This being human


“Humans are funny things. They seem to be constantly searching for external happiness when they need look no further than inside themselves.”


I enjoyed this quote from a student of ours when we were talking together about relationships. It succinctly sums up how we can easily miss the actual one that would make a big difference, looking instead and repeatedly in all the wrong places for that “feel good” factor, that’s often quick to come, quick to go.


It begs the question: “Why don’t we do it?”


The hard to swallow truth is that we’ve mostly learnt to avoid, deny or run away from the experience of vulnerability felt in the body, often a buried part of us that we have not exposed to scrutiny or kindness; perhaps a sensation of hollowing or emptying or an uncomfortable tightening somewhere inside us that manifests in obvious moments of escalating tension but also the more obscure.


A “stiff upper lip” approach down the generations has not done us any favours when it comes to learning and valuing emotional literacy and curiosity about embodied inquiry. Instead it can appear to be an easy fix to succumb to habits that make us temporarily feel at ease….but the impact is never long lasting and so we can develop patterns that keep us prisoners of our own unconscious making.


This begs the question: “What can we do about this condition of being human?”


Well, there is a long answer, but the short one is I am reminded of a reply a 10 year old student gave me when I asked what he had learnt so far:


“Yoga is like a second home.
I can feel myself.
I can look after my mental health and my wellbeing.”


It’s moments like this that the future for being human feels full of promise and hope.

We are all daily being reminded of the impact of our unsustainable use of the world’s resources. Our collective lack of awareness and reluctance to listen to our intuitive wisdom failed to recognise what’s there to be seen. Whilst we cannot continue our own addiction to growth if it means the exploitation and depletion of what we most depend upon, we do each have the power to more consciously guide our future choices. It’s said that we only find the motivation to change when the consequences directly impact us. Here lies the hope.


The idea that sustainability of energy and resources affects us in the most intimate way is less understood in the developed world. In our daily life we’re encouraged to let our consciousness flow outwardly, connecting through our senses with the world around us. It’s where we find engagement, excitement, stimulation and look for reward and meaning as well as the opposite. It’s what has driven us to seek for reward and meaning through the material and this has fed our addictions and thrown our inner compass off course.


When we learn to direct our flow of consciousness inwardly, we realise the human mind and body are a rich landscape ripe for discovery. Coming to understand ourselves beyond our outward physical shape and form enables us to connect with taking responsibility for our own resources, our energetic life force. Like any landscape, once discovered it is there for plundering or respecting and revering. This is what we practice in yoga….. creating an energetic balance within ourselves that is dynamic, sustainable and deeply caring rather than striving or forcing our minds and bodies in an outward way that is completely at odds with our true nature. What we then learn within ourselves becomes the mirror for a more balanced relationship with the outer world…and so, as we learn to harness our own resources we understand at an essential level our collective responsibility to harness the earth sustainably for the good of all.

It is moments of true connection in life that are really memorable and touch us deeply. From random meetings where we recognize a kindred spirit or times spent in nature to rewarding relationships, our life presents many opportunities to connect with a richer sense of being.

When we are preoccupied with past events or anticipating what’s ahead, we can so easily miss moments like these, caught up in the busyness of our lives. Being on autopilot we unintentionally close ourselves down to many possibilities for connection and increase our vulnerability to being out of balance through stress, anxiety, anger and low mood.

What can we do?

Learning to recognise we are on autopilot is the first step towards cultivating a greater sense of connection. This awareness through self-inquiry is part of many different religions and ancient philosophies and in modern times has come to the attention of medical science and psychotherapy as a route to mental health and wellbeing.

Today the effectiveness of ancient meditation practice has been scientifically measured and proven. This research has given much wider acceptance to the importance of mind body awareness in creating connection and the practices like mindfulness that cultivate this.

Another accessible and popular approach is yoga. It invites us to re-discover and harness our own energy in a sustainable way and direct it towards greater connection with our body and mind. This moves us beyond simple physical accomplishment to a different relationship with ourselves, others and the environment.

In this month's blog Sarah writes about Opening to the fullness of life and how all we need that is already within us.
 
To be awake in your body, to know its expression, to feel connection as well as vulnerability is to be fully alive.

By coming to know your inner landscape and how to embrace space, the chains of impulse fall away and a new wisdom and freedom of choice appears.
 
We can each create a home in ourselves where we can learn to trust again……to feel the whole of who we are, to recognise and celebrate the dance of life within us.

The more we can learn to relax our mental chatter and allow the flow of life to move towards our hearts, we invite the energy within us to find a harmony that transcends physical experience.
 
Renewing our most intimate conversations with connection, generosity and vulnerability opens a journey of discovery that leads us towards the essence of our life. 

Wherever we find ourselves, and whatever has gone before, we each have the capacity to transform and immerse ourselves in the freeing and healing power of nature. As we allow our energies to dance and embrace space we open our hearts afresh to merging with the fullness of life.

