Today I was all set to skip yoga due to the huge snowstorm. When it was time to go, it was 38 degrees, raining, with wet roads and there really was no reason to skip class. Off I went and I’m glad I did, because when I woke up and slid the curtain on the door aside to check and see how much snow we got, there wasn’t any snow, but “franticness” was pressed up against the door, wanting to come in. Ah! Fear and panic started creeping into my stomach – no! I was done with that yesterday.
Except…..I did say it was new, and I’m gaining. Sometimes when we’re learning something new, the excitement of mastery wanes the next day. I went right to my morning meditation and the sentence that jumped out at me was – “you stand at a gateway now”.
I don’t know whether to be happy or scared. A gateway is an awesome thing to be standing in front of. It represents uncharted territory. It beckons. It frightens. It evokes curious excitement. It means I’m going to approach life in a different way as soon as I step through it. My yoga practice has caused deep change within me lately, so it is only fitting that I am standing at a gateway.
But I’m so glad I went to class, because today my instructor said, “Change your thoughts, change your thinking right down to your very cells.” As I lay in stillness between poses, I likened this to a car. Put the blinker on to turn right, turn the wheel right, and the whole car goes right. Think “franticness”, feel panic and fear, begin going down an old path your yoga just saved you from. Focus on yourself in the mirror. Conquer the breath. Feel stillness. Feel your energy coming from within, feel nothing can come in from the outside and bother your body or your mind. Change your thoughts, change your thinking.
I can still hear Bikram in the back of my mind saying “Never-mind all your problems – just come to yoga everyday and I fix all screws loose in your head!”
And I’ll be damned – here I stand 15 weeks later, and….he is!
I just got his new book – Bikram Yoga, and it’s better than the first one. He attends to the spiritual aspect way more than he did in book one. The chapter I’m on now is “Bitter Truths”. He’s pretty honest, and I hate to say it, he’s right.
Here’s a sample:
“Without solid grounding in yoga, you have not yet learned to master your ego-controlled mind. One of the worst of those problems is anger. So many people are so angry, and this is true all over the world. If the traffic is a little slow, they get mad. Somebody cuts in front of them in line, they get into a fight. They hold grudges, and families feud.
If there is no moderation within your mind, no balance of biochemistry through the sustained practice of yoga, every fraction of a second you are disturbed by something or somebody around you. Anything can make you fly off the handle or spiral down into the abyss of depression. The physical symptoms of this mental imbalance are a grim checklist of the most common American ailments: depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, gastrointestinal disorders, obesity.
Psychiatrists in the US write millions of prescriptions for Prozac and other psychoactive drugs every year. Do you need these? No! All they do is put the brain to sleep, put you in a waking coma; they don’t solve the problem.
You created this mess and it’s up to you to fix it. As we say in India, if you dig a canal and invite a crocodile into your bed, don’t blame the crocodile when he bites your ass! Is everybody and everything so great in India? Of course not! I’ve just told you of some of the terrible problems we have there, not the least of which is trying to feed over a billion people. And we practically invented the concept of discrimination with the caste system, which is a terrible thing. But we are survivors, and to deal with our problems, we’ve developed a system that let’s us find peace within no matter what the conditions are around us. In India it is said that when a yogi is meditating, an atom bomb detonating could not distract him. Instead, the yogi would swallow the explosion and digest it. That is the power of yoga.”
Wow. To hold that kind of power within is way better than Prozac. And way simpler than taking Prozac or any other drug for either physical or mental ailments. Do the 26 poses everyday and change your body, change your mind, change your life. And we spend billions of dollars in labs looking in vain for cures to all that ails us when it doesn’t cost anything and has been right under our very noses all along.
Why do I believe this? Because twice this week I caught myself in slow traffic and without thinking, I took a breath, sat back, turned up the music and actually didn’t mind cutting people some slack. Again, because the yoga has changed me, it was a natural reaction instead of a conscious act.
Bikram IS right. We need to conquer our ego and do it everyday in small ways. Stop trying to teach people lessons. That’s not our purpose in life. Stop trying to push in front and have the right of way for ourselves. Step back. Understand others hurt and mess up. Stop the fighting and anger. Connect. Communicate. It’s all about how we respond to each other in a hard time. The power to do all this lies in our yoga practice. I don’t know about you, but I want the power to “swallow the explosion and digest it”.
And so, as another day goes by, I can’t wait to get to the next chapter, and … I have written.
Like this one, i too …when i remember… just breathe and relax, if i find the line is not moving fast enough, or someone cuts me off driving, or some poor old lady is driving too slow down 6A.
I too love it when the instructor says something that connects. I’m sure i don’t get all the connections every day, just some days my receptors and what they say are in line.