Today, in my 9am Slow Burn Vinyasa class we began to delve into 'finding balance'. We all certainly know when we are out of balance, but when....if ever....have we ever taken a moment to define what our life 'in balance' actually means. Does it mean work/home balance? Is it a steady emotional state? Is it when life flows along swimmingly without major disruptions? It will be different for each of us. What is interesting is that we can all say, "Oh I need more balance!" or "My life is out of balance," but how can we know what is out of balance if we never have defined what it means to be IN BALANCE. Many of us have an ideation about what it feels like or should like, but I encourage you to sit down and DEFINE it for you.
Another thing we delved into was that emotions are false. I don't mean you don't have them, but the stories the lead us to tell ourselves are. We each tell ourselves many stories throughout our day. Don't believe me? Check in with your thoughts as you pass someone who catches your attention for whatever reason, you don't know them, and check in as to what you think about them. Listen to the story you told yourself about them instantaneously. It might be you like or dislike them, you judge them based on the way they look, the way they carry themselves, etc. Still don't believe me? How about reading a text from someone and assuming their intentions from it or assuming intentions/motives from the someone acts or from what they have said to you or from what others told you they said about you. If we take a moment to drill down and ask ourselves, "IS IT TRUE?", many of us will find it is not true. We have concocted a story on the spot, in an instant, and a lot of times we don't even realize it.
For me, being in balance means being content in any and all circumstance and also being able to be present in each moment. Each day is a new challenge and it is a constant evolution toward that end goal. First things, first. We need to be able to take every thought captive and bring it to the plumb line of God. This includes our judgments and presuppositions, our agendas, and of course the stories we tell ourselves about others and our own self. Understanding when we have conversations with others and we leave feeling discontented in some way, we must figure out and articulate the story we have created and thus are telling. If my husband does not put the cap on the toothpaste and I get angry...IS IT TRUE? No, of course not. I may be irritated at the mess, but in all reality the cap off the toothpaste will not effect me in 5 years and so should be left alone. My emotions say otherwise and are quite volcanic, yet it is something so small. I might be telling myself I am not loved because if my family loved me I would not have to clean up yet one more mess. I could be irritated from something else from day and it is showing itself projected on something false. I could tell myself my husband does not support me because if he did he would know I had a hard day and would not leave a mess. It could also be a false accusation when in reality it was one of the children who left the cap off, so am I mad at my husband or the cap itself or just the idea of it not being where it supposed to be? You get my drift. Imagine this storytelling on larger, more life-impacting events?
We have to be willing to slow down, and discover the inner workings of US. The only things we can change is with US. We can control our thoughts, actions, and deeds; Not any one else's. It takes a certain amount of will and authenticism (is there such a word? Well, there is now...) to practice yoga and the same is true in life. But excessive storytelling creates tension. Finding the balance between the stories we internally tell and acceptance of the truth in life is what we are learning in and with our yoga practice. Some people approach their yoga practice as a break form the world, a separate space where they can recover from the stressed from the world. Once they have pulled themselves back together, they return to the families and their jobs renewed and more 'in balance.
Over the years, I have come to understand life itself is mostly an opportunity to practice, to move toward the wholeness of experience. Our formal practices like yoga and meditation provide us with a safe, nourishing environment in which we can gain stability and abilities that aid this process. Have you ever watched a seasoned yoga teacher do their own asana practice? One thing you will notice is how relaxed they are in their own bodies. They look as if no effort is being given no matter what they are practicing or how strenous or gentle their practice is. No matter how much they urge you to work hard, they don't mean for you to become tense. That is something you are adding because your mind wants to participate; it wants to tell its stories! In our yoga practice we need to learn to just let our bodies do the work. Much of yoga is learning how to get out of our own way and how to incorporate our yoga practice into the rest of our lives so that we know how to handle life's challenges without adding tensions and our stories which only add ore tension!
It is at this level that yoga becomes a deeper practice. We can be under tremendous stress and ocme back into experiencing your feet on the ground as though it were just another moment of Mountain Pose. We can receive a big disappointment and be able to drop into our breath, realizing it is just another moment of practice, and allow the breath to move the feelings through our body. Being grounded and having the peace only God can provide within is balance to me. What is it for you?
