by Jamie Shane
Life is a process. A learning adventure. Its not about what you have done, but what you are doing. And, more importantly, how you are doing it. What a relief it would be to let things unfold as opposed to hurriedly unfolding them. Let some of that responsibility go. Enjoy the mystery. Things have a way of turning out exactly as they should if you quit trying to force them. Patience is a virtue because it broadens your perspective and allows you to breathe. Practicing patience teaches you when to act and when to rest. It prevents your immediate desires from spinning you around like a mad dervish, bringing in its wake a measure of peace and, in its own time, a length of prosperity.
Its okay to let go. The sky will not fall if you sit down to rest. Your life will not spin out of control if you take a minute to wait and see. And if you truly believe that it will, I think maybe you should listen to my grandma. Never underestimate the power of patience.
It can change your life.
39
I hesitate to write this. Not because it is controversial or earth shattering. But because I am about to hold somebody up as an example and I’m not entirely sure he would want to be idealized in this fashion. He’s just not the kind of guy that would preen beneath such praise even though he well deserves it. As his teacher, I am just so proud of his accomplishments that I’ve decided—hesitant or not—to go ahead and tell you all this story. It is, quite simply, the perfect illustration to a necessary point.
About nine months ago, an older gentleman came to my studio. Older, hardly old, lets call it “of a certain age”. He had back problems and was carrying just a little bit of extra weight—no more than any of us average joes. He was a runner, and had decided to add some yoga to help with his flexibility. Wise man.
As a teacher, leading him through his first class was an exercise in “dear lord, lets not hurt the man.” Stiff. Struggling. Sweating. Not at all uncommon. But he was of an age, and in a physical place where many people would have considered the practice too difficult. Too much to manage. No fun at all. I’ve seen plenty of these people come and go; it is just the nature of teaching yoga. I wouldn’t have judged him badly should he have never returned to my door.
But here is where he turns out to be a shining star. He came back. He kept coming back. He sweated and struggled his way through postures that I know had to be uncomfortable. I was forever reminding him to watch out for his back, to take it easy and to modify. And he always kept on the fine line of challenge, pushing just enough to make progress but never enough to hurt himself. The man is a Trojan. And he just never gave up.
You should see him today. I haven’t thought about his back in months. He’s lost thirty pounds. In class his postures are among the most beautiful of any of my students. If I had a hundred students just like him I would weep with the bliss of being a teacher. As it is, I have him (and others like him, I love you, too) and it is more than enough.
My point with this is that yoga can change your body—can change you—if you give it the time it needs. This transformation took nearly a year. A year. And he comes more than once or twice a week. This student moved beyond the point where he just did a little yoga. This became a life routine for him that I doubt he will ever be able to fully abandon. But it took time and determination to reach that point.
New students always ask how often they should practice. I tell them at least twice a week and, should they comply, changes will be seen. Over time. But if you really want to transform, you need to integrate yoga into your life daily. Now, I didn’t say you had to come to class daily, I said you have to bring yoga to your life daily. That could be a video, a book, a routine memorized from class, a sun salutation, a posture, a breath, a mantra, anything of yoga in your life once a day.
Forever.
That’s right, forever. Because a more true adage was never spoken than this: Use it or lose it. If you persevere, you can achieve miracles. No matter your age, or health situation. But it has to be a decision that you make every day, without fail, for the rest of your life.
I’ve seen the miracle of yoga. I’ve lived it. So trust me when I tell you: Stay with it. Even when you hate it. Because it always loves you.
40
One thing I love about yoga is that it teaches you about how things work. Like a thinker of old, you are encouraged to explore your body and mind so that you can discover—for yourself—logic. It shows you how to think. Not what to think, but how to think—meaning that it demonstrates how to utilize thought to its fullest ability without stalling it along the way in a rut of ‘accepted’ answers. There are no absolute answers, just the logical progression of thought towards truth.
Achieving in asana is a matter of discovering the continuum of your body’s movement within the posture. Even though a forward folding position appears to be about reaching down and grabbing the toes, it is really about following the progression of a dozen tiny movements that eventually take you to the right forward fold for you. Sit down on the inside of the buttocks. Lean the torso out over the legs. Relax the toes. Bear the weight of the legs on the center point of the heels. Press the hamstrings to the floor. Soften the thighs. Lengthen the seat by releasing the buttock. Inhale deeply to open the belly and ribcage. Pull the spine through the crown of the head. Drop the shoulder blades against the back. Reach out through the armpits. Let the arms float out over the legs to reach the toes. If you can. And, if you can’t, well, then, obviously you aren’t yet meant to.
That’s a truth you are just going to have to live with.
This ability follows you off of the mat and often shows you things that sometimes you wished you didn’t understand. Your thought process is forever altered and you begin to see things—behaviours—that were once shrouded in short-sightedness. We are not taught socially to follow the art of thought progression. We are often encouraged to stop thinking somewhere along the line so that we can swallow the party line. This method of lowest common denominator thinking does great things for corporate industry and politics, but great wrongs to the world at large. Ignorance can be bliss, but it certainly doesn’t do you, or your community, any favours.
