“So often when we sit to meditate or find ourselves on the yoga mat, we get bombarded with the samskaras of the mind and the aches and pains of the body, and we can wind up feeling worse than when we started.  It’s not that things are really worse – it’s that the practice of yoga and seated meditation shine the light of awareness squarely on the blocks in the mind, and this can be quite uncomfortable”

– Darren Main, Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic

The “born again yogi” may sound all enthusiastic.  This (somewhat lengthy) passage from the assigned reading points to the other side: the practice includes the difficult choice to turn around and look directly at what is gripping us in life.  Difficult, because it’s immediately unpleasant, difficult because of the years of building the prison walls and growing into the shackles.  On the other hand, there  is only the trust in practice to hold on to, the trust that looking at the walls and the shackles would eventually loosen their grip, allow the slivers of freedom into the cracks.