22 PHOTOS: ELITSA DEYKOVA/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
april 2018yogajournal.com.auWish you were better able to accept hot
and cold, noisy and silent, joy and sorrow?
Cyndi Lee shows us how.
ON A HOT DAY LAST SUMMER, I was
teaching in an old brewery turned yoga
studio in Berlin, Germany. It was
sweltering outside, and there were no
fans or air conditioning in the building,
so we opened all the tiny windows that
lined the walls.
As I settled in to teach to a packed
room, we heard a steady, loud
hammering on the old roof right next
door. It wasn’t the kind of noisy
machinery you’d hear in a big city like
Sydney; it was just a couple of guys on
the roof, pounding away all morning.
As you can imagine, the room
wasn’t exactly feeling settled. While it
would have been nice if those workers
stopped banging, that isn’t how life
works, is it? It’s hard to get everything
lined up just right all the time—
everything arranged just the
way we like it so that we can fi nally
be relaxed and content.
For years, I’ve listened to students
explain why they can’t do certain poses.
The reasons are always essentially the
same: my core is too weak, my hips
are too tight ... you get the point. The
undertone is always hope that once the
obstacle goes away, something better
will take its place. Of course, when
that better thing happens, there willflow
Howtogo
be another elusive obstacle that is
hypothetically making something else
unattainable, and so on. The result?
We end up full of craving and
dissatisfaction rather than joy.
Yes, your yoga practice does offer
adjustments for refining your
experience and making you feel a bit
more comfy. For example, if you’re
feeling cold, practice Ujjayi Pranayama
(Victorious Breath); if you’re hot, try
Shitali (cooling) Pranayama instead.
There are various modalities available to
us, designed as yogic course corrections,
so to speak. Yet, in the end, course
correcting is not what practice is all
about. Yoga is not an aspirin. It’s not
about making things fit us so that we
can feel better. In fact, when we
approach yoga that way, we actually
create our own roller coaster.Oooh,
I’m too cold; I’m too hot; my arms
are too short; it’s too noisy in here.
We are always measuring. And all
too frequently, nothing is just right.
So then, what is our practice about?
It’s about getting familiar—with
ourselves, our minds, and our habits,
including all the ways we habitually
create our own discontent. Rather than
trying to make ourselves more
comfortable—by adding props, orwishing the hammering noise would
stop or the weather were different—
what if we tried to expand our comfort
zones? I believe the fi rst step toward
doing this is recognising how we
create our own discomfort.
Asana is a great method for this
recognition, because a lot of feelings—
both physical and emotional—come
up when we move our bodies. When
we take interest in this idea, we can
begin to get familiar with the difference
between feelings and thoughts.
Thoughts seduce us, tempting us to
get hooked on story lines about feelings
and emotions that have already changed
and dissolved. The hammering outside
these windows is annoying, distracting,
and threatens to ruin this yoga class.
But will the hammering do all of that,
really?
If we can stay with our feelings
and relax our habitual thought
responses, we begin to get familiar with
the flow—the vinyasa—of our own
experience. We can start to recognise
that everything that arises also
dissolves. Every noise and silence,
sadness and delight—it’s all
impermanent. Our asana practice can
help us simply be with whatever it is
that comes up.
When we can do this, we can start
to look inside ourselves for growth.
We can trust the practice itself—the
practice of witnessing our lives. Can
we show up fully for this? Can we pay
attention and allow ourselves to be
more curious about the way things
are rather than focusing on how we
may be able to manipulate the
situation to fit our current desires?
Instead of trying to re-establish
our equilibrium from moment to
moment, we may find that we can
ride noise and silence, hot and cold,
yes and no, and joy and sorrow, just
as a ship in the ocean stays afloat by
rolling with thewaves. Instead of
losing equilibrium and needing a
course correction, we become nimble,
curious, and resilient. Our options
expand. And as we learn to trust the
practice, we learn to more fully trust
ourselves.Cyndi Lee, founder of New York City’s OM
YogaCenter (1998–2012), is the author of
Yoga Body, Buddha Mind. Her most recent
book is May I Be Happy: A Memoir of Love,
Yoga, and Changing My Mind.WITH THE