Advice

Saying “No” and “Yes”

Elizabeth Advice , , ,

Saying Yes and No“You have to say ‘no’ to what you don’t want in order to be able to say ‘yes’ to what you do want.” My yoga teacher, Fran Ubertini, told me this almost every time we met in our private sessions. It took me a long time to grasp what she really meant and apply it in my life.

One area of my life I did not want to accept was age and its effects. I didn’t want to accept a decline in my energy from what it had been ten years earlier. And, I didn’t want to acknowledge a connection between the time I was putting into my yoga studies, teaching six to eight classes a week at the Community College and Movement Center, other varied activities, maintaining a home life and the fatigue I was feeling.

At the same time, I wanted to do some things for which I hadn’t the time or energy – writing a blog, offering workshops and study groups, participating more in the community, gardening and cooking. Likewise, there were things I had tired of in my job – having to grade my students in yoga, teaching 8 am classes, and being tied to a semester calendar.

One thing I have learned is the importance of viveka, or discernment. Yoga teaches that if we do not have the ability to discern wisely, we are destined to make choices and act based upon unconscious behavioral patterns. Critical to viveka, then, is awareness of who we are, how we tend to react, and what we want and don’t want. If we are saying “yes” to too many things, how do we know we are correct in our choice of what to give up? Discernment requires a process of verification.

In my case, I recognized what I wanted to do and what I had tired of doing. Even so I found giving up teaching at the college to be very difficult. At first I would tell myself I couldn’t leave because I needed the money earned there. I had to think about what it would be like without that income, as well as talk with my husband about the implications for us as a family. When money was cleared as an obstacle, I had to face my attachment to the job, to a certain credibility it gave me and to the fear of change leaving raised.

I could never have made my choice to leave college teaching if I had not been able to discern that ego and fear were keeping me attached to a path no longer serving me and limiting my ability to move in the direction I wanted. It was viveka, and the process of reflection and verification that allowed me to feel confident of my choice to say “no.”

The eight-limbs of yoga give us tools to develop viveka. The Yoga Sutra identifies the eight limbs in II.29: ethical principles, guidelines for self-care, postures, breathing practices, discipline of the senses, and the inner limbs of concentration, meditation, and complete absorption. With a regular practice of these tools of yoga over time, we can come to know ourselves better and to create a space from which we can discern and verify a positive direction for ourselves.

I had to say “no” to teaching yoga at the college in order to be able to say “yes” to feeling rested, to having time to write a blog, start a yoga study group, start a training in chanting, spend more time with my newly retired husband, and to making more time to cook and bake. I am a believer in my teacher’s mantra of “saying ‘no’ to what you don’t want to be able to say ‘yes’ to what you do want” – and a huge believer in the ability of yoga practice to help us get there.

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Letting Go

Elizabeth Advice ,

Letting GoI was so moved by the message given in the Ash Wednesday service I attended this year that I had to share it with you. In the past the messages I heard this time of the year were about “giving up” something – like chocolate or coffee shops or sweets or movies – as in letting go of something we enjoyed.

But the message I heard this year was “letting go” – as in letting go of those things that burden us like a heavy stone we carry. I am sure you can begin to see the difference from my earlier understanding. Instead of deprivation, the message I heard this year calls for a time of self-reflection, so we recognize what fails to serve us, what causes suffering in our life. With that awareness, we can begin the process of “letting go.”

You might ask how we know what the real problem is? Why do we seem to be facing the same struggles again and again? And, even if we discover “the real problem,” how do we let go?

The teachings of yoga tell us that we all have patterns of behavior, of thinking, of responding that have become so ingrained that we may be unable to even see them. These are called samskaras. Samskaras may be positive or negative; they may support us or cause us suffering.

All of us receive messages as children from parents, institutions, and our culture that become part of how we look at the world. All of us, as we live our lives, experience events or face situations to which we have responded in ways we later regret. Most of us have had experiences that left emotional scars. We may have feelings of guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety, among other debilitating responses that cause us to continue to suffer.

Our work in yoga is about eliminating our suffering. To do this we develop self-awareness as we work in postures, breathing practices, meditation, chanting, or apply other tools of yoga. Yoga’s message is always svadhyaya – self-study –no matter what our practice. Through the process of self-observation, we can come to see patterns blocking us from living fully. Our relationships offer a huge mirror for us to observe our patterns. Likewise, a trusted teacher can help us to see patterns causing us pain.

When we see the samskaras that burden us, we can start the process of change. We can begin to let go of the power these samskaras have over us as we move to replace them with something positive. The old ones never completely go away, and we may find ourselves letting go of them again and again – but yoga offers tools to keep the old small while growing new positive samskaras.

As we move toward spring, we might keep in mind the image of the March winds. As they blow, we can make an intention to be observant so we can identify the burdens causing our suffering. We can imagine the freedom of allowing them to blow away on the winds. We can visualize making room for something new and special to take root and grow and allow that image support us as we begin the journey of letting go – of healing.

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Stress, Meditation, and the Heart

Elizabeth Advice, Health , ,

In a recent blog I wrote about stress and how yoga offers us the possibility of moving from a place of tension and constriction, when the stress response is activated, to a place of spaciousness, ease, and calm.

Most of us have heard of the litany of ailments that are stress-related – everything from asthma to high blood pressure to depression and anxiety to heart disease to irritable bowel to reduced immune function. Some of us may even experience a stress-related condition.

As heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States, the medical community has been looking at whether the practice of meditation can reduce the risk of death, heart attack, and stroke. The results of a study published this month in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes indicated that, indeed, it can. The heart disease study directed participants to meditate twice a day for twenty minutes and followed them for up to nine years. Study participants practicing a form of meditation known as Transcendental Meditation decreased their risk of death, heart attack, and stroke by 48%. For those participants who followed the meditation guidelines strictly the result was even more dramatic – risk was reduced by 66%. If you have a family history of heart disease, as I do, this is important and encouraging information.

While recognizing the benefits, the medical community is not yet able to explain how meditation works. But yoga, ancient as it is, has recognized the role the mind plays in what our physical body experiences. Meditation is about moving the mind from agitation to a focused state. When the mind become focused and quiet, the body relaxes, blood pressure is lowered, muscle tension releases, breathing is slowed, heart rate slows. And, as those of you who practice yoga most likely notice, the focus required to coordinate breath and movement in yoga postures, to do a breathing practice, to chant, all of these quiet and calm the mind as well. The whole practice is a meditation leading to a sense of well-being. Our whole system responds.

The focus, calm, and sense of well-being the yoga practice supports requires our attention and dedication. It requires that we have a “correct practice” which we follow consistently over a long period of time and with a positive attitude about our success. While it requires discipline, our yoga practice offers the possibility of a wonderful journey. A journey that is more than caring for our physical bodies.. In the quiet created in the mind by our practice, we have the space to see ourselves and our relationships more clearly, and to come to ultimately find a compassionate, “settled heart.”

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Starting From Where You Are

Elizabeth Advice

When I am out socially and someone introduces me as a yoga teacher, inevitably at least one person will tell me he or she would like to try yoga. “Unfortunately,” the person will continue, “I can’t.” He will explain that he really isn’t flexible, or she will say she tried it one time and couldn’t keep up, or he will add he has a bad back and couldn’t possibly twist himself “like a pretzel.” When I respond that he doesn’t have to twist himself like a pretzel to do yoga, or he doesn’t have to flexible, or that there are classes where she wouldn’t feel as if she always had to “keep up,” my listeners are either skeptical or surprised.

The image of yoga as an athletic physical practice has kept many people away from yoga when they could benefit from an appropriate practice designed to meet their needs. One of the most profound teachings of the great yoga teacher Krishnamacharya is that the individual should not be required to fit him or herself to yoga. Rather yoga should be made to fit the individual’s needs.

To do that you work privately with a teacher who takes into consideration your needs and interests to come up with a practice that fits the time and space you have available. The teacher makes sure the practice fits into the your life even if you only have time for a twenty minute practice. As you do the practice and progress, the practice changes, for one’s needs and goals change. There is no one size fits all yoga practice.

Many people choose to begin yoga by attending a class regularly. While a once a week yoga class cannot replace the personal practice designed for you that you do each day, it does offer the possibility of exploring different practices and perhaps experiencing something that you would like to pursue further, like chanting or meditation. It also provides a sense of community, as people come weekly and see one another and often become friends.

One of the most beautiful things about a yoga practice is that it is empowering. The personal practice requires that we take responsibility for doing it regularly with a positive attitude, and over time, observing its effects. But it is also beautiful because it is up to us to take the teachings into our lives, both on our mat in practice and in how we live and relate to others. Accepting where we are, and starting from that place, with the help of a teacher, is the way to begin.

Ultimately, the question should not be whether our practice enables us to do a complex yoga pose requiring a great deal of strength and agility and stamina. It should be, instead, whether our practice is helping us to have greater happiness in our lives.

Stress Less: Stress-hardy

Elizabeth Advice, Health

“My back hurts.” “I can’t sleep.” “I cry.” “I smoke.” “I can’t focus.” “I grind my teeth.” “I get depressed.” “I freak out at my kids.” “I am tired all the time.” “I feel like I can’t breath.” “My shoulders and neck are tense.” “My stomach hurts.”

These are some of the responses that students in my Exercise and Stress Management class at HACC would give me when I asked them how they felt when they were “stressed.” I am sure we can all identify with some of these symptoms, and probably could add to the list.

When we feel stressed, a whole series of physiological responses are triggered, known as the fight or flight response, or stress response. If this response were triggered because we needed to flee an attacking bear, then the stress hormones would be dissipated. But, for the most part, in modern life, we are not fleeing an immediate threat to our life. Instead we face overwhelming, never-ending lists of responsibilities and obligations, the challenge of finding, keeping, or losing a job, abusive situations, illness, worries about the future, and on and on.

No matter the cause, the HACC students in my Stress Management class had one thing in common: they were suffering – they felt as if they had no space. Whatever they perceived as stress was closing in on them.

Think about it for a minute. When we are on vacation or feeling relaxed, just enjoying ourselves, we feel a sense of spaciousness. We are not holding tension in our body, our breathing feels easy, worries are not roosting in our mind, and we may even experience contentment. This “easiness” is what I mean when I say “spaciousness.”

One of the goals of yoga is to come to a place of spaciousness in our bodies, breath, minds, and emotions. The most common observation my yoga students make at the end of class, is that they feel calm, balanced, peaceful. Some degree of spaciousness has returned to them as a result of the practice they did.

An appropriate yoga practice done regularly and over time can help us create space within ourselves and our lives. Because we have a greater sense of spaciousness we grow to see the stresses in our lives more clearly. That clarity helps us to make better decisions. Our physiological response to the stress we experience is lower. We become more stress-hardy.