For instance. Bottled water is a huge industry. We are sold the idea of fresh, pure water in a convenient plastic bottle as a good idea and a marker of healthy progress. Okay, now they want you to stop thinking. Because if you followed the law of thought progression, you just might come to understand just how unhealthy an idea this really is. One—shipping large volumes of water away from its source will eventually alter the area’s water table. Not good. Two—the creation and disposal of millions of plastic bottles uses tons of fossil fuels that we really can no longer afford. Not good. Three—the plastic bottle itself will leech toxins into the water that you allow into your system. Not good. But at $1.25 a bottle, this is a huge industry. You spend more on water than you do on gas. Buy a home water filter and a good travel cup ($29.95 + $5.95 + tax = $38.00) and you are done. But you have to follow the thought out to the end. You can’t just stop at, “Bottled water taste good.”
This can be applied to almost any of the ‘convenience’ options being sold to you almost every minute of every day. Prepackaged food. Plastic bags. SUVs. No effort diet solutions. Anything that tells you that you don’t have to extend any effort of thought or deed deserves to be examined closely and subjected to the law of thought progression. Open the door and follow those ideas all the way to the real conclusion. Even if that conclusion means that you will have to give something up or do something for yourself.
Then we might really think about saving the world.
41
As level as I am, there are still a few Westernisms that make my head spin ‘round and vile words issue from my mouth: The supreme belief that we own the road simply because our car is upon it. The irritating habit of commanding one to “relax” when they are on the fringe of losing it. And the annoying tendency to encourage one who is struggling with the phrase, “It’s a question of mind over matter.”
Oh, stuff it.
There is nothing I can do about selfish drivers. Being told to relax is irritating, but it can pull one back from the brink. But the mind over matter thing? You can keep that to yourself because while the sentiment is true, the usage is dangerously flawed.
Yes, the mind is a powerful tool. So powerful that it can, indeed, conquer the base physical. You can force the body into anything if your will is strong enough. You can also strap a couch to the roof of a Volkswagen bug. But that doesn’t mean that you’ll get where you’re going unharmed. The body has limitations; it has boundaries that can and should be challenged. But only after you have thoroughly explored these boundaries and developed a healthy respect for why they exist.
Someone with terrible neck problems should not invert themselves into Shoulderstand. It’ll hurt. And it’ll do more damage than good. But, hey, it’s a question of mind over matter, right? Your supreme mind knows more than the base body, so why not push it into something that you want to do? Everybody else in class can do Shoulderstand, so just put the force of your mind behind it and, voila! Matter overcome.
Bad, bad idea. This is a foolish abuse of the mind’s ability. This is a selfish illusion of our own capacity. Only a clear, balanced mind can discern what should and should not be overcome. And most of us (now don’t get all riled up, here) do not have as absolute a control over our minds as we would like to believe.
The mind is painfully susceptible to illusion. It filters our experience through what we show it. For instance, if I spend the afternoon in a trashy romance novel, reading about the life of Mr. Super-perfect-sensitive-stud, my mind—even though it knows this to be fiction—cannot help but to be disappointed when Mr. Regular-burps-n-all comes home from work. I am experiencing a judgment of my husband through the false illusion I have cast over my mind.
Is this fair? Is this true? No. Its not. My husband is a prince, and I wouldn’t trade him in for a romance character. But the mind cannot help being polluted by what it is fed. And this is not a mind that is worthy of matter control.
If you are constantly giving the mind images of the good life, you will invariably be saddened by your own state of affairs. If you are always listening to hate-rap music, you will eventually absorb that angry cynicism and it will colour your experience. We create illusion. We pollute the mind with falsehoods. Then we expect it to control everything with clear discernment. Hmm.
It takes a dedicated person to rectify this. It takes a concerted effort to purify the mind to a place where illusion holds no sway. It is a state that few people who live in the modern world manage to achieve. This muddy mind is no match to our ‘mind over matter’ principle, and cannot always be relied on for this task.
If it were, every last one of us would be bending spoons and levitating. We would have no physical ails and could live forever. So perhaps the charge is not mind over matter, but mind over mind. Clean it up and see. Maybe then I’ll let that Westernism ride.
42
I talk about becoming aware all the time. As a matter of fact, I speak about it so often that I fear people will soon start rolling their eyes at me and mutter under their breath, “Here she goes again.” But here I go again.
It is so important to become aware. But it is also important to understand that being aware has absolutely nothing to do with what you think you know. And, truthfully, the more you ‘know’, the easier it is to fall into the habits of the unaware. It’s a strange little Catch-22, but an interesting thought.
In ancient times, knowledge was a pursuit in itself. One learned what one needed to know to survive one’s station in life. One undertook further learning because it fed the mind and spirit, bringing you closer to a higher understanding. Those who studied learned how to think, not just how to know. This set them on their paths to awareness. Great philosophers and scientists came out of this tradition; We still study them today.
But I see a frightening trend in the culture which encourages us to simply stuff our heads with facts. We aren’t encouraged to really think—there is simply too much to know. The more facts that we gather, the better ‘informed’ we are. And then, we are allowed to simply react by rote to the facts at hand. No thinking required.