Some
people approach their yoga practice as a break from the world, a
separate space where they can recover from life's stresses and strains.
Once they've pulled themselves back together, they return to their
families and jobs renewed. I think that's legitimate, but it's not my
experience. I approach yoga from the perspective that I'm learning
something that can be integrated into my life. - See more at:
http://dharmawisdom.org/teachings/articles/striking-balance-between-effort-and-ease-yoga-life#sthash.EiPdJKP0.dpuf
Is
your life any different than your yoga practice? Is it possible to
relax once you have fallen into tension in a moment of your life? My
experience is that it is exactly the same. You can be tense when
starting to make a presentation and then relax, or get tense in the
middle of a discussion with your wife or husband and then let it go. But
if you lock into a point of view in which you have to be right or the
other person has to change, then that is just like a weight-bearing pose
in yoga, and there is no getting rid of the tension without
relinquishing your position and starting over. Letting go of tension in
life is a lot harder to do than relaxing in Triangle Poseone more reason
to appreciate your yoga practice. - See more at:
http://dharmawisdom.org/teachings/articles/striking-balance-between-effort-and-ease-yoga-life#sthash.EiPdJKP0.dpuf
Some
people approach their yoga practice as a break from the world, a
separate space where they can recover from life's stresses and strains.
Once they've pulled themselves back together, they return to their
families and jobs renewed. I think that's legitimate, but it's not my
experience. I approach yoga from the perspective that I'm learning
something that can be integrated into my life. Over the years I've come
to understand that life itself is mostly an opportunity to practice, to
move towards wholeness of experience. Our formal practices like yoga and
meditation provide us with a safe, nourishing environment in which we
can gain stability and abilities that aid this process.
For
instance, last week while I was teaching a yoga class built around
working without tension, the relevance of yoga to the rest of life just
naturally emerged. We started with Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha
Svanasana). First I had the students push their hands hard into the
floor, feel the resulting tension in the shoulder muscles, and notice
how when they pushed themselves into the posture that same tension was
built into the pose. "Just do the pose without adding anything," I
repeated over and over. Next, I had them lightly place their hands on
the mat, as though they were ready at any moment to lift off the floor,
and witness how this also created tension in the shoulder muscles and
neck when they pushed up into Downward-Facing Dog. We experimented to
see if it was possible to let go of the added tension once fully in the
pose. It was a mixed class in terms of the students' skill levels and
innate flexibility, yet by the end of class most of the students seemed
to be incorporating the idea into their practice.
"Watch a senior
teacher do their own asanas," I told them. "One thing you will notice is
how relaxed they are in their bodies, as though they aren't efforting.
No matter how much they urge you to work hard, they don't mean for you
to tense. That's something you're adding because your mind wants to
participate. Just let your body do the work. Much of yoga is learning to
get out of your own way." I then pointed out that what we really want
to learn is how to incorporate our yoga practice into the rest of our
lives and to respond appropriately to life's challenges without adding
tension. It is at this level that yoga really becomes a deeper practice.
You can be under tremendous stress and come back into experiencing your
feet on the ground as though it were just another moment of Mountain
Pose (Tadasana); or you can receive a big disappointment and be able to
drop into your breath, realizing it's just another moment of practice,
and allow the breath to move the feelings through your body.
Easy Does It
The
idea of not adding tension is a universal principle. In teaching
vipassana Buddhist meditation, which is a moment-to-moment mindfulness
practice, I emphasize that the mind can just rest on the experience of
hearing, just as the buttocks rest on the meditation cushion. In resting
there need not be any reference to "I"; hearing just arises in the
mind. The meditator then shifts the mind's attention to the breath, and
the same thing applies: The in-breath arises, has a duration, then an
ending; the out-breath follows the same pattern. Over time the meditator
is able to experience many moments on the cushion where there is no
added tension, no contraction into the idea of a rigid unchanging Self.
Eventually the understanding spreads into daily life. When there is no
added tension, there is the opportunity for liberation, to simply be
with what arises in the moment. This is what is referred to in Zen as
"beginner's mind," and it applies directly to your yoga practice.
