Beginner's Mind

        Today's yoga class was wonderful!  There were 4 new students, two of them who had never attended a yoga class and one who spoke English as a second language.  As a teacher, a class this diverse absolutely focuses you  (or sends you into a blind panic).  How to engage both the new students and those who have studied for years?  It sounds like time to cultivate beginner's mind.

       Shoshin (初心) is a concept in Zen Buddhism meaning "beginner's mind". It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would.- Wikipedia

       This attitude of eagerness is everything we work so hard to let go of as children.  We want to be knowledgeable, deft, adept, in command.  Beginners mind requires forgetting what we know, letting go of the past, and being willing to fall down in the attempt to try something new.
        Mountain pose, or tadasana, was where we began.  My challenge was to make just standing up brand new.  The best thing is just living life helps me with that one.  Emotions, both good and bad, leave impressions on the body.  Worrying about a son down in college can make the shoulders and rib cage tight.  This means that each week we bring a different body to class even though the same feet walk us in.  Today my neck hurts from worry, next week my arms ache from gardening.  This makes each mountain pose a revelation.
       We begin to stand before our first birthday.  I learned to stand at attention in 1984, when I joined the Navy.  I learned to stand with attention in 1998 at my first yoga class.  After standing for 44 years, still I learn new things.
        Tonight at dinner I was given another example of beginners mind.  My husband had been working on a project for a while.  Most of the components are in place, but they were in two different computer programs that did not talk to one another.  He had so many "not possibles" in his recent past that he couldn't find a work around.
        A work colleague came over to talk about something completely different, but ended up solving the problem with existing resources.  He was both grateful and irritated (you know how it is).
       I'll leave you with my favorite story of beginner's mind.  When my husband as a very young child, his mother let him out in the back yard to play.  The yard was fenced in with the gate securely latched.  Since he couldn't figure out  the gate, he simply unscrewed the hinges.  His parents found him, hours later, happily playing in the creek.  Now that's beginner's mind.