Discernment

I often use the word discernment when guiding Yin yoga classes. I offer an invitation to sit in awareness of felt sensations—to notice what you’re experiencing, and to see if you can discern the difference between discomfort and pain. We often mislabel or conflate the two.

Whether you’re practicing yoga or noticing something coming up in your life, can you sit quietly and observe what you feel? Take some time to discern whether the feedback coming from your body (or your mind, or your emotions) is discomfort—a feeling that challenges you, but something you can breathe into. Or is it pain—something that doesn’t feel right? If so, give yourself permission to acknowledge the sensation and gently back away. Free yourself from the notion of “no pain, no gain.”

To help illustrate this practice of awareness, I often share the following poem by one of my beloved teachers, Mark Nepo. It’s my hope that his words may touch you in a way that helps you resist the urge to mislabel one sensation for another—and to see what sitting with these feelings reveals.

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Discernment
by Mark Nepo

The trouble with the mind

is that it sees like a bird

but walks like a man.

And things at the surface

move fast, needing to be

gathered. While things

at center move slow,

needing to be

perceived.

What I mean is

if you want to see the

many birds, you can

gather them in a cage

and wonder why

they won’t fly.

Or you can go to

the wetlands, birding

in silence before

the sun comes up.

It’s the same

with what we love

or what we think.

We can frame them

in pretty cages or follow

them into God’s meadow

till they stun us with the

spread of their magnificent

wings.