Tag: Yoga

Today’s quote

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“When there is tension in you, seek within to find out what you are fighting against to cause that tension.” – Eileen Caddy.

The idea of mental tension or inner tension has been in a mind for a while, and I often observe that it is created when I resist or, like I understand the quote, mentally fight a situation. When things don’t go as I want them to go or when I don’t like what is happening. Since the start of this school year, I am trying to catch myself when I am adding tension to a situation because of my resistance to it. I must say it is very helpful, and something that helps is to ask myself what my role is and how I can play that role with an open mind and an open heart.

It isn’t always easy, and it requires discipline and self-reflection, but with practice, I notice it is allowing me to waste less energy in creating internal (and external) distress, and rather spend my energy in what I perceive as a productive and constructive way.

I think it is helping me develop more constructive and positive relationships with my students and with those close to me. Somehow, a big shift has happened in my mind, and what before seemed like big deals, seem more like opportunities to learn and grow together.

A key element to this kind of exercise is time. Time is such a challenge for most of us, but I am experiencing the benefits of always taking the time to stop and talk, or maybe even more importantly, let the other talk. Ask critical questions, be curious, and let ideas, solutions, alternatives come to us. Don’t push it, don’t fight it.

I don’t always agree with what my students or my kids come up with (or other adults for that matter), but it is their clarity, their learning process, and I am experimenting with allowing them to come to their own conclusions. Because that is what we all are doing in this life after all. We are all learning to take responsibility for our own thoughts and actions to act with as much clarity as we can. But this clarity comes from our own perception of the circumstances, so my clarity, will most probably not be your clarity. Or my clarity today might not be the same in ten years time. This is where values come in handy so I don’t fall into too much relativism. The one that I keep going back to is ahimsa or non harming. Easier said than done, but good to go back to over and over again until hopefully one day, it will come naturally in all circumstances.

Thinking about life and death

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One of my colleagues lost a very young family member this week. A young woman who just had started studying at University. I can’t even imagine the pain and sorrow this has caused for my colleague and her family. Some of my first thoughts ware the usual in this kind of situations ‘so young, with her whole life ahead of her, why does this happen to young, kind people?’, and so on.

Let’s face it, death is the only thing in life that we are guaranteed will some day reach us. Death is part of life. We don’t know when we are going to die and we don’t know how we are going to die, but we know we are going to die. It seems random who dies when. Some die young, some escape death in incredible situations, others die in the must absurd situations.

When we are faced with death, we immediately think about life. We start reflecting on what kind of life is worth living.

There are, of course, different answers to this question, and we often have a tendency to think that we are missing out on something and that in order to have a meaningful life, we should be doing ‘something else’, ‘something bigger’, ‘something more spectacular’. But what if, living a meaningful life means living exactly the life we are living, only intentionally, with awareness? Mindfully.

My idea of a meaningful life might not be your idea of a meaningful life, but just make sure that you don’t go chasing impossibles because you feel you don’t live enough. Maybe, the secret is in the beauty of now and the feeling and attitude we bring to it. I keep going back to the same over and over again: clarity, calmness, love and trust. Don’t wait until you can do something ‘special’ to believe that you are leaving a meaningful life. Start with yourself, get to know yourself, be kind and patient and make time every day to nurture yourself. Sleep enough, eat well, rest, and know your strengths and weaknesses so do your part the best you can. Then, look around and notice those around you. Show them that you notice them. Whether it is your family, your colleagues or just a random person.

Be grateful for the small and the big things, for the good and exciting and for the challenging. Gratitude expands our hearts and allows us to develop humbleness. Humbleness teaches us to appreciate simplicity, and this way, life feels meaningful no matter where we are and what we are doing.

The song in my head

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I constantly go around with a song in my head. Luckily, it isn’t always the same song but don’t ask me how my mind decides to change it. It just happens. I don’t seem to have any control over it. You might have noticed that not only songs seem to appear in our minds uncontrollably. Many (if not most) of our thoughts are like that.

In February, I went to a ten day retreat with my Yoga teacher in Munnar, India to learn more about meditation. We practiced silence during two of the days during our stay, and what I noticed this time is that many thoughts kept coming back like a playlist on loop. Even thoughts about events in my life that I felt I was over with. I think this happened because my mind was desperately trying to find things to cling to. I sometimes suspect my mind for trying to torture me emotionally…

Luckily for me, I am have been practicing japa since I started studying Yoga five years ago and it helped me to calm my mind. Japa is the repetition of a mantra, and it is used as a technique in the Yoga tradition. We can read about it in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras:

1.27-29 The word expressive of Isvara is the mystic sound OM. To repeat it with reflection upon its meaning is an aid. From this practice all the obstacles disappear and simultaneously dawns knowledge of the inner Self.