In this age where information is God, is it possible that we are bombarding ourselves with too much information and actually making ourselves dumber? Do we really understand all that we purport to ‘know’? And, does our information obsession really make us any happier or healthier?
For instance, I ‘know’ that germs are bad. They must be because everybody wants to sell me some form of anti-germ spray, creme or gel to kill 99.9% of them. Use this product and you will be healthier, right? All is well, don’t you give it another thought. But if I’m not mistaken, we need to catch some of these germs or viruses to teach our immune systems how to fight them. If we kill them off all the time and never learn how to fight them on our own, then we need to continually use these sprays, crèmes and gels. That is not a good thing considering that these chemicals have a whole host of side effects that we know about but don’t ever really want to think about. So. Are germs really bad? Can’t you just wash your hands?
Facts are like information potatoes. A good foundation, but you can’t live on them alone. You have to use them, not just consume them. This is what your mind is for. It is not just a piggy-bank repository of information. It is a very unique and special tool capable of inductive logic, deductive reason and astounding feats of intuition. But, like any other tool, it grows dull with disuse. If you leave it on the bottom of the pool of facts, it will rust terribly.
Then you are open to being sold your fear. Which believe me, you will buy. If you just react and never think, you are never, ever, ever, in control. If you teach your children to value ‘just the facts, ma’am’, what happens to our Newtons, our Einsteins, our Aristotles? What do we make of ourselves and our culture other than a batch of ‘quick-fix’ junkies?
Just think. That’s all. Most of us aren’t actually suckers, we just don’t think things through past the visible—and desired-- end. Being aware means examining all the angles, even those that are darned inconvenient and have nothing to do with the immediate you.
Engage your mind. Question everything. The next great Descartes is you.
43
I firmly believe that language is the most powerful tool in the human arsenal. Words can elevate or eviscerate more surely than any drug or weapon. Nowhere is this more evident than in the history of nations, where rhetoric has created and destroyed countless civilizations.
I find that there are more than a few magic words in the canon of human communication. (Sadly, “Abracadabra” is not one of them.) Regardless of language, certain words have the power to open doors to the heart which allow us to fully connect with our humanity. And the humanity of others. “Please”, “love”, “help”, “beauty” and “gratitude” are just a few of the more obvious. When they are strung together into sentences, they rarely fail to move a person to action or emotion.
“Please help me.” You are made of stone if you can ignore this heartfelt plea. “ I love you”, can raise consciousness. “You are beautiful”, changes a person’s aura and uplifts their spirit. “Thank you,” transcends social boundaries. These simple phrases touch the very essence of who you are as a human. They speak to our similarities and our unity. To employ them freely helps one move above the pettiness of modern life and into the higher vibration. They are, very simply, tools of self-evolution.
But these words, as powerful as they are, are very safe to us. They do not ask us to step outside of our comfort zone to explore the highest realm of mind and self. They are as familiar to us as our mother’s smile.
There are other words, powerful words, that are largely ignored and often feared because of their foreign origin. But this is silly. ‘Please’ is still ‘please’ whether you vocalize please or s’il vous plait. God is still God whether you say Yahweh, Allah or Dios. It is not always the linguistic articulation that matters,
but rather the vibratory intention beneath it.
Which is why the Western fear of mantras confuses me. We have no problem accepting other languages unless is has something to do with faith. Then all bets are off. But these words are merely tools, magic in the same manner as ‘please’. They soothe the human experience in the same manner as ‘thank you’. I recently heard them described as “perfect chords”. But I prefer to think of them as grease on the tracks to Destination: Peace.
Whether you verbalize, “Sat Nam” or “Eternal True Identity” is honestly irrelevant. I think “Sat Nam” has a nicer rhythm. It is also the original incarnation of the intention and fits well on a breath. What’s the point of messing with that? Fear? Comfort? Pooh. Get over it. (The French still call a t-shirt a t-shirt. And a more linguistically fussy people I have never met. So you can certainly eek out a “sat nam”, right?)
So, let’s all inhale sat; Exhale nam. And then keep going. Allow every inhale to mentally vibrate with ‘sat’ and every exhale to vibrate with ‘nam’. This simple exercise clears the mind nicely because the vibratory intention behind those two foreign words is focusing on an awareness greater than your own. Not much can stand up to that—certainly not the annoying person in front of you hogging up the grocery aisle, or the jerk who believes the red light means ‘go ahead, o special one, red doesn’t mean stop for you’. Inhale sat; exhale nam, and those annoyances are but fleas on the back of a shaggy, cosmic dog because now your intentions are higher.
Give it a try. You’ll be surprised. Words are your most powerful tools for healthy living no matter from what language they originate. Choose wisely. Speak to one another—and to yourself-- with the highest of good intentions and know real peace.
44
Those of you that come to yoga for the spiritual point of view may be a bit disappointed by the average American yoga class. The Plain Jane yoga found in clubhouses and gyms, practiced in an hour of physical asana with the briefest of relaxations. You may hear such phrases as “Connect with your breath”, or “Open your heart”, but you will not often hear talk of God or faith or the deeper mysteries. True chanting is minimized, and only the briefest of mantram make their appearances.