“Through practice, I’ve come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I’m suffering, I find this ‘war with reality’ to be at the heart of the problem.” Stephen Cope
Making peace with our practice is one of the most challenging aspects of physical yoga. If we approach yoga with the premise that we are not already whole as we are, we run the risk of doing more harm than good. If there is even a hint of aggression based in a desire to overcome what we cannot accept, we run the risk of forcing or controlling to achieve a goal, rather than being with and allowing the journey to unfold in peaceful and loving ways.
This idea runs counter to the cultural programming we are bombarded with daily. While we have tremendous freedom in this country, we relinquish a piece of it with our obsession with consumption. Capitalism itself is not to blame. But when the common good is eclipsed by the desire for the dollar, the system becomes the problem. Capitalism gone bad successfully convinces us we are not happy or whole in order to sell its products. In order to be, we have to have, and in order to matter, we must consume.
Nowhere is this tactic more convincing than in the health and beauty market. There assumption is that there is always a way to improve your diet and to "look your best." We're constantly introduced to new fitness trends that make unattainable promises. “Want to get rid of your wrinkles?—here’s a new cream." Advertising preys on our insecurities and our fears of aging. Name the fear and this multi-billion dollar industry has the remedy. Many of us buy into the myths and the stories of how we are “supposed to be” and in weaker moments of self-delusion, gladly consume these products without question.
The practice of yoga can begin to chip away at these stories and reveal a deeper essence - something that exists beyond the control of the advertising industry. As we shed the layers of misinformation and misidentification we are brought closer to the revelation that sits at our core - and the true self that resides there. The truth is that we do not need anything external to define what happiness or beauty means—happiness and beauty are available to us free of charge. Any authentic expression of happiness and beauty first came from within— it has never been the other way around.
Certainly external sources can enhance life experiences, but only if they accentuate the deep reservoir of unshakable truth that where we are, who we are, and what we are, is good. A practice born from the truth that we are intrinsically good takes flight, where one based on fear or hatred towards the body or life itself, can only crash and burn.
Most injuries in yoga, from my experience, take one of the following forms:
The practice of trying to achieve something before we are truly ready (because we feel it has to be a certain way)
Rushing to catch up with others when our pace is really slower
Becoming angry and frustrated and losing our breath and focus
Coming out of a pose too quickly, thereby losing our concentration and connection with the alchemical process
Each of these demonstrates a misplaced purpose of practice, often with aggression the pesky epicenter.
As you deepen your practice, or if even you’re new, check in and discover what your motivation for practice really is. Do you think that who are in this moment is sufficient? Can you love “what is” about your weight, your body, your life? Whatever your answer, this is good work, because the yoga, the movement towards life, demands that you love what is, exactly AS it is. It is only then that true alchemy - change and transformation - can occur. If we choose to practice without such awareness, we will have experiences that keep digging up more of what is buried, until we work with it and come to acceptance. We need this experience to truly rise and grow.
My own experience may illuminate this. Through my practice, often revealed during the simple direct moments of physical yoga, I became aware of some internalized core values that were based on input from outside myself. I realized that I had based my own worth as a human on things I had learned to believe about myself based on the childhood messages I picked up from peers, family, and religion. To this day as I come to greater acceptance of who I am—I bump up against these messages of fear, hate, and disdain towards myself and about myself. Every time I get conscious of one of these old messages I try to love them and accept them. And the miracle is that as I do, they disappear. I have to maintain a constant state of vigilance or the negative thoughts plant new seeds that grow into dark realities of self loathing. The sweetest moments in my life have been the moments from which I have consciously shifted from fear to love and remembered who I am by letting go of who I am not. There is nothing in me that can be held back or limited in any way if I remember that my truest source of life is love and that this supply of love is unlimited, vast, and eternal. While the vessels of love may change, love never does.
Loving what is paves a pathway for loving action. Loving action provides the gateway for evolution. We cannot grow until we accept. We cannot move on until we work with what is. The sickness on this planet right now and the preoccupation with what we don’t have, and who we are not, saddens me. We could be agents of celebration and poets of praise for how much we do have and how great we really are. We could learn the truth that we are miracles unfolding into more miracles.
So what can we do practically to achieve this understanding? I suggest beginning each day with an affirmation. Choose anything that affirms your inherent worth simply because you are. Be creative, but don't worry about getting it "right." Here is a mantra that may get you started: “Sat Nam,” which simply means “I am truth”.
Yoga teachings can seem to send out mixed messages. On one hand we learn about the transformative powers of practice—then on the other hand, we learn about acceptance and loving what is. The truth, like all things, is multi-faceted. What yoga is asking of us is to open to life, whereas so many of us are trapped in a cycle of death and attention to what is wrong or bad. When I speak of change or transformation I'm speaking of the return to a state of oneness. Yoga invites us into this awareness, this very real state of consciousness. In reality we advocate acceptance so that there is space to glimpse essence. Once we are conscious of our deeper essence, we can open to the transformational processes of spirit which may lead us back the oneness from which everything occurs. When we find ourselves in that familiar place, where we push and tug, trying to force ourselves to change, we must remember that we can't get to that enlightening state of oneness through force, control, or aggression. By its very nature, the doorway to enlightenment can only be entered by allowing ourselves to be a vessel in which life moves through without obstruction.
I am reminded of the quote “Just as the caterpillar thought the world was ending it turned into a butterfly”. The cycle of life and our acceptance of it, paves the way for transformation. We ride on the waves of life movements and we become conscious navigators of life’s flow.
Then it’s not about trying to be, but simply about being.
“These days, my practice is teaching me to embrace imperfection: to have compassion for all the ways things haven’t turned out as I planned, in my body and in my life – for the ways things keep falling apart, and failing, and breaking down. It’s less about fixing things, and more about learning to be present for exactly what is.” Anne Cushman
