-Give me your coat, keep your number," says the cloakroom girl at the yoga training center twice a week. She smiles like I'm the only granddaughter who came to visit after a long separation.
But no, she is with everybody, I watched.
This grandmother, with her shining eyes and kindest eyes, has an instant view. She warms everyone who comes in from the frosty street with warmth.
And that's the best way to practice, I'll tell you that.
This cute grandmother is not a great yogic guru, she won't twist herself into a dashing Ardha Matsiendrasana and maybe doesn't even know a single sutra of Patanjali, but she is the living embodiment of everything that classical yoga teaches me.
She's happy, it's obvious. She is angry and sincere in her compassionate treatment. She gives her light to everyone who can and wants to accept it, and she does so with pleasure.
And no, not everyone is there. Most are ordinary, discreetly polite, sometimes inept at hiding irritation for various reasons. That is, there is no mystical influence of the beneficial energy of the institution. The only human factor.
I wonder, I think, how did it reach such zen? After all, even if we assume that goodwill and openness were given to her as a gift from birth, then even to keep this gift intact and safe for many decades is an impossible work by the present standards, because of so many temptations around! It is possible to impudent in response to arrogant sikuhe, to snap at the cry, answering the same question for a hundred thousand times, to freak out for a hundred and four requests per minute, to complain about fatigue and monotony, but there are no reasons to grumble in the cloakroom girls!
A smile is like an honest broadcast of what you feel in your heart, it is always the result of a lot of internal work. After all, a person begins to smile not just because of the lack of reasons for sadness, and when there is a clear reason to be happy. Well, you should find so many reasons for an ordinary old lady every day!
She found some source of her own, I'm sure.
For me, this was the source of gratitude in my day. This simple ritual does change consciousness. It helps to see first, and then to love and make it natural to think that in any situation, every person always has someone to be grateful to. And the smile crowned the success of the assimilated consciousness of the bee, in which you will effort to focus on the beautiful.
And recently it was a pleasant discovery for me that children are very sensitive to such meditations. A couple of weeks ago, we made it a rule for them to record five good things that happened in a day before going to bed. And now they are waiting for this moment when we will gather around a beautiful notebook and take turns to share the positive. It's our moneybox of pleasant memories. A gold fund of positive emotions and proof that life is not so bad.
And everything started with a squeak. At first, there were proposals to write down only five bad incidents, nothing good came to mind at all, there was no understanding of the purpose of the event, were lazy, etc. I had to tense my memory, to fantasize somewhere, to show my own example of the variants of gratitude, to ask leading questions. And then once - and imperceptibly involved.
Changes, even if not big ones, appeared a few days later, but which ones! Children became more attentive to monitor their experiences, to record moments of joy and pleasure, to keep them in memory until the evening. And if by the time X is not typed five full benefits, then urgently begin to look for what would compensate for the lack: arrange for joint entertainment, for example, that all at once in the scoring went.
Negative does not need to look for, he is the first to come to the not hardened heads. The consciousness of a fly looking for dung piles everywhere to sit on them is peculiar to the majority because it does not require any tension. But to collect nectar, you have to fly more than one flower, following its aroma and ignoring all the other smells. But the harvest is also worth it!
After the rain has passed, we choose whether to look at the rainbow in the sky or at the dirt under our feet. The difference is huge because the thought is formed under the influence of external factors. After the visual image is pulled up and further mentality. Well, and about the fact that the thought is material, you know without me. Where our view, energy, is directed, we multiply. It turns out to be a chain.
All we have to do is to get used to throwing our heads up instead of keeping them down. Or one day just to see a rainbow in puddles.
I believe that such practices are able to nurture a sense of satisfaction in a child. To instill the skill of correct guidelines for life. To learn to recognize the signals that should be reacted to, and not to fall for any g****.
So if in fifty or sixty years' time you'll meet some unusually smiling grandfathers somewhere, it's possible that my sons will be there.