Recently
I experienced how easy it is for tension to creep into my poses when my
teacher Tony Briggs and I attended a two-day workshop with one of his
teachers, Shandor Remete. Shandor is an inspiring and demanding teacher,
and I was intensely efforting in each pose. I glanced over at Tony and
saw that his body, while fully engaged, seemed very relaxed; there
wasn't any visible tension. At first I wondered, "Why isn't he working
harder?" I kept sneaking looks at him until I finally realized the
truth: He was just doing the pose. In contrast, I was having to overcome
the constraints caused by the tension I was adding to the pose. Later
when I asked Tony how he stayed so relaxed in a pose, he quoted his
first teacher, Judith Lasater, saying there's a difference between
"action"the doing of the poseand "friction"unnecessary efforting.
Don't
confuse not adding tension with just hanging out in a pose. Of course
you have to work the arms in Downward-Facing Dog. But don't tense the
arms, the shoulders, or the back to work them; instead place your
awareness in the bones, feel the skeleton providing stability, and allow
the nervous system to be neutral. Maintain that neutrality as you use
your muscles to push up into the pose. Then activate only those muscles
needed to move the pelvis farther away from the arms, and to create
space between the pelvis and the thigh bones, and between the top of the
pelvis and the rib cage. You will discover that you can create more
space in your body and hold the pose longer. How can you tell if you're
doing it correctly? Another of my teachers, Ramanand Patel, will tell
students to observe the breath; if it can't move freely, there is
constriction in the pose.
Shift into Neutral
A
question that arises for us all is, "What is the proper use of will in
yoga and life in general?" On the one hand, it takes a certain amount of
will just to practice, let alone grow your yoga practice, and the same
is true in life. On the other hand, excessive willfulness creates
undesirable tension. Finding the balance between will and acceptance is
part of what you are learning in your yoga practice, just as you are
learning what is the proper balance between pain and relaxation. One of
the benefits of doing yoga is you begin to develop the intuitive art of
finding balance in any life situation.
Another way to approach
this question is to begin to differentiate between intention and
willfulness. Intention is setting a direction for yourself in movement
or in actions in your life and holding it as both a vision and an
outcome, so that it acts as both an inspiration and a map. Many books on
the "inner game" of various sports make use of this viewpoint.
Willfulness is the determination to push through any resistance. The
difference between intention and willfulness in this context is that
intention implies flexibility and gentleness, while willfulness is
absolute, unswerving, and rigid. Both intention and willfulness can be
desirable, but for most of your yoga practice and for your life,
intention is the more balanced, healthier approach. Again, you can learn
to make these distinctions in the laboratory of the yoga studio and
then carry them into the rest of your life; that's what makes yoga such a
profound practice.
To discover this for yourself, try this
experiment. Do Triangle Pose (Trikonasana), and as you bend over to the
side, focus your mind on your own body experience. See if you tense the
lower abdomen as you start to bend. Your instructor may well have been
saying for months not to harden the stomach as you bend, and you never
grasped the meaning before. If it's not clear whether or not you are
tightening, deliberately tense the stomach as you bend and see how
difficult it is to both extend and twist the spine with a tense belly.
Then do the opposite and see how much more potential exists for
fluidity. Or do Warrior II Pose (Virabhadrasana II) with the intent of
keeping the little toe side of the back foot on the ground while you
bend the front leg in the proper manner. It's very easy to think you
have to tense the back leg, but the opposite is true; the more you
simply rest the back foot and allow the weight to flow from the buttock
to the floor, then let the front leg bend from this anchor, the easier
it is to do the pose.
Neutrality is a key concept in movement.
When the body is in neutral, it is ready to move in the desired
direction without delay or additional effort. One way to assess your
body for neutrality in yoga is to see if you are relaxed in beginning a
pose and if you can maintain the sense of overall relaxation as you
begin working the body.
In a similar manner, equanimity is a key
concept in vipassana practice. When the mind has equanimity and
something pleasant arises, you experience the moment without trying to
hold onto it and creating tension. If something unpleasant arises, your
mind does not contract in a futile attempt to avoid what is arising.
Instead, it stays open and relaxed even though you are having an
unpleasant experience; therefore, you suffer less.
You can
experience the truth of this yourself in yoga. In his book Light On
Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar rates every pose according to difficulty except for
Corpse Pose (Savasana), which he does not rate because he says it is
simply too difficult to register on the same scale with the other poses.