​Lionel Smit's monumental Janus head scuplture where individual faces emerge from a joint origin their empty eyes averted 2014

“Observe the wonders as they
occur around you,
don’t claim them,
feel the artistry moving
through and be silent” Rumi
 
It’s tempting to be impatient in any practice or direction in life; all too often we can power through or give up because we want outward results fast, but as a consequence, progress of a more rounded nature is stunted. Our body and mind is not something to be conquered, battled against or suppressed, but a source of wisdom.
 
If we can learn to connect with the deepest parts of ourselves whether in yoga, dance or other movement approaches, we can begin to lay bare the inner patterns of holding in the body that restrict us. Setting a direction that is inclusive, physically, mentally and emotionally, we open different doors. 
 
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them” Einstein
 
Subtle awareness, both of the energetic body and the feel of the mind, develops our curiosity around our inner movement patterns and what they tell us about our triggered reactions, our complexity and expressions of ego.  It’s the beginning of a process of powerful transformation that directs us towards a deeper knowing of ourselves, both light and dark.
 
Gradually we can learn to become more comfortable around our imperfections, feeling our way through the body to open the door to the love and compassion for ourselves that has been missing.
 

 "And still, after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky." 
Hafez
 
Poems can have that magical quality of connecting us to deeper and timeless truths. These words from a distant time and place (in 14th C Persia) seemingly have wings to fly lightly and directly to our hearts reminding us of our potential to shine from within. Finding wisdom that is not just rational but heartfelt is precious: it encourages us to lead with generosity and inspires us to do the work to heal the darker and heavier side of experience. 
 
The physicality of the heart’s sorrows are real: we speak of a “heavy heart”, a heart “broken to pieces”, “wrenched in two” or “torn apart”, and how a heart can “ache”, be “weary”, “cold” and “lonesome”. Sooner or later events or death will touch us deep inside however much we might wish for escape.
 
Being with these sensations is not easy; but our greater difficulty is that in avoiding them we also turn away from the very experience of light and lightness in our life we seek. Instead we bury our feelings so they sink and solidify into dark grooves and heavy patterns. CS Lewis in The Four Loves describes how high the stakes can be when we avoid the vulnerability difficult sensation connects us with:
 
“Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” 
 
So if not avoidance, what can we do? 
 
Firstly to recognise that it’s our responsibility to take care of ourselves rather than to wait expectantly, to be easy and not guilty around activities that support our healing.  We can start with small things, the simple and blameless, seeking out experiences that bring us joy and where we feel a sense of openness and lightness however short or fleeting. We need to give ourselves permission to relax into sensations that may have become a distant memory.
 
Secondly to seek out the company of those we trust who support us in the direction we are taking who understand and value our growth without judgment.
 
Then as we reconnect with a lighter, more open expression of ourselves we can begin to explore with kindness our inner landscape, learning to soften and dissolve the layers of tension held deep within us.  Taking this time and care to hold our reactions in a way that is relaxed and alert opens us up to a positive connection with vulnerability. This is our gateway to renewal and sharing with others a re-discovered lightness and light of our hearts.

​Learning to listen to our intuitive energetic centre is one of the most liberating choices we can make in our lives.....directing us towards self-expression, responsibility and trust in ourselves. As simple as it is, it allows us to move, to share, and to heal.  Mostly in the West it remains hidden, its subtlety overlooked by more seductive displays of outward strength and form which are easier to label as achievement and progress.
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 Female Figurine (“Bird Lady”). Egypt, from Ma’mariya. Predynastic Period, Naqada II, circa 3650–3300 b.c. Terracotta. Brooklyn Museum

In many eastern traditions (including Tai chi, Qi gong, Sacred Dance and Yoga) our energetic support is at the heart of practices that direct us inward to develop balance and vitality of mind, body and heart, irrespective of outward presentation.  With the exploration they invite, we realise how strongly guarded the patterns of holding and tension are in our bodies, perhaps from a life held in check by coping or from an investment in outer strength that in truth disguises an inner vulnerability that we fear (sometimes so deeply buried that we are not even conscious of it). 

“And we love life, if we could only find a way to it”, quote by poet Mahmoud Darwish 
 
With a re-focus of effort we can learn to be both alert and relaxed (soft listening) and trust this energetic support, developing our capacity to relate differently to the tension inside us. It builds a different kind of resilience, inner strength and patience in contrast to a world needing instant fixes and external perfection. A path of practice naturally emerges, inviting us continually to step into what we do not yet know, to explore the intersection of truth and perspective, to become familiar with vulnerability, to have the confidence to be imperfect and start to take responsibility for the whole of our human expression...mind, body, and heart.
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Life can take a different turn when we explore relating in this way with less trying to be who we think we should be and more soft listening to how we actually are. Our energetic support becomes the source of expansion, strength and a centredness that signposts towards the self-compassion we need to relate to the tension buried within us.  With this we start to understand the difference between external support, control and force and the balance and vitality that inner strength brings. Our growing personal experience leads us towards an evolving process of healing for ourselves as we begin inhabiting our mind, body and heart afresh and understand the real freedom these practices can bring.

