Steadiness and Ease
Yoga is a tool that can be used to support us in our journey toward wholeness. Much of the suffering we experience is the result of living out of alignment with our highest good. Instead, we’ve been conditioned to be “good”, and we spend an enormous amount of energy trying hard to live up to the idealized version of ourselves we think we need to be to deserve love. We may not realize it, but our pasts colour our experience of our present every day.
My yoga practice helps me connect with, honour and respect my body. It helps me release and process emotions and cultivate resilience and equanimity. When I study yoga philosophy, I read old texts through the lens of a modern person intending to stay present and calm in the face of an uncontrollable world around me and my unhelpful, habitual thinking and reactions to my daily experience.
One of the most notable yogic texts is the Yoga Sutras which includes ten suggestions for a meaningful life called the Yamas and the Niyamas (Healthy, skillful ways of being with ourselves and others). One personal commitment suggested within the text is Brahmacharya. Traditionally this is translated as celibacy; the concept of conserving sexual energy and directing it into the practice. Modern writings suggest considering this yama as “right use of energy”. What an essential lesson! Learning to use my energy wisely would have saved me a lot of suffering.
From my perspective, many of us didn’t learn to utilize our precious energy toward healthy endeavors that foster a sense of personal power, resilience and inner calm.
We learned, directly and indirectly to pour our energy into meeting the expectations of those around us.
We learned to seek approval from others and to find happiness in the attainment of “things” outside of ourselves.
We learned that we need to be something other than we are to be worthy. And for some of us, the longing for belonging became an all-encompassing desire, one that burned up our energy, taxed our nervous systems and had us living our lives on the edge of our seats, searching for the acceptance from others we had no idea how to give to ourselves.
In his inspiring book “Meditations from the Mat”, Yoga teacher Rolf Gates relates the yama Bramacharya to a personal vow of moderation. This sounds so good and yet, it’s not been an easy place for me to settle.
When I was experiencing chronic episodes of panic, I was always terrified of the next attack. I imagined where it would happen, and what people would think if they saw me go into the irrational fear spirals that were my scary companions.
When I think back to those days I wish I would have asked myself what I was afraid of. I was too scared to even look at my fear. I avoided discovering the reasons I may have been experiencing such high anxiety just as much as I avoided situations that caused me to feel anxious. I hid from most of my life and distracted myself in the rest of it. In the meantime, I somehow managed to build a career in radio and stay as social as possible to avoid being alone with myself.
We all do what we need to do to survive. For me, it was drink beer. I’d grown up around it and I just assumed that when you grew up, that’s what you did. I didn’t get a chance to wait until I was an adult though; at 15 years old a friend talked me into trying one of her dad’s beers and that was that. As the cold, fizzy liquid met my stomach, I felt free. A few sips eased my nervous trembling, dried my sweaty palms and allowed me to look the world in the eye.
When I was drinking I felt reconnected to the audaciousness of my youth. I was such a confident kid who shared her creative ideas with gusto. She did everything with gusto- she laughed loudly, she ate eagerly, she made friends quickly, and she talked her playmates into her chosen Barbie scenarios with natural charisma.
It’s taken a lot of years to feel a renewed connection to that part of me. Somewhere along the way, my wanting and desire was muzzled by the label of “too much” and “too big”. I was shamed into making myself so small that I didn’t exist anymore. I walked away from myself while lobbing criticisms from afar. I didn’t feel acceptable. But when I drank, I did.
I unwittingly taught myself to depend on alcohol to survive. That lesson does not promote a life of moderation. And, I had to learn the hard way that the physical effects of over-drinking exacerbate symptoms of anxiety. In fact, I know now that abusing alcohol and eating poorly in my twenties while chasing a high stress career contributed to the anxiety disorder that stayed with me for fifteen years. Thanks to the mindfulness and reconnection to my body that yoga invites, I’ve been able to make more skillful nutritional choices and massively decrease my stress level, but, alcohol continued to be a shady character in my life.
Over the years, I’ve wobbled between moderation, abstinence and occasionally over-drinking. Drinking was a part of the courtship with my husband and a habitual way that we have “unwound” together. The trouble is, a committed yoga practice cultivates increased awareness and sensitivity to what is truthful, including right action for self. So, I can’t ignore it any longer, over-doing alcohol and food doesn’t work for me.
It’s taken me awhile to get to moderation, because over-imbibing was a part of my identity. It helped me feel more acceptable in social situations. The real me likes to have conversations of depth and sharing, but one of my critical inner voices tells me I’m just too heavy for people. I’ve used alcohol to lighten up and become what I considered to be more palatable. That choice is out of alignment with my authentic self and takes much more energy than staying steady in what I know in my heart is best for me.
I’m reminded of the yogic principle of Sthira and Sukha (steadiness and ease). While some may feel that the mark of an advanced yoga practice is handstands and acrobatic shapes, my understanding is that an advanced practice is one in which we are moderating the use of our strength along with relaxation. Can we feel challenged in each pose, without forcing and straining, yet continue to breath deeply, remaining focused and calm?
Overly trying and forcing anything; to be liked, to be seen or not be noticed, feels like strain. It contracts us against the world. While letting go too much; hiding or giving up on ourselves is a different kind of energy drain. It’s more of a collapse, a rejection of the life force meant to propel our purposes.
