Service with a smile

I've started running.

One thing you notice when you run in NYC is that people don't look at each other. Not directly in the eyes. Sure, they check each other out as a potential predator or mate, but running time is not friendly time. We're on a mission, we've got to meet this goal, achieve this pace.

I found myself getting into the same practice. I'd warm up and circle my ankles, then take off on my route. Whenever I'd pass someone I would keep my eyes on where I was going, my mind on synchronizing my breath and steps (8 steps in, 8 steps out). Use the peripheral to make sure no cars or bikes are about to take me out, pay attention to the sound of my feet hitting the ground (soft like cat). Intensely internal. Then, I started passing fellow runners.

At first, I made tentative eye contact, not wanting to weird anyone out with too much. I've heard it said before that people only look into each other's eyes for longer than 3 seconds if they're going to mate or murder. If we met eyes, I attempted a smile. When you're focusing on all the other things (breath, steps, sounds, cars, bears chasing you through the urban wilderness) the smile really comes out as more of a grimace. Before you know it, you've passed the other person, only showing them that you're pretending to have as much fun as they are.

On my way back, I tried a different tactic. I shifted my focus to what was outside of me. The light, the trees, the path, the people. I made a point to say "Good morning!" to everyone that passed me, whether they had their Do Not Disturb sign on or not. A remarkable thing happened- people responded. They smiled back, or said "Hello". You see, this funny thing happens when you smile- the receiver's body mimics your smile to see if it's genuine. That means, whether it's a self-generated smile or not, you'll still create one in someone else. Smiling has all kind of benefits, science showing links to longer life, stress relief, and happier relationships. I found that with every person I greeted, I felt happier, like I was developing a deeper connection to my community and the world just by smiling and speaking.

Two fringe benefits? My pace back was faster than my pace out, and my voice was well warmed up by the time I made it home.

Next time you go out to practice your thing, do it with a smile. Let me know what benefits you discover.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/science/25smile.html?_r=2&src=dayp&
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-willpower/201208/smile-your-way-out-stress

Why I teach yoga #1

I teach yoga so people will walk up the stairs faster. When you take time to practice asana, your body starts to connect everything together in a better, more intuitive way. What was once a body trapped in a rigid, habitual posture lengthens out to a free, open being.
As things get unstuck on the outside, so too within. You learn that anything is possible, and take time to rekindle the artist's voice within. You may start to set goals and achieve dreams you'd put away long ago. The pull of those dreams (or my telekinetic push from behind) will have you bounding up the stairs like you did when you were a kid, excited to explore the next opportunity.

Why I love yoga #1

Yoga makes me flexible. Bendy. Gumby. I never thought I'd be able to fall into a full split at any time of the day, get my leg behind my head, or wear my feet as a hat. Through constant practice, I did, and I can.
It wasn't just physical practice; it was retraining my mind to believe that I could relax my body into this shape, or engage my muscles to create that one. You have to see it, believe it, then you be it.
That's the real gift. Understanding that yoga can make you flexible in the body and the mind is great. Knowing how to set a goal, work toward it, and achieve it or not, that's world-changing.

Choose your Rituals

Per usual on Wednesday afternoons, I was cleaning and restocking in the back room of one of the stores where I work. I To make me feel like I'm doing something meaningful, working my mind as well as body, I was scanning through a backlog of articles on NPR Science to find something interesting to listen to. "What Makes Rituals Special" with Shankar Vedantam popped out at me.

Listening to the program break down the definition of a ritual (a ceremony with a series of actions performed in a prescribed order), and list common rituals that many people in Western society have made me realize- I'm a ritual-making-machine. Those funny things you do because you were taught "this is how you do this"? Rituals. The way you prepare your coffee/tea/mixed drink? Rituals. Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder? It's just a person getting stuck in their own ritual, like a computer program caught in an infinite loop.

There's no clear answer why rituals are so special for us, but there is scientific evidence to show they are powerful. When we perform a specific series of events and expect a certain outcome, the mind is primed to look for examples of that outcome. If "having a good start to your day" means: waking up at a certain time, washing, eating breakfast, and having a cup of stimulant, any day you don't do those things, your mind won't be watching for the "good" things throughout the day. It missed its ritual.

This is the purpose of yoga class. You learn to explore how your inner space is organized by exploring how your outer space is organized. The teacher shows you a series of specific movements that are linked together to strengthen and open up your body for an advanced pose, and by the end of class you've got it. Or at least you have a better picture in your mind, or series of steps you can practice to better realize the pose in the future. Each time you practice, you come closer to the "perfect form" you've created in your head.

