Ever since I had the flu over a month ago, I've struggled with consistency in my yoga practice. I've even sort of downright rejected it. I managed to take at least one class a week since I healed but throughout the entire class, I hate it. I reject it. I lay on my mat for half the class. I don't want to make it a priority. And I haven't been practicing at home like I was before I had the flu. I just feel like I am in a funk. It feels like I am forcing myself to be there in class and it's felt a little demoralizing.
A few evenings ago, I became very overwhelmed with so many pieces of my life that I have let just fall apart. Sometimes I am paralyzed and don't even know where to begin. I've felt burned out lately also because we had a stressful federal audit at work and I feel like all my energy was drained and I have little energy to put towards getting my life together.
That particular evening, I was working in my garage with unpacking some boxes, thinking about everything that I needed to do and I suddenly started to have an anxiety attack. The man across the street told me that I shouldn't have dogs in the front yard because he saw coyotes on the street. I started to have a meltdown thinking that I couldn't put them in the back yard because the fence was broken. And I let it get overrun with weeds. And then I thought of every other thing in my life that was falling apart that I haven't been able to get to and a full blown anxiety attack came on.
Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks and said to myself, "It's ok. It's going to be ok. Just do one thing at a time". I started breathing deeply. I pushed my shoulders down to release tension, breathing in and out slowly, lowering my shoulders and releasing tension also in my chest. "You've had a bad few years. You will get it all under control but you just have to give yourself a break, make lists of what needs to be done and just keep chipping away at your list," I told myself. I breathed, and breathed and breathed, and then released tension, calmed myself down, got my anxiety under control and then made a list of a few things that I needed to do that evening.
Suddenly it occurred to me that this is what yoga is all about. We tend to view yoga as a series of postures or exercises, which is called "asana", but yoga is much more than that. I haven't quite figured it all out yet, but yoga is an entire system that isn't just about the postures. In fact, I've been reading lately that there are some people who still continue to practice yoga without the postures. So, what exactly is yoga?
There has been some ancient theory that discusses yoga as consisting of eight "limbs". One of the first limbs are the yamas, which are 5 self-restraints. One self restraint is "ahimsa", which means "non-violence". Yoga encourages non-violence in thought, word and action towards others as well as towards yourself. It occurred to me at the time that when I was calming myself down with positive, self-compassionate talk that I was engaging in the observance of ahimsa. I noticed that I was beating myself up emotionally, recognized it and changed my thinking to be more self-compassionate.
Another limb of yoga is pranayama, which means breathing techniques or breath control. While I stood in the garage having an anxiety attack, I was able to control my breathing by breathing deeply and releasing the band of tension that was surrounding my chest and making me feel suffocated. As I breathed deeply, I could feel my mind starting to calm because I was focusing on my breath instead of the anxious thoughts I was having. I realized that I had been holding my breath and breathing shallow breaths. My breathing helped me realize that I was raising my shoulders with tension. The deep breathing slowly helped me release tension, lessen my anxiety, calm my mind and refocus on what I needed to do.
At that moment, I realized that perhaps I hadn't been rejecting yoga as I had been saying for the past few weeks. It helped me realized that all in the course of 15 minutes that I engaged in two limbs of yoga in my garage. It made me realize that I was just struggling with the asana limb of yoga, which are the physical postures and poses that we all tend to think define the meaning of yoga. I suddenly realized that we all have backslides in all limbs and just like I wouldn't emotionally beat the hell out of myself for not being self compassionate to myself or not breathing deeply, I shouldn't beat the hell out of myself for not always wanting to do the postures.
After I had that realization, I went back to my yoga class yesterday and was much more compassionate with myself over the asana/posture part of it. And I was actually more successful. When I felt fatigued in class and didn't want to do a pose, I honored my body and just did stretching and breathing. On Friday night I also took a class and when I didn't want to do a series of flows, I literally just sat there and breathed. I didn't feel the frustration and stress that I had been fighting as I was in the mindset of feeling as if I were rejecting yoga.
Everyone says yoga is a journey. I've been practicing yoga for about 9 months now, but primarily the asana part of it. I'm just starting to learn about the other 7 limbs and all of the subcategories within each of those limbs. Yoga has changed my life so far in so many ways and I can only imagine the potential that it can have in my life if I start to explore the other limbs that I haven't gotten to yet. I'm going to start studying the yamas/restraints, such as ahimsa/nonviolence as well as the four other yamas.
As yoga increases in popularity, this ancient healing system is being commercialized and the power of it all can be lost so I plan on blogging about my journey so that other people can understand how powerful yoga can actually be. Welcome to the ride! xoxo
Disclaimer: I'm on a journey, so if I'm not understanding the philosophy part of it, please feel free to add clarification in the comment section!
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