addictive and comforting foods that are not aligned with who we want to be. Then next time at the grocery store shut those foods down instead of letting them in our houses where they cause a little bit of damage each time.
Remember it’s much easier to make one decision at the grocery store than it is to make a decision every time we pass the refrigerator or pantry.
“We started looking at how the yoga practice allows us to become aware of our own defenses so we can shut those down and really allow our true potential to express itself. ”
— Em Hrovat