Why should we create and practice rituals? Rituals are your yoga practice. They are daily mindfulness. For me, performing an action in the same way over and over stills my mind so I can think clearly. I know that by engaging my core muscles and finding the straightest spine in this moment, I'm building a pattern that my mind will follow for the rest of my life. Like a flowchart. We perform actions in every moment. Why not take the time to choose your rituals and create your life?

Read the articles that inspired the entry:
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-rituals-work)
(http://n.pr/145glDz)

Less of the ME, more of the WE.

As a teacher of any sort, it's easy to get caught up in your lesson plan, your impact, your personal contribution to the cause. That'll fuel you for a while. It may even earn you accolades and acclaim. At some point in all of this focus on the singular, you discover you are still alone. You're teaching your method to yourself instead of the students or souls you set out to guide. To create a true legacy in your lifetime, focus less on the ME, more on the WE.

One human can only do so much. You're limited to silly constraints like the 1080 minutes in an 18-hour day, and to being in one place at one time. When you take on a mission greater than what you can do by your self and your life time, you've got to tap into the rest of humanity to make it happen. The more friends you have, the bigger your community is, the more people there are to support you in whatever way they can. (Remember, sometimes someone who knows how to act is just as important as one who knows how to not act.) With a tribe's knowledge base and worldview to draw from, a lot can happen in a little amount of time.  

The next time you have a conversation, see what you can do to support that other being living their dreams. You might be surprised how furthering their dreams furthers yours.

Your Time Savings Account

Wealth is not how much you spend, it's how much you keep. Often we hear people express this when talking of money. I've come to understand, in these past weeks leading up to and including my wedding, that it applies to time as well.

To become rich in money, pay yourself first. That's the secret of every financial book ever written. When you get paid for something, put a percentage in a savings account you do not touch. When you discover time free from work in your planner, schedule yourself first. Focusing on completing that extra degree? Book time to study. Have a goal to be closer to your family? Meet them for a walk, a Google Hangout, an AcroYoga or cooking class. This way, your time is yours; it doesn't get eroded by television or random internet trolling. (Remember when it was called surfing?) These things are at best an illusion of good use of your time at worst an incredibly addictive drug.

When you take time back for yourself, you quickly realize how valuable it truly is. Are you spending it doing what you love, with the people whom you love?

Why do we do it?

There are three practices happening simultaneously throughout your life, whether we're aware of it or not- practice with the body (asana), practice with the breath (pranayama), practice with the mind (dhyana). In most yoga classes, physical poses are the focus, with occasional mention of breath here and there. You're lucky if you find a class in NYC that adds in meditation at all. What's backwards about this? Meditation is the whole point.

My practice began as a child. While learning Hap Ki Do, before we focused on kicks, self-defense moves, and sparring, we sat and meditated. I had no idea what I was doing. The only coaching given was to let go of everything that had come before practice, and prepare for the present. When it was time to move, breath was primary, movement was secondary. We first learned to yell (ki-yai) at the execution of a technique to drive more energy through the body by engaging the core muscles. Only after we could yell properly did we learn the physical movement. The practice ended every evening with a brief meditation.

In yoga class, the purpose of asana is to learn how to keep your spine straight so you can sit in meditation for longer. The purpose of pranayama is to learn how to control your breath so you can sit in meditation for longer. The purpose of meditation? Manifold. At this point in my life, it's to turn the six senses back into one sense- pure awareness. When you spend time with no filters on your mind, you gain the ability to create your own filters and choose who you are being all the time.

Now that you know what us yoga teachers are really preparing you for, we can let you in on the real secret. Whether class is specifically devoted to meditation or not, you can choose to be meditating all the time. Difficult transition from crow pose to headstand? Meditate, recording all sensation as information. Person next to you is totally cute / smells funny / making up their own class? Meditate, and choose how you are being in this moment. After all, life is just a collection of moments. Wouldn't you rather choose to be happy in all of them?

(Curious about other benefits of meditation? Come to my class! Contact me through my website for a first-time private class deal, just for reading.)