Savasana is the ultimate neutral positionthe mind and the body are
alert, both are awake, but they are not contracted in any way.
Living
your life with equanimity has the same flavor as Savasana: You are
alert, but the mind is not attaching to anything; it is just
appropriately responsive. Although the teaching of mindful equanimity is
a Buddhist practice, you can imagine being able to go through your yoga
practice and even your usual day while in Savasana. It may sound
far-fetched at this point in your practice, but many people have varying
degrees of this ability which they've attained through diligent
practice. It's not an all or none situation; rather, it is about adding a
little more calmness and alertness to your practice, your work, and
your home life. Of course, you can be assured you will completely lose
it and have to rediscover it, and that this pattern will repeat itself
endlessly. But, overall, there is growth in your practice and in the
quality of your life, and you have more moments of being able to live
from your deeper values.
Relax into Life
So,
is it possible to let loose of tension once you are in a pose? It
depends on where you are holding the tension. In movement, there is a
primary path of intention in the body and also secondary paths. The
primary path involves weight-bearing effort, such as the action of the
hands and arms in Downward-Facing Dog; the secondary paths are such
things as the neck, abdomen, hips, and chest. Because they are not
weight bearing, the secondary paths can move in and out of tension while
in the pose; but in the primary, weight-bearing path, tension gets
locked into the pose. Try as you might, you can't release it without
breaking the structure of the pose.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the
Olympic gold medal track star, once said of her running style that she
established her speed as quickly as possible and then concentrated on
relaxing while she allowed her body to run. A yoga pose is like that.
You can find the appropriate structure of the pose for yourself on any
particular day with your body just as it is, then relax into the
experience regardless of the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the
sensation. Don't waste energy creating tension, judging the pose, or
wishing you were somehow different than you are in this moment.
Is
your life any different than your yoga practice? Is it possible to
relax once you have fallen into tension in a moment of your life? My
experience is that it is exactly the same. You can be tense when
starting to make a presentation and then relax, or get tense in the
middle of a discussion with your wife or husband and then let it go. But
if you lock into a point of view in which you have to be right or the
other person has to change, then that is just like a weight-bearing pose
in yoga, and there is no getting rid of the tension without
relinquishing your position and starting over. Letting go of tension in
life is a lot harder to do than relaxing in Triangle Poseone more reason
to appreciate your yoga practice.
- See more at:
http://dharmawisdom.org/teachings/articles/striking-balance-between-effort-and-ease-yoga-life#sthash.EiPdJKP0.dpuf
It
takes a certain amount of will to practice yoga, and the same is true
in life. But excessive willfulness creates tension. Finding the balance
between will and acceptance in life is what you are learning in your
yoga practice.
Some
people approach their yoga practice as a break from the world, a
separate space where they can recover from life's stresses and strains.
Once they've pulled themselves back together, they return to their
families and jobs renewed. I think that's legitimate, but it's not my
experience. I approach yoga from the perspective that I'm learning
something that can be integrated into my life. Over the years I've come
to understand that life itself is mostly an opportunity to practice, to
move towards wholeness of experience. Our formal practices like yoga and
meditation provide us with a safe, nourishing environment in which we
can gain stability and abilities that aid this process.
For
instance, last week while I was teaching a yoga class built around
working without tension, the relevance of yoga to the rest of life just
naturally emerged. We started with Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha
Svanasana). First I had the students push their hands hard into the
floor, feel the resulting tension in the shoulder muscles, and notice
how when they pushed themselves into the posture that same tension was
built into the pose. "Just do the pose without adding anything," I
repeated over and over. Next, I had them lightly place their hands on
the mat, as though they were ready at any moment to lift off the floor,
and witness how this also created tension in the shoulder muscles and
neck when they pushed up into Downward-Facing Dog. We experimented to
see if it was possible to let go of the added tension once fully in the
pose. It was a mixed class in terms of the students' skill levels and
innate flexibility, yet by the end of class most of the students seemed
to be incorporating the idea into their practice.
"Watch a senior
teacher do their own asanas," I told them. "One thing you will notice is
how relaxed they are in their bodies, as though they aren't efforting.
