In ninth grade, I read a book called The Inner Game of Tennis. At the time, I had no idea whether or not it was a good book, because I was in ninth grade. And I had no idea whether it was just a fad, because I hadn’t read enough books like it to compare. What “sort” of book it even was…likely I couldn’t have identified a genre (because: ninth grade).
Regardless, I took it to heart. Retroactively, it is clearly a personal growth book, practically a meditation book, wrapped around the sport of tennis. The Inner Game of Tennis popped into mind recently when I was pondering the value of hitting the ball “at two-o’clock,” the part of the ball I was instructed to aim for when I hit a serve. The difference between simply “watching the ball” and seeing “two-o’clock” on the ball itself is remarkable. It narrows down the focus. It’s actually a yogic idea, in that it intentionally filters out every distraction, leaving a very narrowly defined spot, such that one can’t help but be Here, Now.
Lily has Here, Now tattooed on her wrist, but that’s a story for another day.
I’d forgotten all about that book until Wimbledon 2022, when a tennis commentator referred to it, and I realized that the book, whose cover I can still see clearly in my memory, remains relevant—what an amazing gift to have somehow read it decades ago, when it was released! In retrospect, clearly that book had planted a seed of pioneering consciousness long before I knew of yoga, or consciousness. And interestingly enough, when I resurrected tennis after a 25-year hiatus, I experienced the re-training of my body as yogic. In order to re-learn tennis, I had to clear my mental space moment by moment, amusedly banishing thoughts such as "I can’t."
And the truth is, it’s not just tennis: everything is yogic, everything is yoga. Yoga is simply union. Yoga really has nothing to do with becoming flexible; flexibility is merely a fringe benefit. What yoga does--if you’re truly doing yoga as opposed to merely stretching--is teach you to recognize the thoughts that keep you from fully experiencing any given moment. It brings us into union with ourselves and potentially the Universe.
In tennis, for instance, it’s so unhelpful to get mad at the teacher, or at yourself. It’s tempting, when the going gets tough, to blame someone, but after 25-plus years of yoga, I know beyond a doubt that my mental reactions don’t help the learning, training, or reprogramming process.
If “everything” is yogic, what does that actually include? It includes grocery shopping, social media consuming, car driving, people meeting, child rearing…all are opportunities to draw upon the felt concept that while we have almost no control over the world around us, we do have 100 percent control over our reactions to the world, in any situation. Yoga is an opportunity to practice that, to strengthen the muscle of consciousness, so that the “muscle memory” of true consciousness takes the reins when we find ourselves in challenging, uncomfortable, or undesirable situations.
As I re-learned to hit the ball in this second phase of my tennis life, the moment I felt a smidgen of anger at the tennis teacher, or an impending frustration that it was taking too long to re-train my body to play the modern tennis style, I simply let go of that potential thought and re-routed myself back into the present, which is the only time I—or any of us—can actually make a difference. That's how yoga works. Time spent on the yoga mat is practice for everyday life.