If you needed even more evidence, just read what these guys have to say:
Wikipedia: Research on Meditation
Huffington Post - Meditation Benefits
NY Times - How Meditation Changes the Brain

Recognize the greatness

When you recognize greatness in another, you recognize it in yourself.
This entry presumes you are familiar with and practice satya, or right speech in body, breath, and mind. I've come across a number of masters in my life. Their fields of study are vast: actors, singers, dancers, speakers, negotiators, teachers, managers, painters. They share a number of common qualities when creating their art:

simplicity- often so much you don't recognize they are doing anything at all
lateral connection- they associate everything with the practice of their art, always practicing whether they know it or not
listening- to their inner voice and the outside world to understand which is which
spontanaeity- ability to quickly adjust their way of being to cause greater change in less time

It's the balance among these that makes the master.
The more you look for these people in your life, the more you will find they are right in front of you. What you see is what you get. Or, what you expect is what you find. Suddenly, you discover everyone around you is a master at something, whether they know it or not. Let go of the jealous voice inside, because once you turn your lens back onto your self, you'll discover you are a master, too. It's important to use time every day to practice this way. When you recognize greatness in an other, you are really recognizing it in yourself.

Colors of the Spring Life

For those of us in New York City, it's officially spring. We've had a Summer-like day to show us what's coming, wind and cold rain to remind us where we've come from. The reminiscing, preparing season has passed, along with some of our old ways of being, our extra layers for warmth, and perhaps some of our friends. As blossoms of your winter-work bloom, we get a chance to see what we've sown.

To me, Spring is a celebration of color. So many things add different hues to our lives: family adds the base tones, new and old friends are varying shades, experiences of food, vocation(s), and play give us the finer details and contrast. These all weave together, year after year, to express your greatest artistic work- your life. Do you have a zoomed-out grand vision for your finished piece, or are you the zoomed-in moment-by-moment manager of your experience?

We know from studying Yoga that there must always be balance. To live a full life, we have to be good at both. To live only every thinking in broad strokes, thinking of your legacy, is to live a life removed from people. Calculating only the narrow day-to-day tasks will only get you more of the same pattern. We must practice both- being able to scale in and out effortlessly. Then we can live life taking small steps toward our big goal, while still sharing our hours with ours.

ABDS

One morning, a friend and role model shared a brilliant insight with me. I'd already learned plenty of lessons from this person: how to organize your mind like a flowchart, be present and engaged with the people to whom you're speaking, how to create and live your dreams through writing down and pursuing goals. Today, she shared this simple phrase- "Always be doing something".

We are a beautiful blend of three things- mind, breath, and body. The gift of the mind is its ability to  visit the past to learn from our habits and history and imagine the future to dream and plan. The gift of the body is that it's always in the present. When you stub your toe, or make contact with another body through a hug or handshake, you are drawn back to right now.

This is the great secret of the poses you perform in class. We teachers keep you moving to keep you in the present. Plenty of activities in our society are designed to transport you to the past or future, to support you pretending you're somewhere else. Yoga is now. By setting the body in less common postures and choosing to be conscious of the breath, we become posted to the present. It is here, in this moment, that you can affect change and break the pattern of all old ways of being. Through linking the breath and the movement, you become the real organic you. No pesticides.

Always be doing something, whether it's everything or nothing.

K.I.S.,S.

One of the most profound things I've ever learned in my life was in my sophomore year acting class. We were learning the Stanislavsky method, which usually involves a lot of writing. Some of us weren't really getting it, even though we were writing pages and pages of character backstory. The teacher offered us this simple acronym - K.I.S.,S. - Keep It Simple, Student.

I often find my mind looking to make things more and more complex, whether it's designing a yoga class, giving someone else feedback, or telling a story. This tends to go along with the pace of the place where I live- New York City; here, we're always looking for the next new novelty. After teaching yoga classes packed with poses and varying verbiage for months, this acronym appeared on the shore of my memory.

Over the course of a week, I noticed minimalism everywhere I went: Apple ads on billboards, posture and gesture of CEOs and business leaders, acting performances in the Walking Dead, James Taylor songs, and the words of my yoga teachers.  Seeing and hearing the top people in their fields understanding what to say and what not to say, or what to gesture, and what not to gesture, brought me to the base idea that simplicity is sophisticated.

In my yoga class, we often explore what not to do before we get to what to do. My journey to simplicity has taken the same route. I've taught classes of complicated choreography with multifarious monologues only to realize the true goal had been forgotten- to be aware of the breath. In life, this is synonymous with doing something you don't enjoy for riches and fame, missing the simple delight of connecting with people you love.

This week, for homework, take time to sit and breathe. Take time to link up with your loves. Take time to K.I.S.,S.

