Spaciousness vs Tension

Tags

Don’t over-work, Freedom, spaciousness, strength, Stress, tension, Wisdom, yoga teaching

Enjoying a little spaciousness while I cycle...

As I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before, sometimes the words I say when I’m teaching a yoga class seem to appear from thin air. I haven’t planned them or rehearsed them but there they are, being all reflective and wisdom-ish like.

I guess I find my inspiration for what I’ll talk about from observations of my experiences or other’s. Which are really one and the same thing. This is why I can talk of these things and be pretty sure that most people are going to relate to some of what I’m saying.

Because while we all have our own experiences, many of them are shared and/or similar enough in content to be relatable. Shareable. Yes?

So. Tuesday I got to thinking about spaciousness, and how when we tense everything up in our body or mind, there isn’t a huge amount of spaciousness going around. So over-tensing, over-concentrating, over-working, pushing yourself to the limits, killing yourself with running or gym (or intensive yoga) workouts isn’t necessarily helping you.

I told my students what I learned from having a couple of fairly respectable injuries in recent times: you don’t have to push to your edges in order to get the benefit of your yoga practice.

You can do less and it is okay. You don’t have to be sweating like a fiend or waking up sore the next day in order to build strength, stability and openness in your body.

In fact the harder you strain and over-work on strength, stability and openness in your body, the more likely you are to cause an injury. And that’s just on the physical level.

Then there’s the way that pushing too hard mentally can injure your emotional well-being. You judge yourself for not being able to do everything/as well as others in the class. You develop a mindset that says if you’re not pushing yourself to the edge, then you aren’t working hard enough and you won’t get the results you want.

None of this is true, but thinking or acting in these ways can cause physical, mental and/or emotional stress.

And stress is tension. Which makes us feel small and crowded.

But life and our body and mind, feel MUCH better when we have space. When our joints and spine aren’t compacted, we feel better. When we’ve got plenty of time to do the things we want to do, we feel better.

So we practice this in our yoga, and take this idea out into our life.

Be relaxed and comfortable in your poses. Be okay with where you’re at without pushing yourself so hard. Work effectively and functionally, but not excessively.

You will still get stronger.

You will still develop better core strength.

Your body and joints will open over time, to the degree that is possible for your body.

You will find it easier to calm your mind for meditation.

And you will be able to take this sense of calm and spaciousness out into other parts of your life.

So – work as well as you can in your yoga practice, on any given day. Do today, what is appropriate for your health and energy levels today. Do what’s appropriate for you tomorrow, when it is tomorrow. Don’t over-work. Doing your best without straining or forcing is enough.

Find ways to enjoy your practice. You develop more sensitivity and body awareness when you aren’t pushing so hard, because this leaves room to feel subtleties.

You are enough as you are (injured/sick/low energy etc), and you will get the benefits of the practice anyway.

It went something like that, anyway…

~Svasti

Yoga Tattuesday & Ordinary Joy #reverb10

Tags

#reverb10, Anxiety, back seat driver, big gaping hole, Depression, disassociation, Enlightenment, fairy floss, fork in the road, Meditation, morbid alternative, ordinary joy, Self-destruction, sense of enjoyment, spaciousness, vacuum, Yoga, Yoga Tattuesday

Before I get into the next #reverb10 post, I just wanted to mention that Birdie over at Yogi, Interrupted has written a feature post on my tattoo as part of her Yoga Tattuesday series.

Go check it out and say hello to Birdie! 😀

Ordinary Joy. Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?
~ December 27 prompt

Actually, this year has had a bunch of them. Mostly as I previously described: those moments when I’ve realised that depression is no longer running the show.

Where I’ve been surprised by my own darkness-free sense of enjoyment. Free of anxiety, even. Those moments are almost unbelievable and they appear a little bit mysteriously. Think of fairy floss magically wrapping itself around a stick: there’s other forces at work, but to the naked eye things suddenly appear to change.

Like… hey, I think I’m feeling pretty happy right now. For no particular reason… Fuck, but that can be mind-blowing when you’re used to a more morbid alternative!

Don’t get me wrong, depression still sticks its nose out every so often looking for a soft place to land and dig in. That’s its nature. Once it’s had a taste of you, it always wants more. Although it should be noted that the “it” I’m referring to is none other than our own minds. Depression is not an imposition from the outside, but one way that our brain functions or rather, dysfunctions.

