R-E-S-P-E-C-T

In yoga classes teachers often ask you to love.  They ask you to love each other, love the environment, love animals, and the hardest – to love yourself.  Perhaps that’s too much to ask for each of us to love each other or for that matter to even like each other. But what if we all respected each other? What if we all respected ourselves? What if we all respected the environment?  Maybe respect is a more achievable goal, whereas love will always be aspirational.

 The word respect comes from the Latin work respicere.  Respicere means to look back at something.  It means to pause and take a second or careful look at something or someone.  It implies attention and consideration versus a casual glance.  It implies careful and deliberate observation.

As we go through our lives and daily routines, we run into and or pass by numerous people. Some we know, some we like, some we dislike, some we just down right hate (plenty of those in my life). What if we looked at everyone we passed by in the eyes and said hello, or gave a nod or a smile? 

 In yoga when we hold our hands in prayer and say namaste, we’re not only greeting the person in front of you, we’re greeting the soul in that person.  The eternal soul that connects us all to the single source of life in the universe.  By saying namaste, we show respect and dignify the other person.  We acknowledge their physical and spiritual presence.  We acknowledge that they are taking up space in this world, this universe.  We show respect for that existence, acknowledging that we exist in relation to each other.

 How many of us at times have felt invisible, as if we weren’t present in a classroom, at a party, at a family dinner, or at a work meeting?  Regardless of where life and chance places us in the social, political, economic, or racial hierarchy, we deserve to be respected.  Our physical being, our mind, and our souls.

 So, as we practice on our mats today bring to mind people who you don’t like and see if you can find the courage to at least respect them.  See if you can respect their physical being, mind, and soul.  You don’t have to love them or like them, just respect and thus dignify their existence in this world that we all share.