Peace,
C

Stabilize your spring

As winter comes to a close, set your foundation for the warmer weather. Whether that means starting a new habit or releasing an old one, now is the best time to make it happen.

You could be doing it in your body: In all my vinyasa classes this week, we'll discover how to keep a tall torso in your movement practice. This isn't just for looking pretty, it's to train your body to find length in the center- your spine. Typically, we allow the weight of the ribs and shoulders to fall into the pelvis, pushing it into too much tilt forward (when you stick out your butt), or backward (when you tuck the tail through the legs). A tall torso means the S of the spine is more perpendicular to the ground, which also puts it more in harmony with gravity. To find this feeling, follow these steps. From standing:
1) Push down through feet.
2) Tuck tail through legs 2%, or just until you feel the low back lengthen out.
3) Engage core muscles and low ribs toward your back.
4) Pull up through center of head.

It's a lot to think about at first. After a few minutes of playing with it, you'll have programmed yourself a personal, portable fidget. Feel free to take this fidget out any time you're standing in line, waiting for a bus, walking about town, etc. Long spine = long life.

You could be connecting to your foundation in your mind. Direct your attention to the place where your low-rise jeans button would touch. This place goes by many names- the hara, svadhistana, center of gravity, dan tien. Find it by underlining your navel with your index finger, then counting four finger widths down. Close your eyes. Direct your inhales and exhales to the whole area around this space- the front, back, sides, and even middle that goes through your organs. Imagine this sphere growing larger with each successive breath. Use this fidget interchangeably with the first.

For a serious challenge, perform both fidgets simultaneously.

May you live a long life, with your tall torso connected to the core of your being.

See you on the field.

Warmly,
Corey

Watch your words

A student came into the place I work this week. Once we recognized each other, she had a story to tell me.
"My knees had been bothering me for some time. It's funny, after going to the doctor, I found out yoga is the worst thing for me."
To which I replied, "That seems strange. You mean to tell me conscious breathing linked to movement, or yoga, is bad for you? Perhaps you mean certain poses are not right for the health of your knees right now."
"No, no. You don't understand. My doctor said yoga is bad for me. I won't go to class any more, but I'm here because I still want to wear the clothes."

Your words create your world. Whatever you habitually write, speak, and think constrains your perception of reality. In effect, you are hypnotizing yourself with every word you speak, and to every word you listen.

I first began to understand the power of words many summers ago reading the book "Frogs into Princes" by Bandler and Grinder. The book is a transcript of a three day master class on NLP, or Neuro Linguistic Programming. This field is interested in how words are interpreted by the brain, and how we can use that information to open a person's mind to understand more of its resources.

For instance: imagine Marty McFly from Back to the Future. Any time someone calls him a chicken, he must fight back. Just like a computer program, if this, then that. This is his pattern, his samskara. He is stuck in this lane of thinking where fighting is the only choice when called a chicken. A NLP coach would ask his subconscious to create other possible choices the next time this situation occurs. Then he could choose from 2-3 other actions to take when called a chicken: shrug it off, walk away, or call for backup. Or, if a person is stuck in the way of thinking, "my doctor says yoga is bad for me", you could coach them into understanding, "these select poses done in this way will cause my knees to give me pain. I can listen to my body and modify or omit those poses as I practice".

If this sounds like hypnosis to you, you would be correct. NLP posits that we are literally hypnotizing ourselves with the words to which we choose to listen. That means we are constantly accepting suggestions about what our reality is from: the radio, the TV, books, facebook, email, advertising, and most of all by the words our friends and family speak (our social bubble).

Don't take my word for it. Do an experiment.

First, write a page of words describing how you feel about your health, your personal, and your career lives. This is our control reading.

Then, for the next 7 days, follow these guidelines:

1) When you have nothing kind or constructive to say, say nothing.
2) Eliminate dualistic words from your everyday speech. Good and bad do not really exist. There is only more effective and less effective. Even this is still subjective, but most people I've surveyed have less emotional attachments to the word "effective".
3) Choose the things to which you listen carefully. Words set to music are interpreted by deeper parts of the brain than spoken word, making them more powerful.
4) Spend 15 minutes a day in complete silence.

Now, write another page of words describing how you feel about your health, your personal, and your career lives. This is the experimental reading. Compare both pages.

If that's too big of a commitment for you, try this bite-sized version:
Listen carefully to the words you speak, and others speak. Notice if you make requests in the positive, "Please remember to do X", or the negative, "Don't forget to do X." Reflect on the effectiveness of both. Which statement makes it more likely you will complete the task?

