Is a puzzle a yoga practice?

As I’ve been embracing solitude in my new empty nest life, I’ve looked for things and activities to occupy my free time. The obvious binge-watching shows and catching up on all the movies I’ve been meaning to see since 2002 worked for a while, but I needed something a little more stimulating.

After a weekend at the lake with my bestie and completing the ever present puzzle that sits on the desk at the lake house for rainy lake days, I decided, “that’s what I need more of in my life!” So began (and continues) my puzzling phase.

What I loved about it was that it made me focus, to be completely present in the moment and allowed my constantly overthinking mind to switch over to something more productive. Yes. Working on a puzzle was far more productive than the reanalyzing of an unsolvable future my brain was hooked on.

As I continued puzzling, averaging a puzzle a week these days. I know. Impressive. I started to notice how puzzling and the journey of life are related and how many yogic principles and practices I uncovered as I continued to explore this metaphor.

The more I looked for, the more I found. Here are just a few of my insights:

When you start it seems overwhelming, impossible.

You open the box, dump out all the pieces, and it feels like it will take forever to get them all in place. But just as we don’t attempt to float into a handstand in our first yoga class, or go straight into an hour long silent meditation, we start where we are. We work with what we have and we trust that in time and with practice the picture will become more and more complete.  We start with the corners then the edges, maybe start sorting by colors or textures and just see what starts to unfold. Just keep taking the next right step and in time, the path will become more clear.

You keep trying a certain piece in the same spot over and over because it just seems like it should fit there.

How often do we try and try to force something because it’s what should be or because we want it to be. How often do we try to fit ourselves or others into the spot we think should fit, instead of waiting and letting the journey be our guide. Sometimes we just need a few more pieces in place and then that piece we were working to fit in fits in it’s actual place just right. When life seems too hard, we might be doing it wrong. Instead we can trust in the universe and trust in the people we love to create the life that’s meant for them.

You’re staring at a puzzle for days and feeling stuck, then someone not involved in the puzzle walks up and sees where the pieces go clearly.

I know. I hate that guy. But let’s turn it around and see if we can be grateful for the push. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a coach or a therapist. Having someone with an outside perspective can open us up to blindspots and limiting beliefs that we might be holding on to. We can be frustrated by the intrusion, or we can be thankful for the insight. We may not like what they’re seeing or don’t want to see it for ourselves, but sometimes outside help is exactly what we need in order to move forward.

Sometimes when you’re deep into puzzling you just get stuck.

Everything looks the same, you can’t find anything you’re looking for and you get completely stuck. The best thing to do here is just walk away. When you come back, in a day, in a week, in an hour, everything will make more sense. Breathe, wait, trust, stop trying to force a solution.

Just one more piece… sometimes, when you’re puzzling you get on a roll and can lose all track of time.

I had to institute a no puzzling during my workday rule for a while because of this truth. When you’re in flow, a state where where you are totally absorbed by and deeply focused on something, beyond the point of distraction, experts say our mind reaches full capacity. “If the activity at hand happens to be something we enjoy and we’re good at, we achieve a flow mental state — and it can leave us feeling ecstatic, motivated and fulfilled.” I’ll take more of that please.

You have to shift how you’re approaching the problem.

You know those puzzles that have like 40 pieces of just light blue sky?  When the image on the piece, the colors and textures aren’t any help, we need to change what we’re looking for. Looking for the shape of the piece instead and then maybe just trying something to see if it fits. If it doesn’t, we just try another one. No big deal. When we let go of the way we’re used to solving a problem and are willing to fail or get a “no” we can let go of our perceptions and expectations and start to be open to new possibilities for an even better solution.

There are times when you complete a little floating section that you know is in the middle somewhere but don’t know exactly where it’ll fit yet.

Then finally you have enough of the background in place to connect that little section into the big picture. Every time, I’m surprised by the proportion. What I thought was just a little piece of the whole is usually much more significant once it’s in place and opens up so many new options. This makes me think of community and how we’re all closer than we think, and when we stay separate we all feel smaller (or bigger) than we actually are. It’s only when we come together that the proportions make sense.

And then there are those glorious times when without any rhyme, reason or probability, you pick up a piece and without even really looking at it, your hand places it in exactly the right spot.

It’s so weird! Take home message: Trust in the flow of the universe, stay open to possibility and miracles, we don’t always have to try so hard. We start by trusting in life and taking one uncertain step at a time and soon, when we stop trying to force it, we’ll begin to more clearly see the path that is unfolding underneath our feet.

I hope my experiences remind you that even when it feels like it, you're never alone. I'm right there with you, using and sharing all the resources I have to navigate through life as gracefully as possible. ❤️