If you practice yoga regularly the chances of you not having heard this song are about zero but we couldn’t help posting it anyway. All of Bon Iver’s songs seem to work really well in yoga sessions. One reason why is that they’re spellbindingly melodic, but especially on ‘Bon Iver, Bon Iver’, the album with this song on it, the lyrics are a little bit harder to make out than on ‘For Emma Forever Ago’, which works really well if you’re trying to get into a meditative state since you can kind of let the feelings from the music transport you instead of getting caught up in what is being said.
For me, Bon Iver’s music evokes feelings of inspiration, sometimes tinged with grief, and thoughts of epic distances. The question is, what do you tend to do when you are feeling inspired? It’s a great state to let the creative juices flow and produce something, but a lot of people feel like they don’t have the right and so they just sit on their inspiration, happy for the feeling but not necessarily realizing that they can pass that very same energy forward through their own creative work.
You can easily consider your yoga practice to be an area of creation in your life. Although there might be nothing physically left behind after you practice, your asanas are still works of art, and actually what is left behind is the change in your body and the change in your mind. Next time you are feeling inspired by anything, try focusing that energy on improving one of your asanas. Why not create something tangible as a result of outside inspiration, something that moves your yoga practice forward in a consciously chosen, Self-determined way, instead of just sitting on that pleasant feeling and doing nothing with it?
