The first time for everything

My first time in baby bakasana or low crow

When you observe or experience something for the first time, you may or may not always remember it. 

However, when you witness someone else experiencing that same thing for the first time, it is possible that you remember having that experience. It's familiar to you, but it's new to them. Their new experience becomes a reminder of your beginner mind having that experience. 

How do you allow your beginner mind to be present in that moment? Can you remember what it was like to experience that something for the first time? If the answer is yes, maybe you meet it with a new appreciation for what you've just witnessed, as if it were the first time for you again. So, what's the takeaway? 

The takeaway for me after having this experience recently is this. The beginner mind is where learning and growth happens. I can remember the first time I took a yoga class with my husband practicing next to me. It was soon after my home studio opened and soon after I began to develop a regular practice of my own, way before I became a teacher. I was a newbie! 

During savasana, we let our hands touch and rested like that, holding hands.

Flash forward to this year, when I broke my own rule and took this picture during savasana as I guided young children through their yoga program at the Clifton Boys and Girls Club this summer. 

Two friends hold hands during savasana

In that moment I couldn't stop from taking the picture, perhaps because two young girls had done the exact same thing in savasana that day in the group before this one. I felt it was a sign. I mean, it is adorable and cute on its own. But I took it also as a sign to remind me of that time I lay in savasana next to Huz in class and did the same thing. 

We were beginner yogis then. Those young children are beginner yogis now. We share that beginner mind status.

Staying in touch with the beginner mind is so helpful to me as a yoga teacher - and student, more importantly. It helps me to have an understanding about how certain asanas, sequences, and yoga philosophies can land in a new body or new brain. By "new" I mean "new to that experience". Remembering that for many people in class with me, whether I'm in the seat of the teacher or next to them on my own may, that this may be the first time they've tried an arm balance, worked on a new breathing technique, or even managed to stay in the hot room for the full length of class - allows me to grow and learn about myself and my own practice. 

A yogi that holds on to that beginner mind - maintains an ability to keep learning and growing through the experiences they have, the lessons they can learn. Calling oneself a "master" at anything, implies that there's nothing left to learn.  

And we all know, there's so much to learn.