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No one really likes the word discipline. There are so many things we can think of that are more entertaining and require less attention or intention to accomplish. Still, discipline, when undertaken with a certain spirit, can mean freedom.

Yep – I said it! Discipline can mean freedom.

Drudgery is when we are sentenced to have to do something. Freedom happens when we can trust that certain things will be taken care of. We can relax that something is true now.

When we have established a way we do things, regularly, repeated and sure, we no longer must struggle to get them done. Do you think of brushing your teeth as a discipline? Do you think of brushing your hair or fixing breakfast as a discipline? These things became established for us when we were younger. We can just do them without much thinking about whether we want to or not. We can just trust them to be a part of the day.

Discipline = Freedom

Your yoga practice, your meditation practice, your art practice or writing – whatever you do can become as brushing the teeth. You just show up and somehow it happens.

It doesn’t seem that it will ever become effortless when we think about some new attempt at discipline. But that is exactly what the purpose of developing discipline can be, and will ultimately lead to. Use your practice today to explore what you think this might mean, or how this could be.

It is traditional for people to work with discipline, and there is no limit to what can be accomplished.

Today, as we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., a master of the art of discipline, we can look to his work and his words about it to understand the potential power of working in this way. Martin Luther King worked a discipline to help lead a people, the American people, to a greater reflection of its beauty in diversity through true equality. We can see that he felt giving all of those who worked alongside him a sense of discipline was a way to protect them and guide them so that no person could take their dignity no matter what happened.

“If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, in a sense he is not fit to live.  And the nonviolent discipline says that there is power in this approach, precisely because it disarms the opponent and exposes his moral defenses.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

While we are not talking about such a big discipline here, one that need protect thousands of people as they face possible arrest or attack, we can see there is a great example in Martin Luther King, Jr. The way King shared non-violent discipline with our people is an excellent example of the power of discipline. In fact, Martin Luther King, Jr. studied the work of Gandhi of India, whose work to free his people from British rule, was based in discipline with ahimsa (non-harming). Martin Luther King’s teachings were based on his own interpretation of the ahimsa of Gandhi, which he translated into “the discipline of non-violence.”

Pose of the Day: Gomukasana – Cow Face

Yogic Concept of the Day: Discipline can mean freedom.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/65798313@N06/6156055497/sizes/m/in/pool-685365@N25/