“I love how awareness of the body connects us
to its rhythms and its currents,
how it leads us towards an inner landscape beyond form and substance,
where we can find the soft and subtle energetic expression that is the pulse of our being
and feel the pull of our minds revealed as tension in the body
lighting up our path to healing.”

It’s not uncommon to hear students remark how much calmer, grounded, settled and at ease they feel after a yoga session. It’s almost as if we reconnect with how the mind feels at the end of the class.  Yogasana certainly has an impact on the mind and this is appreciated by many who practice; it’s less common to recognize the impact the mind can have as we practice and to work directly this way round. 

Why is our mind so important when we practice?

We can integrate mindfulness and yoga at varying levels and degrees. We can know how the body moves, we can be aware of our breathing, its depth and rhythm, awareness of muscles tensing and releasing and the shape our body makes using the mind as the observer. We can also invite the mind to observe itself as well. This capacity to directly observe mind and mind states such as frustration, annoyance, fear, wanting and the impact they have reveals a more subtle form of automatic pilot, where strength and physical effort push through inconvenient mind states in the search for balance and ease. 

Be curious about your mind

When our mindfulness expands to include mind states we begin a process of increasing curiosity that accepts we are not always calm, happy and unstressed even in our practice and how this impacts our physical experience. Our sense of limitation may have nothing to do with our physical body but that doesn’t stop us using strength and effort to push through in our impatience, irritation or desire to succeed. In doing so we miss the subtlety that yoga has to offer and a ‘good’ practice can simply become one where we feel ‘good’, where the endorphins and dopamine give us a high and cortisol reduces so we feel calm. This is like sugar candy, a pleasant sensation, a treat to be enjoyed when it occurs but if we expect this as a result every time, what happens when it doesn’t?

Without discriminating curiosity, we are in danger of spiritual by-pass and get caught in the idea that because we practice yoga or meditation, we should always be calm, happy and without discomfort. Innumerable times in the last 25 years I’ve been told, ‘you’re a yoga teacher, you don’t have any stress’.  Implicit is the invitation to believe that these sensations and emotions are a sign of spiritual failure or the yoga ‘not working’ and so either should not be felt or should be ‘held in check’. Nothing is farther from the truth. 

Mental obstacles are not your enemy

The release from our addictions or aversions or other mental obstacles such as doubt, lethargy, indolence, procrastination, restless and worry are very high attainments in the Buddhist path to freedom, so they are going to be around for quite a while. Our yoga practice is not a place to escape them, but a safe place to work with them. It’s important to realise that they are not ’bad’ of themselves and simply arise because the conditions are right for them to do so. What matters is our next step and our yoga practice is the ideal place to explore this.

​Our addictions have a sense of dissatisfaction about them, they’re acquisitive, needing to be the best (rather than the best I can be today), to compete and above all to win. They come with a lack of generosity and compassion towards our self and others; our sense of wellbeing often predicated on being a bit better in some measure than we were yesterday and certainly to those around us.  So what happens as we age, and capacity reduces? Do we abandon our yoga rather than work with the uncomfortable truth it gently reveals?

Our aversions can be even more insidious. We can often brace, push, strive, demand adjustment or even take anti-inflammatories to subjugate and punish our body using our desires and goals as cover from what is often a rejection of ourselves; if this is where we are with our practice, a trip to the candy shop can confuse the deeper work of learning kindness and loving acceptance towards ourselves.

Connecting to the felt experience

To start to see what is really going on, it’s important for us to engage both our 1st and 2nd brain in our practice: our first brain is our rational, logical, reasoning, concept and language based brain the one that understands the placement, shape, sequence of the posture; our second brain is all about the felt experience and our reaction to it. It is completely non-verbal and by-passes the 1st brain. 

The felt experience embraces the head and importantly the physical brain as well as the rest of the body and yet many students, when asked to point to their body, indicate everything below their chin as if the body is the life support system for the thinking mind. Once we become sensitive to the sensation of the brain we begin to notice how there is a feeling of tension whenever addiction or aversion takes it out of balance.  

Soft Listening

As we gradually learn to release this tension we tap into something quite extraordinary we call ”soft listening” that opens our heart to a more compassionate and loving acceptance of ourselves and a greater sense of mental balance. Our body immediately responds to this, opening up and softening allowing the support of the energetic body to replace the need for strength and allowing our body to move into balance instead of striving and bracing. Everything begins to flow and we notice a lightness and ease in postures where before there was heaviness and effort. We experience effortless backbends and weightless inversions. Our body is the same but our relationship to mind states has changed. In this way our practice becomes increasingly effortless, the breath deep and at ease allowing us to express ourselves at our best and revealing a clear-awareness that is naturally mindful, joyful and full of still energy. 

 Truly our mind is part of our posture and that has made all the difference.




 


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