No matter how much they urge you to work hard, they don't mean for you
to tense. That's something you're adding because your mind wants to
participate. Just let your body do the work. Much of yoga is learning to
get out of your own way." I then pointed out that what we really want
to learn is how to incorporate our yoga practice into the rest of our
lives and to respond appropriately to life's challenges without adding
tension. It is at this level that yoga really becomes a deeper practice.
You can be under tremendous stress and come back into experiencing your
feet on the ground as though it were just another moment of Mountain
Pose (Tadasana); or you can receive a big disappointment and be able to
drop into your breath, realizing it's just another moment of practice,
and allow the breath to move the feelings through your body.
Easy Does It
The
idea of not adding tension is a universal principle. In teaching
vipassana Buddhist meditation, which is a moment-to-moment mindfulness
practice, I emphasize that the mind can just rest on the experience of
hearing, just as the buttocks rest on the meditation cushion. In resting
there need not be any reference to "I"; hearing just arises in the
mind. The meditator then shifts the mind's attention to the breath, and
the same thing applies: The in-breath arises, has a duration, then an
ending; the out-breath follows the same pattern. Over time the meditator
is able to experience many moments on the cushion where there is no
added tension, no contraction into the idea of a rigid unchanging Self.
Eventually the understanding spreads into daily life. When there is no
added tension, there is the opportunity for liberation, to simply be
with what arises in the moment. This is what is referred to in Zen as
"beginner's mind," and it applies directly to your yoga practice.
Recently
I experienced how easy it is for tension to creep into my poses when my
teacher Tony Briggs and I attended a two-day workshop with one of his
teachers, Shandor Remete. Shandor is an inspiring and demanding teacher,
and I was intensely efforting in each pose. I glanced over at Tony and
saw that his body, while fully engaged, seemed very relaxed; there
wasn't any visible tension. At first I wondered, "Why isn't he working
harder?" I kept sneaking looks at him until I finally realized the
truth: He was just doing the pose. In contrast, I was having to overcome
the constraints caused by the tension I was adding to the pose. Later
when I asked Tony how he stayed so relaxed in a pose, he quoted his
first teacher, Judith Lasater, saying there's a difference between
"action"the doing of the poseand "friction"unnecessary efforting.
Don't
confuse not adding tension with just hanging out in a pose. Of course
you have to work the arms in Downward-Facing Dog. But don't tense the
arms, the shoulders, or the back to work them; instead place your
awareness in the bones, feel the skeleton providing stability, and allow
the nervous system to be neutral. Maintain that neutrality as you use
your muscles to push up into the pose. Then activate only those muscles
needed to move the pelvis farther away from the arms, and to create
space between the pelvis and the thigh bones, and between the top of the
pelvis and the rib cage. You will discover that you can create more
space in your body and hold the pose longer. How can you tell if you're
doing it correctly? Another of my teachers, Ramanand Patel, will tell
students to observe the breath; if it can't move freely, there is
constriction in the pose.
Shift into Neutral
A
question that arises for us all is, "What is the proper use of will in
yoga and life in general?" On the one hand, it takes a certain amount of
will just to practice, let alone grow your yoga practice, and the same
is true in life. On the other hand, excessive willfulness creates
undesirable tension. Finding the balance between will and acceptance is
part of what you are learning in your yoga practice, just as you are
learning what is the proper balance between pain and relaxation. One of
the benefits of doing yoga is you begin to develop the intuitive art of
finding balance in any life situation.
Another way to approach
this question is to begin to differentiate between intention and
willfulness. Intention is setting a direction for yourself in movement
or in actions in your life and holding it as both a vision and an
outcome, so that it acts as both an inspiration and a map. Many books on
the "inner game" of various sports make use of this viewpoint.
Willfulness is the determination to push through any resistance. The
difference between intention and willfulness in this context is that
intention implies flexibility and gentleness, while willfulness is
absolute, unswerving, and rigid. Both intention and willfulness can be
desirable, but for most of your yoga practice and for your life,
intention is the more balanced, healthier approach. Again, you can learn
to make these distinctions in the laboratory of the yoga studio and
then carry them into the rest of your life; that's what makes yoga such a
profound practice.
