What are your expectations of yoga?

Once school broke up for the summer, I had an idea in my head that my teenage boys would sleep late. It turns out I got the other kind of teenage boys. Ones who get up really early, and I'm always the last one downstairs.
 
At first I was a bit disappointed. Where was my peaceful morning coffee while the kids lay in? This used to happen, even last year. Where was my longer yoga practice and more leisurely pace for the weeks over the summer?
 
Yes, my expectations set me up for a mismatch with reality. 
 
It is all good really, I love that they are healthy and able to get up and start their days. It just seemed odd and out of kilter with what I had thought.
 
It is easy for expectations to hit that mismatch in our yoga practice too.
 
We expect a certain practice and a certain result. To feel stretched this way and that way. To feel energised, vibrant, calm and for it to improve how we feel in some way. And yes, it might. And thankfully, it usually does. 
 
But our expectations will set us up for a fall at some point. It won't always go how we expect it to. And we need to be open to what we aren't expecting or even open to what we wouldn't choose to experience. And to note any disappointment, anxiety, judgement or frustration that then arises. 
 
We might feel that our practice wasn't good enough, that we didn't like what we were doing, that the yoga didn't work.
 
But perhaps the yoga did work, and is helping you discover something unexpected. Perhaps you have discovered the reality of how you are. Whether you like it or not. 
 
At some point in your practice, you'll discover that you can't do the thing you could do last time you tried. Perhaps you felt stiff or had a pain, didn't feel strong enough, felt agitated, stuck, dissatisfied in some way. You expected your practice to make you feel great again. You want your yoga to allow you to continue to do the tough stuff forever. Yoga can't do this, obviously.
 
But there is something wonderful that we can find, every time.
 
Yoga can help you discover that being open to how you actually are, not how you think you are or would like to be, and accepting completely what you find, is a beautiful, less effortful, less frustrating route to the spaciousness and ease that yoga can lead you to - if you allow it.
 
Yoga doesn't do this by satisfying our expectations. Especially when these expectations are mismatched with reality.
 
It does it by allowing you to let go of notions of what you hope to create or change. It feels like a conundrum at first - how do you do that?
 
You don't, yoga does, you just show up and be open and attentive to what you discover.