The mantra mentioned in the Yoga Sutras is the word OM which is known by many people. The beauty of it is that it is easy to remember, it is powerful and it is very soothing to repeat either aloud or in your head. I repeat OM as part of my meditation practice, but it can also be repeated mentally whenever and wherever.

In the Yoga tradition there are many mantras. Sri Swami Satchidananda mentions Japa Yoga in his commentary of these sutras, which I think is the repetition of mantras as a technique to calm the mind and come closer to the True Self.

It is also possible to have a personal mantra (preferably made with the help of a teacher) often repeated as some sort of antidote against limiting thoughts (i.e. ‘I am safe and secure’ if you know you are the anxious type, or ‘I am enough’ if you are constantly torturing yourself with thoughts of self-doubt, ‘I learn and I grow’ if you keep putting yourself down whenever you make a mistake). Usually, one has one mantra and sticks with it for a long period or even a lifetime. It is not advisable to change mantra as we change socks because for it to make a change in our mindset, it needs to be repeated constantly over a long period of time. That is called japa.

So, when, where and why do japa? Whenever and wherever! You can decide to start from the moment you open your eyes in the morning and continue whenever you remember. Most probably, your mind will keep taking over, but when you notice, you go back to your japa to still the busy mind. It is a very good ‘activity’ to have when waiting in line, or at the waiting room before an appointment, while sitting on the bus, while going for a walk, etc. Once repeating your mantra becomes a habit, it can be powerful tool when you are feeling mentally or emotionally distressed. I remember a friend of mine told me she used her mantra when she was lying on the operation table right before surgery, and it helped her feel safe. I use mine when I wake up in the middle of the night and notice my mind is all over the place. Most of the time, it helps me fall asleep again quite fast.

Note that Patanjali tells us that by doing our japa, ‘obstacles disappear’. The obstacles in question are our own mental obstacles. The practice of japa is to overcome our limiting thoughts. Either rumination, regret, worry or limiting thoughts about ourselves. The noice in our head that doesn’t help us.

Ask yourself, how is your self-talk? What do you usually think about yourself? Do you usually feed into your strengths and qualities or do you ruminate on your shortcomings. When you make a mistake, do you show self-compassion or do you drag yourself down through your critical inner voice? Unfortunately, most people have quite nasty self-talk. Whenever you catch yourself putting yourself down stop, take a deep breath, show yourself some understanding and either replace the thought with a positive one, or do your japa. It doesn’t need to be ‘relevant’. You are trying to train your brain to stop limiting yourself.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t spend time reflecting on what we can do better next time, but it means that we talk to ourselves as we would like a good friend would talk to us. You want to have constructive self-talk, not destructive.

Abhyasa o la práctica

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Hoy quiero escribir sobre la práctica. Tanto en los Yoga Sutras de Patanjali como en el Bhagavad Gita se le da gran importancia a la práctica. De hecho, la práctica y el desapego son dos principios esenciales en el yoga.

La práctica es por un lado el sadhana diario. Cada persona tiene su propio sadhana, de preferencia guíado por un maestro, pero también puede ser creado por uno mismo.

El sadhana es importante porque es cuando la mente se va acostumrando a usar herramientas como la respiración y la consentración. También es importante porque creamos un momento del día para estar consigo mismo en silencio y aprender a ser sin necesidad de hacer.

Pero la práctica va más allá del sadhana. La práctica también es aprender a vivir una vida consciente. La práctica requiere auto observación y constante reflexión. Al ir por el día a día observamos nuestro estado mental, nuestras actitudes y nuestro comportamiento y tratamos de alinearlo con lo que sabemos (a través del estudio del yoga) es beneficioso para nuestro desarrollo espiritual y el bien de los demás.

Cambiar hábitos y sobre todo los hábitos de pensamiento, toma mucho tiempo y mucha práctica. Es importante reconocer y aceptar el por qué de nuestros hábitos limitantes. El auto análisis puede empezar por reconocer y aceptar situaciones de nuestra vida que han creado ciertos patrones de pensamiento, pero no es necesario. En la práctica del yoga lo más interesante es encontrar de dónde, al interior de nosotros mismos, viene nuestra manera de pensar, no es necesario apuntar hacia experiencias vividas ya que no podemos cambiarlas.