Over time the onset of depression’s symptoms get easier to recognise and as long as I’m still doing yoga, riding my bike and connecting with nature then it can’t easily get a foothold.

Not that it doesn’t try.

Most interestingly, while examining my mind recently I noticed that depression shares the same root experience as meditation. A sense of spaciousness. A big gaping hole. A vacuum.

However if you’re not prepared for that kind of spaciousness, it can be very scary. It can even look a little bit like death. No matter who you are or how much work you’ve done on yourself it can be quite shocking.

I know this from my own experience – I’ve been shocked several times now, via both depression and meditation.

And perhaps depression is just one fork in the road, a really well-trodden path because the alternative is… what? Self-destruction?

Unless you’ve had any meditation experience, then there aren’t really too many other roads to take. You can’t see them and even if you could, they wouldn’t make much sense. Because there’s just too much noise going on there in the ol’ mind.

Problem is, once you’ve become acquainted with that sense of empty space, it never really goes away. In fact, it can be a little bit like the worst back seat driver imaginable. Always commenting and shadowing your actions, seemingly not being helpful at all. Butting in when you wish they’d just SHUT THE HELL UP! Ever present and waiting, causing unnecessary stress.

Until we learn to relax and humour it: the back seat driver; depression. Take your pick. Life isn’t going to end because of them, not unless we allow it to.

This is why I say that yoga and meditation had as much to do with my recovery as all the therapy I’ve ever had.

The physical practice of yoga – all that movement and controlled breathing – was just what I needed to get out of my head, because depression lives in the mind and then invades the body.

To build up my sensitivity in order to dispel disassociation. To sense and feel in ways that weren’t too scary.

The practice of meditation helps us understand the mind’s vagaries and also provides discipline. And it is this discipline that we need in order to free ourselves of the endless terrors the mind will cook up if we let it.

Endless hours of this kind of work: vigilant observation of the mind; moving my sorry ass around instead of sinking further into the couch; feeling, even when it was painful to do so; facing the truth about my experiences, as much as they hurt.

And my reward is this: these little moments of ordinary joy.

Of rejoicing in a glorious sunny day while waiting for the train.

Of skipping gleefully down some street and noticing the beauty of a tangled mess of tree roots.

Of talking to animals I come across, just to say hello.

A cute random dog I befriended on the street

Of that incredible high I get post-yoga class, body and mind engaged and experiencing life fully as an integrated mind-body awareness. Less a singular person and more a living organism, just a part of the whole.

Of all of those things and more. Ordinary moments of joy, indeed.

~Svasti

How the rest of the day went

Tags

banana bread, Chai tea, Royal Albert china, spaciousness

Chai tea with honey and banana bread

It’s still sort of how things are today, too…

After yesterday’s post, there was all kinds of spaciousness happening in my heart. A lot of room, numerous tears, a bunch of peace and a whole hoard of revealed truth staring at me kindly from my hands, eyes and every other part of my body that I looked at.

By the way, don’t you love the sweet tea cup and saucer set above? It’s actually Royal Albert china, and even though it’s not the one I wrote about here, it did belong to my grandmother. I have also inherited three other sets (all different designs) and some funky retro green glassware, too.

Last Sunday (next day after the workshop) we were all at my parents’ place to celebrate my dad’s birthday. Sweet little nieces were there too, thank goodness. They honestly make my day, running up all excited to see me and giving me lots of hugs and kisses!

For some reason, my mother is doing a massive clearance (they are pack rats!) of the room under their house. There were a few boxes of stuff that belonged to both grandmothers, and my sister and I were asked to look through it and take whatever we wanted.

It’s so weird, choosing from someone else’s things like that. Weird too, because my mother can be quite miserly at times, and then she’ll occasionally hand over all sorts of things.

I don’t get it. And I didn’t ask why. But it is interesting that we are simultaneously going through a phase of purging (possessions/emotional baggage etc). Not that accepting china and glassware is helping me with the owning less concept!

Anyhoo. Still nursing this new knowledge about myself. So cups of tea and banana cake, and swimming and long walks are all good things right now.

But when I get a job again, I’ll make it a priority to go and see Kerry and make sure all of this gets properly resolved…

~Svasti