Call It Magic

Yesterday I was reminded of the magic of yoga. It’s been over a decade since I first stepped onto the mat, and still I can forget the impact of this simple practice.

It was early evening, and I was in a pretty good funk. It had been raining all day and I felt trapped in my house. I was alone–par for the course during the pandemic–and thinking about how much I wanted a partner in my life. Longing for a partner made me feel lonely, and my attention naturally turned to my ex. As I remembered sweet moments with him, I felt a wave of grief for that lost relationship. My memories also triggered some hurt and disappointment, and I thought about calling a friend for some comfort. But that reminded me that a dear friend had recently expressed that she thought I had let her down, and I was anxious because I felt out of connection with her. Since we hadn’t talked yet, I found myself imagining the different directions that this difficult conversation could go.

I sat on my couch, tangled in all of these thoughts and feeling unhappy and stressed. I wondered how soon I could crawl into bed, pull the covers to my chin, and escape into sleep.

I glanced at the clock. It was only 7–much too early to attempt sleep. I remembered a yin yoga class that I liked started in fifteen minutes, so I opened my laptop to register. When the schedule loaded I saw there was a substitute listed for my favorite teacher. Ugh!! I snapped the screen down in frustration. But I knew from experience that yoga would somehow help me out of my funk, so I registered and started setting up my props.

The class began and my sour mood continued. I was rolling with the substitute teacher, but her microphone kept cutting out and I struggled to hear her instructions. I added that frustration to the running list in my mind…COVID, never ending rain, my ex, my friend, this yoga class. And yet I continued to follow along with the poses, beginning to breathe with the teacher’s cues.

In yin classes postures are often held for a few minutes to provide slow, steady stress to our connective tissues. As the poses became more challenging, I started to feel stronger sensations in my body. I needed to focus on these in order to position my body in that sweet spot somewhere between pushing myself too hard (and fighting through discomfort for the remainder of the hold) and not challenging myself enough (and missing out on the full benefit of the pose).

We finished a particularly intense hip opener and rested on our bellies for several breaths. I settled onto the mat, released a loud exhale and felt the support of the ground below me. I noticed that the list of stresses was no longer on repeat and–released from the weight of all of those thoughts and feelings–my body was relaxed. I felt peaceful. And then I remembered: this is the magic of yoga! This is the power of being present to the moment instead of trapped in the tangle of thoughts in my mind.

You see, our minds are always thinking. It’s sort of their thing. And while sometimes our minds think about useful things, like how we need to stop at the red light up ahead, all too often they think about all sorts of things that aren’t actually happening. They think about the things that we wish we’d done differently. The things that other people said to us. The things we said to other people. The things that we are scared may or may not happen to us or to the people we care about. And when our minds are attending to these past events or future worries, they take us away from the present moment. I am no longer sitting rather comfortably on my couch–albeit alone–while it rains outside. Instead I’m in the middle of an (imaginary!) argument with my friend and feeling anxious about it.

It’s an incredible challenge to not get carried away by our thoughts like this. Yet the more we are able to recognize that we have been caught up in our thoughts, the more we strengthen our ability to come back to the moment at hand. Yoga helps us build this muscle memory.

In yoga, we actively practice bringing our attention to our bodies in the moment. We may practice this dozens of times in a single class. As my mind starts to compose a grocery list, the teacher asks me to notice where the weight is centered in my feet. And I drop the list and turn my attention to the soles of my feet. As I start missing the way my ex-boyfriend tucked my hair behind my ear, the teacher cues to ground into my left hip while continuing to extend through my fingertips. And I feel what it is like to root and reach. As I start to worry that I might lose a dear friendship, the teacher asks me to inhale into my right side and I feel my ribcage expand.

Over and over again in yoga, I practice turning away from my mind’s distracting chatter and bringing my awareness back to my body. My attention can’t be in both places at once, so if I am present to the moment then I won’t become tangled in thoughts about the things that have already happened or that haven’t even happened yet. I won’t become stuck in the morass of feelings that these thoughts provoke. I won’t spend the precious moments of my life in a moody funk induced by recreating the past or worrying about the future.

When my attention is centered on my body, I am awake to what I am experiencing now, in this moment. I am alive. I am sitting alone on the couch, listening to the raindrops tap dance on my windows.  

This is a life changing practice. You might even call it magic.

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If you’re interested in learning more about the practice of bringing your attention back to your body, check out this podcast by meditation teacher Tara Brach.

Awakening Our Body's Awareness - Part 1 - Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence (a favorite from the archives).

Knowing What You Want

I’m reaching out to all the people pleasers. I am one of you. As a woman, middle child, and Pisces with Libra rising, on a scale of 1 to 10 I’m somewhere around a 13. (What do I want? Wait a minute, what are you asking?) But I’m working on this tendency, because while it may seem kind to consistently care take and accommodate others, without clear intention this behavior breeds resentment and frustration. Ultimately, it is unkind to yourself.

While it may be difficult to admit, I know from experience that it can feel scary to think about what you want. It requires you to stop looking to everyone else and instead undertake a close and sometimes uncomfortable examination of yourself.

What do I want? When I first intentionally asked myself this question, I didn’t even know how to begin to find my answers–and the fact that it seemed like such a simple question made me feel even worse. Yet how was I supposed to know what I wanted when I’d lived so much of my life according to what other people wanted for me or from me?

I struggled to identify what I wanted for a long time before I realized that I could take advantage of the deep listening skills that I’d been honing on my yoga mat. During yoga I practice detaching from the distracting thoughts in my mind by bringing my awareness to the sensations in my body. Have you ever had a yoga teacher ask you to feel into your feet or your hamstrings or your shoulder blades? This prompts you to direct your attention back to your body from whatever mind chatter you were caught up in. At first you may only be able to notice intense sensations in your body, like a stretching feeling in your hamstring or an ache in your knee joint. Over time, as you practice listening while you move through the postures, you develop an ability to discern more acute sensations, like subtle shifts in where the weight is in your feet or where you are holding tension in your face.

So how does this body awareness relate to knowing what you want? I believe that my body’s instinctive responses are a useful guide for making decisions. Our bodies constantly offer us feedback as we navigate the day; for example, you may experience a change in your breath rhythm, a slight increase in your heart rate, a clenching of your gut, or a relaxing of your jaw. This feedback is provided in real time, but we are usually too consumed with the mind chatter (planning, judging, remembering, criticizing, worrying, etc.) to notice it. When I need to make a decision about what I want, I can listen to my body’s response to the options I have and allow that natural feedback to inform my choice.

This is how it works. When I need to make a decision, I consider each of the options individually. I close my eyes and picture the first option. I briefly imagine that I’ve made that choice. Then I switch to observer mode. What is happening in my body? Am I feeling any sensations? Is there a churning in my gut? Am I holding my breath? Am I feeling at ease? I open my eyes and note what I felt. Next I close my eyes and repeat the process, this time picturing the second option. Again, I switch to observer mode and notice any sensations that occur in my body. Then I compare notes. What felt better in my body? It’s entirely possible that neither option created much of a response, but often I find that my decision becomes clear once I evaluate the simple feedback from my body.

I’ve repeated this process again and again, practicing it like any other new skill that I want to master. Now when I am asked for another favor or to change my plans for someone else, instead of falling into my old people-pleasing ways I can ask myself what I want. I can listen carefully. If I say yes, I know it is because it’s what I truly want and not because of some expectation, guilt, or need to be liked. That’s a meaningful change, and it’s ultimately a kindness to everyone.