Dear Readers,
In the flow of life we can find ourselves, at some point, feeling stranded between a rock and a hard place. In those moments we say “I feel trapped, stuck, unable to see a way forward”.
Sometimes there is pressing imminence about the situation and the urgency increases our anxiety. Other times it is something that sits terribly uncomfortably and chronically, unrelentingly there.
The point and result of yoga is that there is a way. There is freedom - now.
While life by definition entails suffering, the yogi has a deep understanding that there is way to decrease it, avoid it or totally transform that suffering.
Heyum Dukham Anagatam
The suffering that is to come
Can and should
Be avoided
Three stories from my own life.
1/ Psychologically minded
I remember being in my room in our family home in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne and thinking, wow, I can just become my own psychologist, then I won’t have to save up money for when I need to see one. I was 12 years old. To me saving money was a really really cool thing to do. I didn’t have any to save but I knew I would need to one day “If I don’t have any now…” I thought “then I probably won’t have any in the future”. So I fervently invested in myself.
With great enthusiasm I learned and applied psychological frameworks to my life, including understanding the wild, crazy distress that surrounded me. Parents, siblings, friends, school life, boys. So much for a 12 year old to manage!
The rock or limitation: being completely under-resourced to cope with life.
The freedom: to become my own inner guru.
I truly learnt and believed there were ways around the ingrained limitations of life.
I used reflections, perspective shifts and a wide range of frameworks to see myself and others. I dove in and by 16 had a growing interest in Jungian and Freudian psychology. I started to feel capable and even masterful. Life was no longer a series of random acts hurtling toward me and from me. Things could make sense if studied and named, observed and interacted with. I was like a scientist and I loved that because they wore white coats and earned money.
2/ Tennis
One day on a ‘weekend explore’ around our local streets with my brothers (something we did quite often) we came across a dumpster bin. In it I found something I had been yearning for: a tennis racket. It was a metal black frame, slightly bent, and had a full set of strings. The handle had no cushioning, but I managed to use money from my paper round to buy some.
Mum enrolled my sister and I in tennis lessons on Saturday mornings. When we had competitions I was aware that my bent, rusty old racket from the dumpster was kind of a dud, but I did something to overcome that issue. I decided I could made my racket super powerful. I truly made it mine. I would imagine it was an extension of my arm, that it connected right in to the centre of my chest and that when we moved we moved as one.
I loved playing tennis and I never blamed my racket for any of my losses.
When I started high school I got an amazing bright red sports uniform. Along with new runners and my first ever backpack, Mum also bought me a proper tennis racket from a real sport shop. The racket was white and polished like a ceramic doll, with a blue and red stripe, matching my sporty look. I felt decked out and powerful, like I could stand tall and be like the other girls.
The fact is, this racket was waaaay too heavy and my poor right shoulder still hasn’t recovered. 40 years later my shoulder feels as though it must be dragged out of its healthy home, deep in the socket. Just to perform the acts of daily life the arms stills believes it must be pulled out from its roots. I never want the allure and dazzle of things looking good to trick me again.
I’m hugging this shoulder into my the side windows of my heart now, tending and cradling it as I sit here on the couch. The rain falls and I have a warm home, lamps light and chicken broth brewing.
Moral of the story: a crappy tool can be made splendid because sometimes spirit is greater than matter. I extended my spirit to include the full potential of my racket into a sense of wholeness, coordination and balance. I united spirit with the limitations of this physical world, we did the dance and it was marvellous.
3/ Heat
For many year, after graduating from Melbourne University with my Arts degree in psychology and English (literature), I worked at a University and wore work clothes. ie: restrictive in all the wrong ways. One very, very unyeildingly hot day I jumped on a tram in the city. No air, full of other people and their body heat. With my skin unable to breathe and my digestive system squished, I knew I had at least a 25 minute journey ahead. When bodily suffering is that carnally present, it becomes all pervasive and consuming. Something has to be done other than bad moods, frowns, grumpiness and irritability as the outlets. I decided to use the Sitali cooling breath that I had learned in my yoga classes. I rolled my tongue and breathed in. Ahhh, cool. I stopped crouching and frowning and allowed the mind to focus on the breath coming in and the feeling of ‘cool’. Even in that stifling heat I found reprieve. Nothing in the environment changed. I changed. I switched it with a Sitkari breath every now and then which kept my mind occupied and content.
And that is the end of today’s blog post.
There is freedom. There is choice.
I have no interest or investment in the blame / complain game.
I chose wisdom, freedom and grace.
x
Katie
p.s. Today, being the 7th October is a sad and painful day for me. I am protecting my mind and heart through mantra, prayer and reflection. At the Buddhist temple this morning, as I walked toward the river, my friend Seven saw I looked low, he said : “Listen to me, not too much thinking, sing, move, keep body busy.” The true nature of human nature is to want each other to be happy.