We’ve all been there. The instructor calls out a pose, say, Half Moon (Ardha Chandrasana), that you know is challenging for you. It’s a pose you choose to avoid in your home practice and secretly hope the instructor doesn’t make you do. But there you are in class and the instructor has set the alignment of your extremities up to move into that pose, so you know it’s coming. You move into it. You think about your standing leg wobbling, how much stronger you wish you were, and your mind doesn’t stop there.

How long are we going to stay here?
Does this instructor even know how to count?
I can’t do this.
I don’t want to do this.
I should just not try because I can’t do it anyways.

We often get so caught up in our inner dialogue that we’re not even really in the pose. For all intents and purposes, it might look like we’re standing in the pose, but our minds have wandered so far away that we’ve left the moment and that pose entirely. It happens to all of us. Sometimes it happens during every pose in a class, while other times only once during class. It is our job to gently reel ourselves back into the moment of that pose and out of our expectations for it. This is definitely easier said than done.

Our thoughts and expectations take us out of the moment, whether we’re in a yoga class or having a conversation with a loved one. It’s easy to fall into the spiral of our thoughts, falling down, down, down. The deeper we fall into this spiral, the tighter and more constricted it becomes. It can make even breathing become difficult. Actively quieting the constant mental chatter helps us to travel back up towards the top of the spiral－the spiral widening the higher we get.