Normalmente, la raíz de nuestros pensamientos y acciones limitantes es alguna sensación de carencia. Esta carencia se traduce de diferentes maneras y es importante saver verla y aceptarla para así tomar nuestra vida y nuestro bienestar por las riendas. Es importante aprender que las experiencias del mundo material jamás podrán satisfacer esa carencia. Solamente nuestro trabajo interior podrá hacerlo.

Con la práctica tanto del sadhana como la práctica del día a día, al calmar nuestra mente, al aceptar nuestra situación y gradualmente cambiar nuestra mentalidad, nos acercamos poco a poco a la fuente interna de abundancia y nos damos cuenta de que no nos falta nada.

Eso hice este fin de semana al entrar una vez más en uno de esos estados de auto-lástima y ‘soledad’. Logré sacarme de ahí al reconocer que mi estado mental y mi percepción son mi responsabilidad. No más culpar las circunstancias. No más culpar simplemente. Mi mente tiene la tendencia a buscar algo que falta, algo que está mal. Pero poco a poco voy acostumbrándola a ver lo que hay y lo que va bien y cultivarlo.

Lack of governance or lack emotional intelligence?

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I just finished reading The Lord of The Flies by William Golding. I guess it belongs to the list of books one should have read at some point in life, but for some reason, I had never taken the courage to do so. I had heard about it as a teenager. A friend of mine had read it and she told me it was horrible. I kept that review in my mind for the rest of my life until this Fall when I started teaching Humanities in yr10 and our first unit is about Governance. The teacher that had created the curriculum for this class had the movie version as a possible way to introduce the unit, so I decided to read the book before eventually showing the movie.

The book is about a group of boys that end up in a deserted island after a plane crash and how they try to survive. The oldest kids are around fourteen, and the youngest are six or even younger. One of the older kids is picked as a leader early on in the story, but soon conflict arises between him and another boy of his same age who sees their survival in the island differently. Things turn quite ugly, and towards the end of the book, we read:

‘Nobody killed, I hope? Any dead bodies?’

‘Only two. And they’ve gone.’

The officer leaned down and looked closely at Ralph.

‘Two? Killed?’

Ralph nodded again. Behind him, the whole island was shuddering in flame […] For a moment he had a fleeting picture of the strange glaour that had once invested the beaches. But the island was scorched up like dead wood – Simon was dead – and Jack had… The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island […]

I couldn’t help but make the analogy between the island and the world we live in, between the boys and the whole humanity. Will we, in the near future look back and see the same destruction around us? Is this what is happening to us right now? Have we forgotten that we all are here for the same reason and that we are part of the whole? Are we so busy chasing God-knows-what that we don’t see the consequences of our actions?

I pushed those thoughts away and went for a walk. During my walk, I heard a talk with Dan Goleman on Action for Happiness about Emotional Intelligence, and throughout the walk/talk, I thought that maybe what the boys in the book lacked rather than governance was emotional intelligence. Step number one in emotional intelligence is to take the time to accept and understand our own emotions. This allows us to learn the art of taking a step back before acting out of impulse. If the older boys in the book had been able to take the time to acknowledge that they were scared and tired, they might have acted differently. What happened on the island is what often happens in human interactions, the mental creation of the ‘other’ who becomes such a big enemy that anything to ‘get rid’ of him is valid.

Over and over again, I am more and more convinced that if we are going to be able to make a change in the world, we need to start within ourselves. We have to take time to listen to our emotions, understand them, and change the behaviours that are not helping us to be in harmony with ourselves, the environment and other living beings. Feelings like fear, anger and jealousy are connected to our inner feeling of lack, of void, of insecurity which are very human. Everyone experiences them to some degree, and everyone tries to deal with them in different ways. If we learn to tap into our inner peace to fill in that void, we make the world a big favour. If we acknowledge our weaknesses and inner struggles, we are then able to accept those of the people around us. If we can show self-compassion, we can then show compassion to others.

I started wondering, how do we teach emotional intelligence to those who are not ready for it? I guess that we can start by being the example, but how can we help for example teenagers to be more aware of their feelings without it being so awkward that they push the whole idea away? Can emotional intelligence be taught or can it only be learned by own interest?