You do the same thing to your hair everyday yet the result is different every time.
Every morning it is the same thing, wet hair, apply shampoo, lather, rinse and repeat. And some morning your hair looks great and some other mornings your hair looks ugly and then there are those days where your hair is to die for.
What’s going on with tha?. You do the same thing and you do not get the same results.
It is the same way with your yoga practice, particularly if you practice Ashtanga yoga where you do a set sequence of postures every time. The Shampoo effect is even more obvious when you are doing your Ashtanga practice on your own and not in a group class.
There are three major benefits you get from this Shampoo Effect in your yoga practice.
- Your mind
- Your body
- Your meditation
Your mind is the best place to start when looking at these benefits.
Your Mind
One of the important aspects of your yoga practice is increasing your ability to focus your mind on the task at hand. The more you can focus your mind the better you will be able to handle stressful situations in the future.
Is your mind more focused today? If it is more focused than usual, what did you do differently today to cause your mind to be more focused. Perhaps you may want to introduce more of that activity into your life on a regular basis.
Is your mind scattered today? So, what was going on in your life to cause your mind to be less focused. Perhaps you should reduce some of those activities.
Good hair day, bad hair day. Focused mind or scattered mind. You do the same yoga practice and you have a different level of focus every time.
Once you have checked out your mind to find out how your mental practice is going it is time to check out your body and see how your physical practice is proceeding.
Your Body
Doing the same set of postures each time you do your yoga practice lets you establish a bench mark to measure your progress against. Are you more flexible today or less?
Generally over time you expect your body to gradually become more flexible, but there will be days when you will be less flexible.
The Shampoo Effect strikes your body as well as your mind.
Are you less flexible today? What did you do differently? Did you eat differently? Did you do some other activity that affected your flexibility? This reduction in flexibility, causes you to examine your day and figure out what was different. Perhaps you should consider reducing the activity that lead to your reduced flexibility.
And of course if your flexibility increased, you examine your day to see what you added or took away that might have led to this increased flexibility.
Because you did the same sequence of poses that you did yesterday you are able to see the subtle effects that your activities are having on your practice and make adjustments to your life as a result.
The Shampoo Effect works on your meditation as well.
Your Meditation
A yoga practice is often called a meditation in motion. In particular with an Ashtanga practice you are working with a set sequence of postures and you do not have to think about which posture to do next you just flow from one posture to the next.
Once you have learnt the sequence of postures, you can now focus on your breath. Focusing on your breath and the movement through the poses are the key components of the meditation in motion.
The Shampoo Effect of doing the same postures all of the time lets you focus your attention inwards and when this happens your meditation begins. Your mind is focused on your breath and the movement and it stays focused there throughout the entire practice.
Is your breath fast or slow during this practice? Is your breath flowing easily or is there a struggle with the breath as you enter a particular pose. Once again you reflect on your day’s activities to see what has happened that could be affecting your practice. What should you do differrently during your day to restore your medative practice to its normal state.
But, don’t you get bored doing the same sequence of postures all the time?
You would think that doing the same sequence of postures all of the time would be quite boring, but in fact there is an amazing amount of variation in your practice.
Your mind is more focused today! Your flexibility is less in one pose but more flexible in another. Your breath is flowing easily today in a particular pose. All of these variations to examine and reflect on.
Summary
Just like the Shampoo Effect and your hair, the poses may be the same, but the practice is always different.
Next Step
If you haven’t tried an Ashtanga yoga based practice. Give it a try and once you get beyond the learning phase about which posture comes next, you will discover the Shampoo Effect.