Right use of energy falls somewhere between the two. We are actively doing our work to own our own emotions. We surrender to what we can’t control. We let go of resentments and endeavor to forgive ourselves and others, cultivating lessons from the past and releasing what doesn’t serve our development.
Just like a yoga posture where everything clicks; a sense of calm sturdiness infuses the experience. We’ve released the hold life has on us, and we’ve dropped into a state of profound presence. We’ve all unintentionally visited that sweet space from time to time when we’ve been supremely engaged in moment to moment experience.
On the yoga mat, when doubt, judgment or negative rumination arrives as an unquestioned companion, an immediate contraction begins and there’s a subtle response in the body and breath. The solution is to continue to come back- to attention on a deepening breath and to the body as an anchor to the present moment.
All teachings gathered in the yoga room can be translated as support systems for a balanced life.
As I’m going about my day, I practice staying present, to those around me and to the inner conversations going on in my head. The moment I start to engage with the inner rebel who wants what she wants and damn the consequences, or the inner manager who resists reality and wants to control the world around me, or the other members of the symphony that form my interior world, I’ve got to come back. I’ve got to come back to my breath, to my feet on the ground and to what is real. From that place I am better able to direct my energy into the next right action.
The idea being, that enough tiny moments of right action add up to a life I can stand firmly within, with courage and peace, strength and softness and …steadiness and ease.
TIPS FOR CREATING MODERATION:
As we mature, age and begin to make choices toward greater health, we begin to notice what food and drink enhance our well being, and which takes away. It’s important that you’re gathering information from your own experience, rather than from the noise and judgments from the world around you, What is right for one person may not be helpful for you.
If you’ve been considering that something you’re consuming is for reasons other than nourishment, (this applies to what we might be consuming in the form of media, entertainment and thinking as well) and those reasons don't add up anymore, here are a couple of gentle questions you could ask yourself.
-Is this serving me?
-Would I experience greater peace and happiness without it?
Releasing something that’s been a part of our life for a long time is challenging, The body, mind and emotions are all involved, and each must be attended to while making changes for greater wellbeing. Here are a few concepts that have helped me:
-Notice the positive:
If you’re experimenting with changing an eating or drinking habit, notice what is going well. It’s easy to focus on thoughts of lack when we’ve told ourselves we are giving something up. We need to challenge the bias of our brains to focus on the negative and really pay attention to even the smallest positive effect. Maybe you woke up earlier without the help of an alarm, or spent an afternoon without a huge energy crash, or was able to navigate a stressful situation with a little more ease…pay attention to every subtle way you’re feeling and thinking better.
-Replace the old with the new:
It takes the body/brain awhile to adjust to changes in a daily routine. If you’re accustomed to consuming something that is not serving you at a certain time, with a certain person or a at a regular place, replace that pattern with something else you enjoy. Use the time you would have spent on the unhelpful habit to go for a walk, read a book, plan a future outing or trip, take a class, listen to a meditation app, take a nap or a bath…choose something you enjoy and can look forward to.
-Question:
If your mind introduces lots of reasons why it’s just too hard to keep your promises to yourself, investigate those thoughts. I spent a while listing all of my reasons for my more unskillful behaviours and then I questioned every thought I had. We’ve likely all heard by now that we’re not our thoughts. Our thoughts are patterns: learned information habitually arising in our awareness. We don’t have to believe what we think and we can choose to think differently.
-No judgments:
Let go of deeming any certain food “bad” or “good”. As I learned from a line in a Deepak Chopra text years ago- “there is no right and wrong- just choices, and subsequent consequences line up after each choice.” Practice paying attention to what is working for you and how different foods and drinks affect you. If you’re feeling chilled or scattered in the mind- warming, grounding foods may help. If you're feeling flushed and warm, or irritable- perhaps turn to cooling items like cucumbers, green veggies or coconut yogurt to pacify heat. Think of food as another tool that can help you create balance. If you’re interested, look into ayurvedic eating guidelines to continue to learn how every person is an individual and will be served by individual eating habits. Only you can know what is making you feel more vital, alive and whole.
-Let go of the shame:
If we’ve not being served by what we consume and we’re not able to stop, it’s ok to ask for help. If you decided you’re cutting out a certain food and then you have it, it’s ok. The more we can think of food as neutral and take away it’s status of “good” or “bad”, the less shame we’ll have. When we feel ashamed of what we’re doing, we hide, we rush, we over-do and eat it all so it will be gone and no one will know. If we can embrace all types of food, then maybe when we decide it’s time for a piece of cake or a glass of champagne, we can enjoy it with all of our senses and feel completely satisfied and then move forward, without looking back.
-Breathe:
A deep breath is a powerful thing. Use a few in the face of a craving and allow the feeling to be there. It will pass. Use it as a focal point for the mind when thoughts get chaotic. Use a few before eating and between bites, allowing yourself to relax and fully experience the taste of what you are eating. When we learn to be more present with our meals, we are able to listen to our body’s cues of fullness and we are often satisfied with less.
These concepts have supported me on my journey of moderation. If you’re like me and face the same struggles, I hope they offer a little inspiration to you too.