self work – Yoga of Mukti

The analogy of a fart

Published on October 22, 2023October 22, 2023 by VanessaLeave a comment

What on earth does this have anything to do with Yoga?!

My youngest daughter and I sometimes have the simplest funniest yet most philosophical conversations. We were walking home from the gym when she told me about an episode where someone farted at school and all she could think of was to ease the awkwardness by pretending she didn’t hear anything. I mean, who hasn’t experienced that before? You laugh too hard, you sneeze, you push a piece of furniture and the wind you have been trying to keep in your belly sees its possibility to finally get out. We then discussed how we don’t really mind other people having this kind of “accident” because we understand, but how embarrassing it is when it happens to us! When we fart, we spend at least some minutes hoping nobody heard, and if they did hear and make a fuss about it, we then feel like changing our name and moving countries. Why is this? Why are we able to show understanding to someone else in this way, but feel like our farts are unforgivable?

It’s a weird social norm, isn’t it? We all have the same issue. We eat food that creates gas in our belly and it needs to somehow get out? Still, it is so embarrassing.

The last few weeks, I went back to studying the Bhagavad Gita with my teacher Prasad, and one of the lectures this week was about verses five and six in chapter six:

One should raise the self by the self (mind) and not allow the self to sink, for the mind
alone is the friend of the self, and the mind alone is the enemy. The mind is the friend of
those whose mind has been conquered. But for them whose mind is not conquered, the mind, like an enemy, remains hostile.

The definition of yoga my teacher is operating with during this course is “the state of detachment from our attachment to suffering.” (Gita, ch. 6 v. 20). In order to do so, we need to understand certain things, one of the most important being that our mind is limited. Through introspection, we can recognize this and thus set ourselves to the task of resolving these limitations so our mind is quieter and calmer. Why do we want to calm the mind? Ideally, to be able to see beyond our body, mind, and senses and reach to a deeper part of ourselves that in Yoga is called the Self with a capital “s”. Whether you are a Yoga practitioner or not, I would argue, that most of us want to live our lives at peace. We all want happiness, and for me, an important aspect of this happiness is having a calm mind.

Going back to the quote above, to befriend the mind we need to 1) have the courage to see ourselves in the mirror with our qualities and our shortcomings, and more importantly 2) we need to accept them, embrace them, and if possible, use them in order to move towards a calmer state of mind.

By now, I am guessing you are seeing the connection with our farts. Just as we all fart, we all have our mental limitations that lead us to act in unskilful ways. More often than not, I am willing to accept this fact from other people than myself. When someone pushes my buttons, after the initial reaction, I look into the context, and this person’s patterns, and I manage to find some compassion in myself.

Our state of mind is as it is because of a series of factors that have been less than more out of our control, its patterns have been set for years. Therefore, we do better to accept that it is as it is and find a way to help ourselves through these limitations instead of judging or shaming ourselves.

I am learning to do this through my studies in Yoga but also through therapy. I have had a hard time accepting that I am a person who experiences strong emotions, and for years, I have been trying to “calm down” these emotions, especially those I consider as negative emotions by “talking to myself”. Unfortunately, this has only led to me driving myself crazy! On one side, I am experiencing the emotion, on the other I am trying to talk myself into what I consider is more sensible, at the same time the side of myself that is experiencing the emotion is convinced she’s right. It can last for days this incessant mental back and forth. I feel angry, frustrated, or sad, and then my mind makes a big mess out of it, and I end up feeling exhausted, guilty and ashamed of myself. I don’t think this is being very friendly towards myself.

Lately, I am aiming to recognize what is at the core of the emotion (this is also inspired by Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg). Does what happened go against one of my core values, does it not fulfill a need I have? Do I need to find a constructive way to express this emotion, request something, or contribute in a way to improve the situation? Or do I need to find a way to reassure my mind and let go of the situation? In any case, what I need to stop doing is judging myself for experiencing a strong emotion because I then get lost in it.

I realize that I am a very spontaneous person when I feel grounded and safe, this makes me feel happy. Most of the time, I allow myself to be spontaneous, except when I am afraid of being judged. When I feel insecure or afraid, I can act impulsively, which often brings a lot of regret.

In either situation, I need to remind myself that, yeah, we all fart, and those that are able to see me beyond my spontaneity and sometimes unskillful impulsivity are the people that I need around me, and those who have a problem with it, can communicate it with me, I can reflect on it, apologize if needed, change something if it doesn’t go against what I believe in, and let go of people who cannot accept me as I am.

I have been too afraid of stepping on other people’s toes, on other people’s perception of myself, on not fitting in groups, places, and jobs. I have been very good at being flexible (often against what I felt was right) and adapting to situations, but this has often made me put myself and what I think is important in the background. I now know this hasn’t contributed to my peace of mind, on the contrary, it has made my inner noise louder.

It is, as my Yoga teacher keeps repeating, one of the core principles of Karma Yoga, be clear about who you are, with your strengths and shortcomings, be clear of what your values are, and act with awareness of these. Sometimes, you will manage and will be okay with your actions no matter what, sometimes, the results of your actions will not be as expected, and all you can do is get up, brush the dust, say sorry, and try again next time. Punishing yourself mentally every time you make a mistake, you fall or you step on someone else’s toes is not being a good friend of yourself.

What do you see?

Published on March 20, 2019March 20, 2019 by VanessaLeave a comment

When I was in my early twenties, I lived in France in a student city near the northwest coast. During four years, my main means of transportation was the tramway.

I moved away from France, got married and had children. Some years after my youngest child was born, I took a housewife vacation to visit old friends in France. I remember so well taking the tramway the first day and being puzzled by the number of kids and young couples with strollers in the tram. I did wonder for a little while if the city had changed that much from having many students to having many young couples with small children…what happened?