To discover this for yourself, try this
experiment. Do Triangle Pose (Trikonasana), and as you bend over to the
side, focus your mind on your own body experience. See if you tense the
lower abdomen as you start to bend. Your instructor may well have been
saying for months not to harden the stomach as you bend, and you never
grasped the meaning before. If it's not clear whether or not you are
tightening, deliberately tense the stomach as you bend and see how
difficult it is to both extend and twist the spine with a tense belly.
Then do the opposite and see how much more potential exists for
fluidity. Or do Warrior II Pose (Virabhadrasana II) with the intent of
keeping the little toe side of the back foot on the ground while you
bend the front leg in the proper manner. It's very easy to think you
have to tense the back leg, but the opposite is true; the more you
simply rest the back foot and allow the weight to flow from the buttock
to the floor, then let the front leg bend from this anchor, the easier
it is to do the pose.
Neutrality is a key concept in movement.
When the body is in neutral, it is ready to move in the desired
direction without delay or additional effort. One way to assess your
body for neutrality in yoga is to see if you are relaxed in beginning a
pose and if you can maintain the sense of overall relaxation as you
begin working the body.
In a similar manner, equanimity is a key
concept in vipassana practice. When the mind has equanimity and
something pleasant arises, you experience the moment without trying to
hold onto it and creating tension. If something unpleasant arises, your
mind does not contract in a futile attempt to avoid what is arising.
Instead, it stays open and relaxed even though you are having an
unpleasant experience; therefore, you suffer less.
You can
experience the truth of this yourself in yoga. In his book Light On
Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar rates every pose according to difficulty except for
Corpse Pose (Savasana), which he does not rate because he says it is
simply too difficult to register on the same scale with the other poses.
Savasana is the ultimate neutral positionthe mind and the body are
alert, both are awake, but they are not contracted in any way.
Living
your life with equanimity has the same flavor as Savasana: You are
alert, but the mind is not attaching to anything; it is just
appropriately responsive. Although the teaching of mindful equanimity is
a Buddhist practice, you can imagine being able to go through your yoga
practice and even your usual day while in Savasana. It may sound
far-fetched at this point in your practice, but many people have varying
degrees of this ability which they've attained through diligent
practice. It's not an all or none situation; rather, it is about adding a
little more calmness and alertness to your practice, your work, and
your home life. Of course, you can be assured you will completely lose
it and have to rediscover it, and that this pattern will repeat itself
endlessly. But, overall, there is growth in your practice and in the
quality of your life, and you have more moments of being able to live
from your deeper values.
Relax into Life
So,
is it possible to let loose of tension once you are in a pose? It
depends on where you are holding the tension. In movement, there is a
primary path of intention in the body and also secondary paths. The
primary path involves weight-bearing effort, such as the action of the
hands and arms in Downward-Facing Dog; the secondary paths are such
things as the neck, abdomen, hips, and chest. Because they are not
weight bearing, the secondary paths can move in and out of tension while
in the pose; but in the primary, weight-bearing path, tension gets
locked into the pose. Try as you might, you can't release it without
breaking the structure of the pose.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the
Olympic gold medal track star, once said of her running style that she
established her speed as quickly as possible and then concentrated on
relaxing while she allowed her body to run. A yoga pose is like that.
You can find the appropriate structure of the pose for yourself on any
particular day with your body just as it is, then relax into the
experience regardless of the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the
sensation. Don't waste energy creating tension, judging the pose, or
wishing you were somehow different than you are in this moment.
Is
your life any different than your yoga practice? Is it possible to
relax once you have fallen into tension in a moment of your life? My
experience is that it is exactly the same. You can be tense when
starting to make a presentation and then relax, or get tense in the
middle of a discussion with your wife or husband and then let it go. But
if you lock into a point of view in which you have to be right or the
other person has to change, then that is just like a weight-bearing pose
in yoga, and there is no getting rid of the tension without
relinquishing your position and starting over. Letting go of tension in
life is a lot harder to do than relaxing in Triangle Poseone more reason
to appreciate your yoga practice.
- See
more at:
http://dharmawisdom.org/teachings/articles/striking-balance-between-effort-and-ease-yoga-life#sthash.EiPdJKP0.dpuf