More brain food next week.

P.S.- Let me know how your results.

Love is a four-splendoured thing

Tomorrow, February 14th, is a day I've been taught is about love. Commercials and cultural programming dictate that you buy someone wine, flowers, chocolate, jewelry, and a nice dinner. If you were from another planet, this is the definition of love the media would teach you- it's a product you can buy with money, a mix between rich indulgences and rare earth elements.

All it takes is thirty seconds watching how animals love each other to understand one of two things: humans did not evolve from animals, or that love doesn't have much to do with material goods.

The Buddha spoke of love in four forms:
1) metta - loving kindness, or friendliness
2) karuna - compassion
3) mudita - sympathetic joy
4) upeksha - equanimity

Metta is finding friendliness and peace toward all beings. It's speaking with and having genuine interest for everyone you meet- the barista at your coffee shop, your random friend from a past class, your life partner. The person who exudes metta wishes for the betterment of all beings.

Karuna is having compassion for those in suffering. That's all of us, bums to bodhisattvas. ("We're not humans having a spiritual experience, we're spirits having a human experience." - Teilhard de Chardin) Because we live in the land of duality, of opposites, we will always be on a journey to one side of the spectrum or the other. The person who recognizes this and still radiates love for everyone is expressing karuna.

Mudita means sympathetic joy. This is the love you feel for someone who experiences great success. It is love without envy or ego. When you can feel triumph, excitement, felicity for their victory and abstain from allowing your subjective mind to compare your experience to theirs, you know mudita. (I would start working with feeling mudita towards friends' accomplishments, then gradually move across the line toward people you find less likable.)

Upeksha is equanimity, finding peace with every moment. When you have learned to enjoy the ups as much as the downs, the lefts as much as the rights, or the up up down down left right B A select starts as much as the 007 373 5963s, you have touched on equanimity.

May you experience these four forms of love, or Brahma Vihara, this Valentine's Day.

Shantih.

Marry a rich girl.

"Marry a rich girl," he tells me. "Some of my friends who moved to this country worked in hotel bars, spending time with rich people. They dress like rich people, even though they don't have money in their pockets. They found rich women to marry, and now they're rich. I move to this country, work in a grocery, spending time with poor people. I dress like a poor person. I marry the cashier who is poor, so I am poor."
"Do you have a plan to get out of poverty?"
"To get rich, I would have to leave my wife and children to find a rich woman. Of course, there are things more important than money."

This is the life wisdom the taxi driver imparts.

We are all playing a role in this life. Sometimes it's a different character we play with certain people: we are one "self" when we're with family, another with friends, another at work, another when we feel judged or lesser than someone else, another on our first date with a new person. How many "self"s do you play?

Part of the process of growing up, becoming "comfortable with yourself", or maturing, is trying on enough outfits and personas to understand which fits you. Eventually, you learn to custom tailor your character to line up precisely with your values. It's quite a feat when fully achieved, pretty much a superpower. I'm sure you've encountered at least a few fully-cohesive characters, people who are simply magnetic because they are who they choose to be, they're fully present, 24 hours a day.

The opposite of this is the person who reacts to everything, real or imagined, living in the past or future. It's: the crazy person on the subway who shouts out at tormentors who are no longer there, the person in a groggy daze just going through the motions, and the person who constantly misinterprets everything said or done toward them like they don't deserve what they already have. We all fall into these patterns of being from time to time. The secret is- realize you've been asleep, reward yourself for realizing it, and come back to the present.

The Taxi Driver gives us this gift- if you wish to be/have/do something you can't/aren't yet, fake it 'til you make it. And even then, all you need is love.

And whether you marry a rich girl along the way or not, enjoy the ride.

Change and Death

If you've taken any of my classes in the past few months, you make have heard me make mention of "the constant". It's the thing inside you that, in the midst of the movement of life, is still. The constant is the space inside of you, the eye of the hurricane, that is simultaneously full and empty at once. In life, only two things are for sure- Change and Death.

I've been creating a lot of Change in the past few years: reorienting my career path, healing my body with yoga and food, getting married, buying an apartment. I hadn't been experiencing much Death. There must always be balance.

I received a message this week that my family dog, the one we've had for 14 years now, has kidney disease. Even with change of diet and exercise, there is no cure. Her kidneys were not designed to last forever. To my surprise, the first thing I felt was acceptance. I knew, with each visit back every year to where I grew up, that she wasn't getting any younger. That constant friend, Change, had paid me a heavy visit. Or was it Death? They're really the same thing, you see.