I had changed! Not the city. I was now mum to three small kids, and my focus in life was completely different from when I used to take the tram back in my uni years. This really amused me back then. There most probably were children and strollers in the tram when I was a student, but I wasn’t paying attention to them. I was living in a completely different world.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting a lot about how we create our reality through our mind. Whatever it is that occupies our mind influences what we see around us. We tend to see what we are looking for.

Our perceptions can influence the way we experience the world at different levels. My story about France talks about what was occupying my mind at two different stages in my life, but expectations can also affect the way we experience things.

I was born in a big city, and when I was six years old, my parents decided to move to a completely different place by the coast, about 1000km from the city. They had been there two weeks before on a work trip for my dad and fell in love with the place. My brother and I had no idea of where this was and how it looked like. All we could do to get an idea was to listen to my parents talk about it.

From what my mum said, and out of what my imagination was able to produce, for me, it sounded like we were moving to Disneyland – even though I had never been in Disneyland before.

We drove there, it took two days. For a six-year-old, that was a long road trip. In addition, the closer we got to the place, the hotter the weather, so I remember the last hours of the trip as a little torture.

When we finally arrived, I remember so well my mum being super excited in the car, and me being super disappointed. The place was a small town, the vegetation completely different from what I grew up with, and what is worse, it didn’t look like what I had imagined at all! I think I kept my disappointment to myself, but I remember it took a while before I understood why we had left our big beautiful house in the city for this.

My experience in this new place was affected by the idea I had created in my mind. I eventually came over it because as it turns out, it was a great place to grow up in, but I often remember this episode in my life and I have to laugh because as an adult, I have experienced quite often the same. I create an idea of how things should be and struggle with the disappointment of how things actually are.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming and having objectives, I can almost hear some of you thinking as you read, and I agree, but we might want to be aware of the moments when our experience of reality is muddled by our expectations.

I don’t know how many times I have spoiled an experience for me and those around me because if this. Either because of too high expectations or because of my biased mind.

I once had a boyfriend with whom I was very very in love but I was sure he was going to end up leaving me for someone ‘better’ than me. I had convinced myself that he was with me to pass the time, and as soon as he discovered that I wasn’t that great, he would leave me for someone greater than me. I must specify that at that time, I wasn’t aware of this, this became clear to me later.

So, most of the time I was with him, I was interpreting all his actions and inactions as a sign of him soon dumping me. If he was kind, he was kind out of pity, if he has distant, he was distant because he was tired of me, or even worse, he had a better time with another woman. It was exhausting, mainly for me because I didn’t necessarily share these crazy thoughts with him.

My point here is, how many times I messed up the nice time spent with him because of my inability to be in the moment without interpreting every action, every word, every gesture? I was so lost in my perceptions that I couldn’t open up to the here and now.

I have been having fun with these memories this week because, I now know how my perception affects what I experience and how I experience it. This can be a useful tool both to show more understanding of other people’s attitudes and actions and also to be more aware of my own attitudes and actions towards the world around me. Especially when experiencing challenges. Maybe the challenge doesn’t really come from the outer world after all!

This has also led to a mind game I’ve been playing recently. Imagine if we could wake up every day to a completely new day! We would never ever need to travel away to find new things because the reality before our own eyes would constantly be offering us the opportunity to be amazed, to be surprised, to see something new and refreshing. All that is required from us is to open our eyes and let the mind rest.

Self-centered

Published on March 2, 2019March 2, 2019 by VanessaLeave a comment

The other day, I dreamed that someone called me self-centered. I can’t remember how I reacted to it, but it stayed in my mind beause, from time to time, I do ask myself if I am self-centered. If I play a bit with the idea, I have to say, that yes, I am self-centered. The world around me unfolds itself through the lens of my mind. This lens is tinted with my own perceptions. Thus, every experience is a self-centered experience.

I am also self-centered in my practice of Yoga because I want to improve my interactions with the world around me and the only way I see to achieve this is by directing my vision inwards. I believe that spending my energy on getting to know, accept and refine my thoughts and perceptions is a better investment than trying to change the world to make it fit my expectations.

I also believe that through this inner work, it will become clearer for me how to invest my energy in the world in a more positive and meaningful way instead of blindly engaging in everything with unconscious and sometimes conscious expectation that the world around me will fulfill my deeper needs such as love, peace and happiness.

Through my study of the Yoga philosophy, I have learned that we all have something called svadharma. Svadharma is our individual duty in the world and it is connected to our capabilities. For what I understand, it has an element of service for the benefit of the whole.

The challenge for some of us is to find out what our svadharma is since from birth, we play many different roles in life (i.e. son/daughter, student, friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, employer/employee, etc). An interesting idea to reflect over is that none of these roles can define who we are. Each role has its own sort of “job description” and we put our own personal touch to it, but if we were to stop playing any of these roles, we would still be who we are. These roles are here to help us realize ourselves as we learn something new at each experience.

Some of us play many roles, some of them by obligation, and there is nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn’t become a struggle for us. But I believe that the thiner we spread ourselves in the practical world, the less we have to give, and evenmore, we might end up loosing ourselves in these roles without knowing who we are and what our capabilities really are.

Therefore, I think I benefit from prioritizing the roles I believe are important, and letting go of those that I can let go of. I want to give my best in my roles and still have energy for myself. So, yes, I am often self-centered but my theory is that at the start of the inner journey we need to let go of a lot that we are not. Such as things we do and roles we have out of habit or social expectations. Then, as we start feeling more confident and comfortable with who we are, the opportunities to engage positively and meaningfully in the world will present themselves to us.

And then, these roles will be played more naturally, with what in Yoga is called “effortless effort”.