Following Directions

Are you good at following directions? I guess for some of us it is easier to follow verbal directions while others might have to visibly see a direction. I know when my dog Bear really wants water sometimes he’ll point his nose into his water dish. Other times he will jump up on me when I’m seated. He's trying to get my attention and it is up to me to figure out what he wants. If I say, “do you have to go to the bathroom?” he seems to understand those words and respond by putting his ears up. But I really think he's responding to my body movement when I say those words. I think that I move in a particular way but don’t realize it. He recognizes that movement as “he is going to take me out”.

When I first started taking yoga lessons I can remember that one of the hardest things to do was to follow directions. It seemed like it didn’t make sense what the teacher was directing me to do. My brain was trying to figure it out, but when the teacher would demonstrate the move I then thought, "Oh you want me to do that, OK I can do that". Then I went and did it. But of course my brain thought it was doing it but it really wasn’t. This goes on and off still to this day. I catch myself now, when the brain thinks it can do something and then I stand back and wait. I know now that it is the body that really knows how to do it and the body and the brain both seem to have their own intelligences.

So I recognize now that Bear reads my natural body intelligence a lot faster then I do.