Get to the POINT!!

Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned.

I was judgmental, in direct violation of the very lesson that I opined about just two weeks ago in my last blog post, The Judgy Yogi.

Ok, so I’m human. It happens.

I was taking an online yoga class this past Monday, and the teacher was talking. And talking. Every pose, every pause, every nook and cranny of space was filled with a story, a metaphor, a Scriptural quote. There was no room for me to have my own experience. So. Much. Talking.

I finally found myself shouting (on mute, of course), “Get to the POINT!”

Get to the point, indeed. I’m having a flashback to college. If you opened my textbooks, you would find that I had highlighted every single line on every single page – which is fairly hilarious since that is exactly the opposite of what “highlighting” is meant to achieve.

In fact, getting to the point is a skill that is sharpened over time and with practice. Sitting in my yoga philosophy classes, I remember being bombarded with so much information that it felt like I was trying  to drink water from a gushing fire hydrant. Everything sounded so profound and relevant. Trying to cull one juicy nugget that encapsulated the essence of the teaching was nearly unthinkable.

One of the greatest benefits of being a yoga teacher is that once I absorb what life throws at me, I then have the privilege to whittle an experience down to its refined essence, perhaps cross-reference that experience to a Yoga text, and finally present to you the most salient byte of wisdom in the most concise and meaningful way. I mean, we only have 45 minutes (or 75, depending on the class you take). I can see your eyes glaze over if I’m not getting to the point! Actually, I myself can feel when I’m droning on and missing the point. A good teacher can sense this and can self-correct.

Linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky once had this to say:

… The person who wins the Nobel Prize in biology is not the person who read the most journal articles and took the most notes on them. It’s the person who knew what to look for …

So let’s raise a glass to getting to the point – to honing our ability to synthesize heaps of information and distilling it down to the most valuable, Nobel Prize-winning lessons.

Ironically, in Yoga Nidra, in spite of the copious verbal cues that are built into the method, SILENCE is ultimately the point.

Let that sink in. Silence. Stillness. Beingness. THAT, my dear students, is the point.