I hope to see her a few more times before she moves on to her next form.

All of this puts me in the "do it now" mindset. How much time do you have left? Are you spending it wisely, putting your skills and talents to use as a service for humankind? Are you using your life to unite or divide? Heal or hurt? Love or hate?

I ask these questions because it's vital for you to know who you're choosing to be, what you choose to make your life about. Get clear on the basest of truths- this body you're in is going to wear out. It may be 5, 10, or 100 years from now (I've got at least 99 left), but it is finite. You're choosing how you spend your life in every moment.

Take time this week to tell everyone how much you love them. Give everyone hugs. Take that class you've always wanted to take. Talk to that cute person in the coffee shop. What've you got to lose? Your life? You won't be here much longer anyway. Enjoy this moment. And this moment. And this moment.

Peace to all.
Love to all.
Light to all.

It's Always A Private Affair

"The breath is a private affair," my student tells me. This is one of those moments when everything stops, and you can perceive the profound meaning of the words still echoing off the walls. Taken at face value, your ego filter interprets it as a stuffy statement, a refusal to follow along with the suggestion of the teacher. If you follow The Four Agreements and practice #2: "Don't take anything personally," you uncover a gold mine.

You can easily observe the breath on the outside. Watch someone's ribs and stomach expand and contract, or even watch their back if you're clever. The thing is, that's the tip of the iceberg; the vehicle form of a Transformer.

Here's where it gets more absorbing:

Every body has different geometry- my bones are different sizes, muscles are stronger and weaker in different ranges of motion, and my organs are organized in a way that is completely unique. So, right at the start, before adding any learned behaviour about how to move your body (sports, martial arts, dance training), we already have poses our body is better suited to perform. That means every body will move differently. This means each set of lungs will take in a different volume of air into different places. It's not possible for you to breathe like me, or me like you.

The breath is our connection to what's going on inside of us. Most of us leave breathing to be controlled by the brain stem; part of our reptilian, primal brain. Its purpose is to keep us alive long enough to replicate- controlling motor function so we're dynamic targets instead of static ones, pumping nutrients to the rest of the body (heart, lungs) to fight or take flight, and making facial shapes to attract a mate. Stuck in this mentality, breath remains a basic, automatic function. If you choose to turn the attention of your forebrain (the frontal lobes) on to your breath, you immediately discover you're only breathing into a fraction of your potential volume.

With the power of the frontal lobes at work, the practice of breathing into more spaces in the body instantly turns the awareness inward. We unearth the ability to use the breath as a window to the places the outer eye can't see. You might even discover that space between the thoughts where consciousness contemplates consciousness- meditation.

Unite the data of the observation of breath on the outside and observation of breath on the inside, and you have a yoga practice. It could be any kind of movement: simple or complex, martial or venusian, East or West. It doesn't matter what you're doing with the body when you are aware of how you are doing it. When you work on this level, it's always a private affair.

Keep listening for the gold.

Eternal Repairation

Jan 16, 2013
NYC

On my way up the stairs to my apartment, I bumped into a neighbor I hadn't seen since last year. We wished each other Happy New Year, and he asked about our renovation. "Almost done," I told him. "Should be finished the last phase, the kitchen, by the end of next week." He was surprised, and shared with me an old Russian saying, roughly translated, "You can start your repair, but never finish."
Of course, this applies to a physical structure, like a building, house, bicycle, or car. These things require consistent upkeep, being perpetually worn down by nature. My first thought was of the body. It, too, is ever in repair: unable to find completion, that 100% charge of the battery. That's not really its purpose, though.
The body dies. Your physical form was always supposed to be finite. After age 20-something, the body stops growing and begins maintaining, hoping to live day in and out until you find a mate and create a new body for a new consciousness. Then your Earthly-dimensional form can fade away, having replicated. That's the body's set of instructions, its mandates. If you've spent any time in meditation, caring for young or old people, or have had a near-death experience (some psychedelics count toward this one), you may have discovered- we are not the body.
The animating force within, the conscious divinity, needs no maintenance. It is already infinite. Through practicing how to breath, we learn to let go of tightness in the body and mind to allow this inner, subtle consciousness to grow strong. That's the point of yoga. It is union, weaving together the body, breath, and mind. Discover that practice, and in time, you'll uncover a body of stress and fear to find one filled with joy and peace.

See you in class.